Tripe - if you can stand it, the dogs love it!

On the advice of an old Lab breeder who has come to live nearby, I have started to give mine tripe as an additional meal. Deccy has always been a picky eater and has spent most of his life so far underweight, and I was assured that tripe would help.
Well....... she asked me to pick it up from the slaughterhouse for her, and I have never seen anything so disgusting in my life. They were hanging up dripping, having had the grass and who knows what hosed off and were on a hook looking like very large, tatty wash leathers. And the smell! Anyway, I brought them back (very heavy they were too) and Rose trimmed off the excess fat and cut each tripe into hand size pieces. As well as the brown, honeycomb effect stuff with bobbly bits there are pieces called "melts" which appear to be skin filled mainly with blood, no idea what this is, can anyone enlighten me? I came home with about 30lb of vile looking repulsive yuk!
Deccy has been on it for a month now and he has certainly put on weight. He absolutely adores it, in fact I give him his piece and by the time I have given Diva hers in her crate he has swallowed his whole His coat gleams, his poos are perfect, and Diva's spots are positively shining!
As Rose does, I feed it as a supplement on it's own, with the normal kibble earlier in the day and it seems to work. Someone said not to mix it with complete food so I don't, but I don't know why this would be a problem.
It's cheap too - the equivalent of £2 for a whole tripe, although it needs trimming and cutting up. It freezes well.

I just wish I could deal with it without feeling ill........

lovely stuff for dogs.

hateful for humans, yuk!!

mine love it and do very well with their weight and coats.

i have mine delivered frozen, but it still stinks when thawed.

My dad eats it.......I remember when I was young ,the smell used to fill the house.

I think your dad ate the bleached tripe that you can buy from the butchers, fresh tripe for dogs is green and smelly and the dogs love it!! I buy mine in minced and frozen, tripe for breakfast and tea, they dive in and don't come up for air!!

One tip - whatever you do - don't cook it - you will never get rid of the stench!

Had to laugh....i have done the same as you. When i had my newfie years ago, a friend used to work at an abrotois (sp? ),

He used to bring me home a whole lining in a black bag It was quite heavy. I would put it on a table in the back garden and spend an hour cutting it all up into handfull sizes. My dog loved it. I hated it, it stunk and was really hard to cut and it had bits of hay stuck to it. discusting stuff but the dog loved it. It used to cost me £4.

I started getting raw tripe from the slaughterhouse about 25 years ago and must admit, I was quite repulsed at first but strangly, I got to like the smell of good, fresh green tripe

I've never had 'melts' but I believe this is what they call the spleen which does lie close to the stomach (tripe) and is an organ that processes blood, so yes, it does sound like that.

LOl, Gill ,my butcher says I can have all his tripes as long as I climb in the skip and get em out, hose em down and chop em up myself, Havent quite brought myself to do it yet, but they are free of charge so maybe one day.....

Yes, I'll second that ..... cooked green tripe is something else altogether! :smt078

Gill, when we were kids we used to have it for dinner

Yes, I remember that smell even now

Apart from the smell, is there any other reason not to cook it OH wants all the food for Doggies to be cooked but I could do it in my workshop which is 50 Metres away from the house

My grandmother used to eat the bleached variety with onions, I used to retch if we were round there and she was cooking it, this "green" version is actually brown so it looks and smells like something that has come out of the back end of the cow I'm surprised that nobody has modelled a space alien "Doctor Who" style on it!:smt078
My vet has confirmed it's tremendous nutritional value for dogs and people (the slaughterman eats it, the green variety, but there again you have to be fairly hard to kill animals and cut them open to remove the guts twice a week).
I wouldn't want to cook it, apart from the small, I imagine that the nutrients would be destroyed by cooking. Raw IS natural for a dog, isn't it????
Mine have raw chicken wings as a treat when I make my bi-monthly visit to Tesco's (can't get them from local shops) but I am used to those!
Thanks for the explanation of the "melts" that does make sense.... unfortunately....