While they may not be your average dog treats, the weird bits such as beef lung, heart, kidney, beef liver and tongue are jam-packed with important nutritional benefits for dogs. This beef offal also forms an important part of Gully Road’s ethical treat sourcing philosophy, which is focused on ensuring sustainable and ethical processing of beef. If feeding beef organs raw is not to your liking, these treats can be fed in their dried form while still maintaining maximum nutritional value. Nutrient dense and full of healthy fats, feeding beef offal products is a great way to supplement your dog’s diet for optimum canine health and wellbeing.

What is beef offal?

‘Offal’ is a broad term used to describe the organs of a butchered animal. Depending on your heritage, you may have come across offal (also called ‘variety meats’) in home cooking or old family recipes. Whether the term makes your hooman mouth water from hunger or perhaps makes you feel a little queasy in the stomach (memories of a generous plate of grandma’s tripe?), doggos love all of these tasty and nutritious bits. An irresistible treat for our four legged friends, beef offal is essential to a balanced and complete diet for dogs.

Is beef offal good for dogs?

Yes! The different organs that are collectively labelled as offal have a huge range of benefits for dogs. Whether fed as raw meat or dried treats (Gully Road offal is low temperature dehydrated to preserve the full nutritional content), beef organs are a crucial part of a healthy dog’s diet. Due to the fact that all Gully Road beef treats are grass-fed, they also include a range of extra healthy fats not typically found in commercially processed beef. Grass fed beef is significantly higher in fat soluble vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, beta carotene (a potent antioxidant) and CLA. The latter is perhaps the most exciting – see below an excerpt from our previous article Grass Fed and Good Fats for Dogs;

“CLA is a beneficial fatty acid with anti-inflammatory properties, it is found in meats & milk of ruminant animals. CLA is linked to fighting cancer, preventing bone loss, and building muscle. The anti-inflammatory properties help provide protection from chronic inflammatory disease. Importantly, grass-fed fats contains 300–500% higher more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than fats from grain-fed cattle. Synthetic CLA is often added to commercial pet foods, but the absolute best source for bio-available CLA is from grass fed and grass finished beef cattle.”

How much organ meat should you feed dogs?

The Prey Model Raw diet is a popular feeding guide for dogs that that mimics the raw foods naturally consumed in the wild. This model is based on an 80-10-10 rule – 80 per cent muscle meat, 10 per cent bones and 10 per cent organs. Organs can be fed in raw or dried form, with dried products typically having three times the nutritional value by weight of fresh organs (for example, feed only one third of the weight in dried treats compared with the equivalent fresh offal). If you prefer to feed beef organs fresh, Gully Road Raw’s Balancer Kit is pre-prepared to this ratio.

How should I feed beef offal to my dog?

Fresh beef offal fed as part of daily meals is a great way to supplement your dog’s diet, particularly if you are feeding a Prey Model Raw diet. At Gully Road we offer a diced organ mix, available from Gully Road Raw which can be fed on its own or mixed into other meal components.

Alternatively, beef offal can be fed individually as treats in dried form. These treats are low-temperature dehydrated which means that the key nutrient content is retained. These treats are a little greasier than most store-bough treatos as they are jam-packed full of the healthy fats which also act as a natural preservative. Our Regen Pack includes a mixed selection of liver, kidney, lung, heart, tongue, paddywhacks (neck tendons), chuck ends, rib bones and feather bones. In addition, we also stock Beef Liver Jerky, Kidney Bites, Beef Dongs (beef oesophagus), Moo Tubes (dried beef trachea tubes), Beef Neck Splits, Beef Bunts (beef epiglottis), Weenie Peenies (no prizes for guessing what these are) and Achilles Chews – browse the full range of beef products here.

What are the benefits of feeding different types of beef organs?

Aside from the healthy fats that we have mentioned, beef organs provide a range of other nutritional benefits. Each organ has a different set of nutritional values.

Beef Liver for Dogs

Liver treats are popular for dogs in both their dried form and as a raw food for dogs. In both forms, liver is a vitamin-rich protein with vast nutritional benefits, being high in Omega 3s and packed full of Vitamins A, B, D, E and K as well as iron & taurine. Liver is so nutrient dense that it should be fed only in small quantities, with dried liver being fed at 1/3 of the raw weight. For example, a 10 kg dog should be fed no more than 2 x postage stamp sized sections (10g) of dehydrated liver per day. Raw liver can be fed at approximately 30g per day, per 10kg of bodyweight. Fresh beef liver can also be made into smaller training treats – see our best-ever Royally Delicious Beef Liver treat recipe here (a serious home made dog treat recipe only for the hooman dedicated to the treato cause)…

Buy Beef Liver for Dogs

• Raw Grass Fed Beef Organs
• Dried Beef Liver Jerky

Beef Kidney for Dogs

Like liver, beef kidney is super rich in nutrients and proteins and deliver a large portion of your dog’s required daily vitamin intake. Grass fed kidney contains Omega 3 fatty acids as well as vitamins A, K, E, B12 and iron. This organ is known to contain anti-inflammatory properties while also being particularly good for heart and cardiovascular health. Vitamin A is essential for healthy vision and eye health and kidney is an ideal supplement for prevention of many degenerative disorders associated with ageing in senior dogs. Kidney can be fed as part of a 10% organ component in your dog’s daily foods.

Buy Beef Kidney for Dogs

• Raw Grass Fed Beef Organs
• Dried Kidney Bites

Beef Heart for Dogs

Heart is both a muscle and an organ, so has two key sets if benefits – much like feeding your dog lean muscle meat with an extra dose of vitamins and minerals. Heart meat is an excellent source of B vitamins as well as essential fatty acids, iron, protein, phosphorus and taurine. This organ is also rich in thiamine, which is important for nourishing the brain and other high-energy organs.

Buy Beef Heart for Dogs

• Raw Grass Fed Beef Organs
• Regen Pack

While Gully Road does not currently sell brain as part of the beef organ range for dogs we recommend it as part of their offal diet.

Where Gully Road Beef Dog Treats Come From

If you’ve read our previous articles such as Where our natural beef dog treats come from and why it’s important you will already know that ethical sourcing of meat products is an essential part of the Gully Road ethos. In addition, nose to tail processing (essentially, ensuring that the whole animal is utilised and nothing is wasted) is something that we take very seriously.

Gully Road beef treats are sourced from our sister company Provenir – which is Australia’s only commercially licensed mobile beef processing operation. All Provenir beef is on-farm processed, highest animal welfare, grass fed, free range and hormone free. This means that our beef is ethically sourced and comes from happy, healthy cows (the way they are meant to be). Therefore, we truly believe that Gully Road offers the most ethically produced beef dog treats available in Australia.

The offal dog treat products that we have incorporated into the Gully Road range have two key sets of benefits. Most importantly, they provide a convenient way to supplement your dog’s diet with a huge range of nutrients and healthy fats (think shiny coats, healthy skin and strong joints). These beef offal products also account for a range of beef cuts that are less popular for human consumption and therefore often have the potential to be wasted or underutilised in many commercial beef processing operations.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Gully Road dog treats are sourced, take a look at another of our articles – titled So what do we mean by ethical, sustainable and environmentally conscious?

Gully Road for Dogs

Gully Road enables dog owners to buy a range of natural dog treats online. We source all of our dog food products carefully to ensure that they are produced with the highest standards of animal welfare as the upmost priority. As well as our selection of grass fed beef dog treats we also supply chicken and seafood products as well as wild rabbit for dogs. Gully Road for Dogs proudly delivers ethical dog treats Australia-wide from our little farm in Western Victoria.