When to start meats?

[TexasG]

I am wondering when to start giving baby meats--either pureed or tiny pieces? we have started solids and he is 8 1/2 months old and hubby is bugging me about it! I am not really a meat eater, but he is--I want to compromise, but not even sure when they can have it! he just wants to make sure that we have given him a variety of foods. I can't hardly stand looking at the pureed meats--looks like cat food!

[Ldavis24]

I have been feeding DD meats since she started solids about a month ago. She is almost 9 months and one of her favorites meals is when I roast a chicken and make her her own plate!
I just rip it up into very tiny pieces.
This kid also loves loves loves bacon!

I don't know if I am breaking some kind of rule but we haven't had a problem. Although I am really picky about the meat we buy, local if possible, free range grass fed etc, and we are getting chickens of our own soon which we will be eating and collecting the eggs. It's just good to know where that meat is coming from!

[pumpkin]

At that age we gave DD larger pieces of meat. She would chew and suck on them. Her favorite was steak cut into strips.

[Abraisme]

I give me 6.5mo little bites of meat. I usually pre-chew it or smash it in my fingers and hand it to her. I started giving her meat just after she started solids (at 5.5mo). There's not reason that I know of to wait.

[Kelly1101]

I think 8.5 months is perfectly fine for meats. I don't puree meats (although I have and still do purees of some things), just cut them very very tiny (to where it couldn't choke her) and let her finger-feed.

I don't think anything has any allergy risk except for some seafood, especially shellfish. If there is an allergy history I'd wait on those. If not, just do the four-day rule.

[Sasharna]

Echoing the others, it sounds fine to me. When my baby was just shy of six months old I found that (self-fed) meat caused a teensy amount of blood in his stool. Seeing this, I withheld it for another couple months in spite of his strong interest in eating it. When we next tried it there were no longer any ill effects.

[Ruthie's momma]

At that age, DD really liked eating little pieces of turkey, chicken and salmon. The poultry was often roasted, grilled or stewed. The salmon was either grilled or poached.

[AFWife]

We started giving DS chunks of meat around that age to just suck on...

He's 10mo now and he's on a meat kick. He's been eating sardines and kipper snacks.

[TexasG]

Thanks so much for the replies, I usually end up waiting too long, good to know I can start it.

[wombatclay]

In some cultures meat is the traditional "first food", and it's actually something suggested by LLL as a good first food. So really it's fine to offer whenever assuming no allergy/ethical reservations about animal protien.

We follow a baby led approach and let ds chomp/chew/gum whatever dinner happens to be. DD2 adored red meat (which we have 2-3x a year) and would gnaw on strips of steak. DS hasn't had red meat yet, but he has had chicken breast... cut into a wedge so he could hold it, but cut in such a way that he couldn't really pull off "chokable" pieces. (We do sit right with him while he eats though.)

[blumooned]

I've had the best luck giving DS ground meat or meat that comes out of soup. So far, he loves ground chicken, beef, & turkey. He likes chicken picked out of chicken noodle soup.
For the ground meat, I've made meatballs, meatloaf, burgers, tomato pasta sauce, taco meat, sloppy joes - anything really!! I just cut up the pieces if they're big.