Making Your Own Dog Treats: Our Home-made Jerky Treat Production

I haven't met a dog that didn't love jerky treats. I think, and the dogs I know concur, that jerky is the best kind of treat going.



Buying jerky treats for you dogs, though, you can run into major safety issues. 

Jerky treats made in China are behind numerous dog illnesses and even deaths. I can only imagine how it would feel to hurt my dogs while thinking I was doing something good for them.

FDA has been issuing warnings since 2007 but failed in getting these dangerous treats off the shelves.

The Truth about Pet Food is organizing a Black Friday for Pets event, a peaceful protest, asking Walmart to remove all Chinese imported jerky treats from store shelves.

Jerky treats are very easy to make at home!

We've been making jerky treats for our guys for about six years now. It all started when on her play date with Jasmine's best buddy, his mom pulled out something very yummy. Dehydrated beef lung chunks!

Jasmine could not get enough of them!

As a loving mom, I ran to the store to get some more. It was $10 for a tiny little bag. Well, that was not going to cut it. And that's when we started thinking about making dog jerky treats ourselves.

We looked into dehydrators and started small. But the treats were so popular, our treat making evolved into treat production. As you can see in the video, eventually we ended up with a butcher meat slicer, jerky gun and stainless steel heavy-duty dehydrator. Of course, you don't need all that, a simple American Harvest dehydrator will get you started as well.

We make jerky treats from beef, ground beef, beef hearts or beef liver.

You can, of course, use any meat you like, or even experiment with some veggies, such as sweet potatoes. If you do want to make jerky from ground meat, you will need a jerky gun (or if you want to go big, jerky cannon). Having a slicer works for us but you could have your butcher slice it up for you as well.

Home-made jerky treats are cheaper and SAFER.

We like using the dehydrator, but you can experiment making them in the oven as well.

Why risk your dog's health when you can make their jerky treats yourself?

Related articles:
Chicken Jerky Anyone? Not When It's From China!

Further reading:
Time for Another Jerky Treat Update
Safety Alert on Jerky Treats for Pets
FDA Investigates Animal Illnesses Linked to Jerky Pet Treats