“Green Tripe”, the stuff that could quite literally make you hurl your own stomach content across the room while for your dog or cat, they would walk in handstands for a mere morsel of the stinky stuff.
What is Tripe?
It is the stomach of ruminating (grazing) animals; such as cattle, sheep or goat. The stomach of grazing ruminants is unique in that they have four-compartments that systematically break down the grasses and plant matter digested by their stomachs digestive enzymes, gastric juices and amino acids. What is left is the slimy, smelly slurry rich in natural goodness.
Why Does It Have To Be Green?
Have you noticed that the tripe available from your local grocery store is white? This is a result of being cleaned, scaled and bleached. Unfortunately this process also removes any nutritional value to your pet’s health.
What you are looking for is “Green Tripe”, in all its’ glorious raw natural unprocessed state oozing with gastric juices, digestive enzymes and natural probiotics!
What Is So Good About It?
Those same gastric juices, digestive enzymes and natural probiotics not only aid the the digestion of the animal it came from, but also aid your pet in digesting and efficiently utilizing his food.
Green tripe has the ideal ratio of calcium to phosphorus – 1:1. Green tripe also contains the essential fatty acids, Linoleic and Linolenic, in their recommended proportions. The amino acids are necessary for muscular development and the other gastric juices even help to keep teeth clean.
Green tripe is highly beneficial to pets suffering from digestive problems, sensitive stomachs, food intolerance, leaky gut syndrome, acid reflux and irritable bowel symptoms. Older pets are prone to lower levels of beneficial bacteria in their gut, making it much harder to digest food and the nutrients efficiently. Supplementing your pet’s diet with raw, green tripe will help maintain a healthy balance of micro flora and manufacture additional B vitamins.
What Is Not So Good About It?
There is no getting around it, IT STINKS – a lot!
Be warned you will not be able to help yourself, everyone does it, you open up your first package of this delish green tripe and consider “can it really smell that bad” and there you go, taking in a big deep whiff. As you recoil like you just stuck a fork in the toaster, I can promise you that your gut-retching heaves will stop, just as soon as the smell dissipates from your nasal hairs.
It is also important to remember that green tripe is raw and since us mere moral humans do not carry the natural resistance to harmful bacteria as our pets, you will need to handle it in the same manner as any other raw meat products. Prevent cross contamination by washing your hands and utensils thoroughly after handling. Lemon juice might help to get that smell off your hands!
The Great News!
Green tripe used to be quite difficult to find and then even worse to handle.
Thankfully green tripe is becoming more readily available in convenient portioned forms; frozen and freeze dried such as offered by K9 Natural and Organic Paws. The smell is still there, but they have made it much easier to handle!
The benefits of “Green Tripe” far outweigh the smelly gross part, so if health and vitality of your pet is important to you, then you might like to consider dishing up the stinky stuff!
Green Tripe – Raw Freeze Dried
If your pet has a medical condition, it is always recommended you speak to your veterinarian
before making a major change to his/her diet.
Are you considering a total change to a Raw Diet for your pet? Then read more on going Raw.
Author Bio: Nikki is pack leader at Pressplay Pets, a blog for the modern age pet parent interested in health & care, news, reviews & personal accounts of unconditional love & at times heartfelt pain of pet parenting. She is also proud mum to cute and cheeky Papillons ‘Amber’ and ‘Indy’ and one crazy Rainbow Lorikeet named ‘Ralph’! Follow my Facebook and Twitter.
Pressplay Pets a blog for the modern age pet parent interested in health & care, news, reviews & personal accounts of unconditional love & at times heartfelt pain of pet parenting!
Follow Us!
I just wrote an article about green tripe. It is EXTREMELY rare to find green tripe in dog food. The food that I give my own dogs has it. Green tripe is really the best ingredient. My dogs’ food only contains a little bit so it doesn’t stink. I have given pure green tripe to my dogs in the past, but I just couldn’t stomach the stench.
Hi Janie, Yes I did get to read your article the other day about Green Tripe. No doubt you have also found it surprising the amount of fur-parents whom have never heard about Green Tripe. I have been giving it to Amber and Indy for about 18 months, after Amber got HGE and it has done wonders in helping her intestinal tract and bowel recover.
I am discovering a lot more ‘RAW’ food producers are putting tripe in their range, which makes it so much easier to offer our pets. Amber and Indy like “K9 Natural” a NZ product that contains tripe as the 3-4th ingredient. Therefore the ratio is really good, however, I do also give straight tripe (also “K9 Natural”).
I like to increase straight green tripe a couple of days a week, in particular if they have tummy grumbles (usually after foraging in the backyard, goodness knows what they have eaten). The smell, hmmmm well I certainly am not used to it, but I have discovered if I take the green tripe straight from the freezer and put it in their dishes and allow to defrost slightly before dishing it up, I don’t get the whiff up my nose quite so bad :).
This is a very interesting read! I’d never heard about the stuff before so thanks for sharing!
We’d love if you would check out our website and share with your paw-pals. We want pet-lovers all across Australia to unite together!
Best, the PetHomeStay team