Raw diet not working right now

[Bill Fosher]

A couple of my dogs are putting on some extra weight this winter as their activity levels drop. I've responded to this by cutting back on the amount of raw meat and bones I feed them, but they have responded by finding truly disgusting supplements to their diets. One of them has taken to eating dog crap and barfing it up in the night. Try as I might, I can't find every pile before she does (the dogs go off in the woods in places where I simply can't get right now as the branches are iced in).

 

Old Molly starts feeling empty about three hours before feeding time and makes sure that everyone around her is miserable until she is fed.

 

Any suggestions about how to keep these dogs feeling full without packing on more pounds? I've tried pumpkin and other forms of winter squash and they'll eat a little but not enough to solve the problem.

[Laurae]

Bill, you've probably thought about this already but I might try dividing their total intake into another meal. I'd also try to increase the ratio of leaner meats to more fatty ones. We are very lucky here to have access to wild elk, bison, and venison, and these meats tend to be much leaner than, say, chicken or farm-raised sheep. Not sure if that is an option available to you. I also might try some of the things that they mostly chew with few calories, like chicken feet. I pretty much have the opposite problem, so I am always trying to find ways to put on some weight on mine without just adding piles more meat.

[Wendy V]

What are you feeding currently? Winter squash becomes more palatable with the addition of egg or oil. Perhaps you can try adding a little bit of oil to see if they will eat it?

[Shoofly]

I've had the opposite problem too. Can you add lean pork?

[Wendy V]

Dogs love raw pork. I had a problem with the dog's keeping weight when I fed veggies. I quit the veggies and I now feed meaty raw bones only, with emphasis on a lot of meat. Have you tried beef brisket? This cut of meat tends to be pretty fatty. Denise Wall also have a line on a wholesaler that has very fatty ground meat.

[Bill Fosher]

Right now my dogs get what I can get for 70 cents a pound or less or can produce myself. Recently that has meant pork neck, chicken backs, and mutton. The mutton is the only muscle cut that I have had of late. The "easy keepers" are getting about 3/4 lb., and the two that stay trim are getting about 1 lb.

 

I hadn't considered splitting the feeding into two meals, but I could give that a try. It seemed to me that would produce twice the distress -- whetting the appetite and then not satiating it.

[Shoofly]

Dogs love raw pork. I had a problem with the dog's keeping weight when I fed veggies. I quit the veggies and I now feed meaty raw bones only, with emphasis on a lot of meat. Have you tried beef brisket? This cut of meat tends to be pretty fatty. Denise Wall also have a line on a wholesaler that has very fatty ground meat.

 

Yep, that's who i get food from to add fat to the diet and keep the weight up (it's a ground beef with 40% fat). I was thinking Bill could add more pork since his dogs are needing less weight on their bodies and more bulk in the diet - when i was feeding a lot more of it than i do now, that's when i had more trouble keeping the weight on the dogs. And it's easy to find at a reasonable price.

 

The other option is green beans. The dogs can eat a lot of them for bulk with very few calories.

[Liz P]

Bill, I would be wondering if your diet is lacking in some nutrient that the dogs are craving. If you are mostly feeding muscle meats and bones I can understand why your dogs are acting hungry.

[Pippin's person]

We've had luck cutting back on food for the portlier in our pack by adding some raw oatmeal to their feed (like a tablespoon). That seems to help them feel fuller as the grain expands in their bellies. We also feed them two meals a day and none of them complain (at least not in ways we can understand) about being hungry.

 

We also have a poop connoisseur (though luckily, she seems to process it in the normal way)--I feel your disgust and if you find a way to stop that, please share it.

[Bill Fosher]

I forgot to mention that there's organ meat at least weekly. Beef liver, lamb liver, kidneys, heart, and even some lungs and tripe from the mutton that I slaughter at home -- can't get federally-inspected plants to give me lungs or stomach parts. Occasional seafood. Odds and ends from the table as well.

[Shoofly]

We also have a poop connoisseur (though luckily, she seems to process it in the normal way)--I feel your disgust and if you find a way to stop that, please share it.

 

Oh geez, no kidding. I have 2 that are terrible about it. I can hardly stand to be where i can smell their breath.

[pammyd]

sounds like yove got a good diet for them

 

I have heard tales that one meal a day is better than 2 cos then they get really full? might expand on that with a gourge meal of a couple of days food in one.

 

I would go with the leaner cuts of meat and try and find ways to get more active

 

as billy conelly says to loose weight 'eat less and move more' (he also says we are always gonna struggle when the hole it goes in is bigger than the hole it goes out)

 

can't help with the poo eating my boy got better on the raw diet-but still no face kisses!

[Alaska]

Daily frisbee.

 

Not trying to be a smart aleck, but I cannot understand why my two 40 lb BCs, who do not work stock and are definitely not getting much sustained exercise these wintry days, do not put on an ounce of weight eating 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lbs. of raw meat per diem, plus snacks. The only explanation I can come up with is the brief daily frisbee or chuck-it sessions, which appear to burn an unbelievable amount of calories per minute.

[Bill Fosher]

Our world is a sheet of ice. I shudder to thing of what my dogs' shoulder and hip joints would look like if they were chasing toys over this surface.

[Laurae]

Right now my dogs get what I can get for 70 cents a pound or less or can produce myself. Recently that has meant pork neck, chicken backs, and mutton. The mutton is the only muscle cut that I have had of late. The "easy keepers" are getting about 3/4 lb., and the two that stay trim are getting about 1 lb.

 

I hadn't considered splitting the feeding into two meals, but I could give that a try. It seemed to me that would produce twice the distress -- whetting the appetite and then not satiating it.

 

Well, the idea is that they then never get so hungry that they go into distress mode.

Winter is hell, eh? That sheet of ice thing is what it was like here in Colorado last winter. It was a nightmare trying to exercise the dogs. I think I put on 10 pounds myself!

[mbernard2424]

Bill,

 

First of all, I commend you for feeding raw, however, the diet that you describe is not well balanced: you are feeding too much bone. You said that you are keeping your budget to meat that you can get for $.70/pound or meat you butcher yourself. Can you even get kibble for $.70/lb?

 

Ideally, the muscle/organ meat to bone ratio should be about 15% bone. This is if you are feeding based on the whole-prey model (a term I personally hate, but it works). In my opinion, Billinghurst did feeding dogs a raw diet a great disservice in the amount of bone he recommends in his diet. The veggies have to be in that type of diet to keep the dog from getting constipated from all the bone. See http://rawfed.com/myths/preymodel.html

 

You said that it's too icy to exercise your dogs, but this is only temporary. If they get a little chunky during times they can't exercise, they'll take it back off when they can exercise, no? I expect they are burning considerable calores just keeping warm in your climate, unless they are kept inside of course.

 

What do your dogs' stools look like? How long have you been feeding raw? Do you think they are properly digesting their food? Temporary use of digestive enzymes may help.

 

To keep them happy in between meals, how about large, recreational bones?

 

You stated in one of your posts on the "Why?" topic one of the reasons some dogs are out of control is feeding a type of food that was too "high energy." Not sure what type of diet would be too "high energy" than feeding raw, which is what you are feeding. I'm curious what type of diet you were referring to.

[Bill Fosher]

Hi Michelle,

 

When I see people feeding puppy food that's 36 percent protein and feeding it ad lib -- or as much as the pup will eat three times a day -- that's when I think they're going over the top.

 

How do you measure that 15 percent? By as-fed weight? Because by that standard, I think I'm probably not too far off when averaged out over the week. Nights when the meal is chicken backs I know I've got too much bone, but then there are nights when they're getting leg or shoulder chops from the mutton which is virtually boneless and one night a week when they get organs which are boneless. The pork neck is very meaty as well -- no more than 20 percent bone by weight, I'd estimate.

 

Stools look fine. Nice and dry and well formed. I've been feeding raw meat for a little over a year.

 

And no, I can't get kibble for 70 cents a pound -- at least not any that I would be willing to feed them. However, I would not be feeding them a pound of kibble either. Probably more like 4 to 8 ounces. At 70 cents a pound, raw is costing me about $126 for the six dogs per month. Premium quality kibble like Canidae at $1 per pound would cost me about $70 per month for the same six dogs.

 

I have really liked how the dogs have performed on the raw diet up until now, so I am willing to pay a little more and deal with the headaches of storage and prep, etc. Plus my cull ewes are more valuable as dog food -- even if I just value them as replacement for kibble -- than they would be at the auction.

[mbernard2424]

Hi Michelle,

 

When I see people feeding puppy food that's 36 percent protein and feeding it ad lib -- or as much as the pup will eat three times a day -- that's when I think they're going over the top.

 

Michelle: Well, the problem with most kibble, the 36% "protein" isn't likely coming from meat but grain so I would expect a dog that is being fed food like that would be more likely to get fat on it than to have too much energy.

 

How do you measure that 15 percent? By as-fed weight? Because by that standard, I think I'm probably not too far off when averaged out over the week. Nights when the meal is chicken backs I know I've got too much bone, but then there are nights when they're getting leg or shoulder chops from the mutton which is virtually boneless and one night a week when they get organs which are boneless. The pork neck is very meaty as well -- no more than 20 percent bone by weight, I'd estimate.

 

Michelle: No, total per week. Unless you are getting pork necks different from what we get here, I don't consider pork necks as being too meaty. A lot of people who feed raw tend to feed primarily chicken necks and backs and some organ meat. You are lucky you have your cull ewes as that gives you an inexpensive source of high quality meat. How many ewes can you cull in a month? I'd feed as much as you can of that meat. Maybe you could throw some goat meat in for good measure? In general, muscle meat is expensive. I just bought three big packages of ground beef (high fat) for $.99/pound which I thought was a bargain!

 

Stools look fine. Nice and dry and well formed. I've been feeding raw meat for a little over a year.

 

Michelle: Are they dry when passed? What color are they? Are they in balls or tootsie roll shaped? If you've been feeding it for a year, then digestive enzymes likely won't be useful.

 

And no, I can't get kibble for 70 cents a pound -- at least not any that I would be willing to feed them. However, I would not be feeding them a pound of kibble either. Probably more like 4 to 8 ounces. At 70 cents a pound, raw is costing me about $126 for the six dogs per month. Premium quality kibble like Canidae at $1 per pound would cost me about $70 per month for the same six dogs.

 

Michelle: I didn't think you could get premium kibble for $1/pound.

 

I have really liked how the dogs have performed on the raw diet up until now, so I am willing to pay a little more and deal with the headaches of storage and prep, etc. Plus my cull ewes are more valuable as dog food -- even if I just value them as replacement for kibble -- than they would be at the auction.

 

Michelle: I agree, I wouldn't feed anything else. If it were me, I'd just feed them what they need and worry about taking the weight off when you can run them. My problem is the exact opposite, keeping the weight on!

[Alaska]

Our world is a sheet of ice. I shudder to thing of what my dogs' shoulder and hip joints would look like if they were chasing toys over this surface.

I'm in nearly the same situation. I constantly evaluate the possible surfaces available and adjust the activity to the conditions, and there are plenty of days when only low-speed activities are permitted. The only advantage I have is that I'm on the ocean, so at low tide I have access to beaches that are snow and ice free, though this isn't much help when low tide occurs during the dark hours. But I'm also considering a move to warmer climes, since, dogs' needs aside, I'm getting awfully tired of walking on ice (and falling on ice) (and putting on and off yaktrax every time I step out of or into a building) for months on end.

 

I don't think I quite have the patience to wait for global warming take care of the problem.

[kelpiegirl]

Bill

I kept forgetting to post this, but- I have had success with probiotics and my old dog for her interest, shall we say in excrement. Many older dogs just don't digest food (any) well, and need a bit of help in that department. Lew Olson has an extensive website on canine nutrition, and she also has probiotic discussion.

[Alaska]

Hey Bill,

 

Here's another suggestion you probably don't want: a treadmill. I know, I know, you wouldn't be caught dead putting a dog on a treadmill. Me neither. But I have lately run across a few people who've trained their dogs to use a treadmill (apparently easy to do) for exercise in the winter. Just a thought.

 

Lucky for me, we just got a foot of snow, so until it melts down into an inch of ice (usually about a day ), the outdoor dog gym is open for business.

[Alaska]

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[ness_bc]

Maybe I don't have it right as my usually constantly demanding food driven BC (yep she is one of those that lives for her food) when on 50:50 (kibble/meat) was constantly struggling with putting on too much weight. I was only even giving her a small handful of dry at that. Now she is on totally raw with just occasional dry if I want to use up the leftovers (prize winnings) and do some quick training and I find I don't have to be quite as strict on the amount I feed and she feels great. She is even getting less exercise then when she was on a mixture. It takes her far longer to eat as well and she isn't at me for food all the time.

 

She is still the same dog who would rather eat then do anything else so what have I done wrong as she no longer pleads for food yet is feeling a hell of a lot better then she did before!!!

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

I do think your meat sources might be suspect here, not necessarily the approach. Ben has very limited sources of meat to choose from since he is allergic to all poultry. With him, I shoot for less than $2 a pound and haven't had a problem with that even though I have to feed exotic stuff like goat.

 

If you could find leaner sources of muscle meat, just for the ones that seem to have the most serious problems, and just for the winter months. I know that cost is a big part of how you evaluate the effectiveness of what you feed. But, your dogs might be telling you they need more variety than you are offering.

http://www.eatwild.com/ is a source of where to look for family farm raised meats, including lean pork. What I've found is that though there might be just a couple of sources listed, these people know people, etc.

[Lenajo]

Bill a couple of people I know have gone to feeding every 2 days. They let the dogs have a huge meal, then feed again in 48-72 hours. I know people doing this both on kibble and on raw. Not so enamored myself with how the kibble 48 hour dogs look (granted, it's cheap awful stuff they are using), but the raw fed dogs look really good. They also seem much more content - less food "starving" behaviors, and fighting in winter underexercised animals.

 

These dogs are hounds mostly, and they give 10-12 hounds a 2-3 hundred pound calf or a whole deer or sheep when they feed them.

 

I can't go quite that "natural" LOL myself (thought I'm sure the pack would love for me to throw a few deer over the fence into the play yard) but the idea of it can be worked into an existing raw feeding program. Dogs are meant to eat in bursts - meat/bone/organs, then rest and chill out with bones to gnaw on. Pica and cophraphagia are somewhat natural, particularily in the winter months - I think because the content of the vitamins/minerals in the meats changes as the seasons change for the animals it comes from. Also I think there are some inborn starvation prevention behaviors going on - they aren't called carnivorous scavengers for nothing.

 

*Some* dogs may need some carbs to deal with this - my vet and I have been in great discussion for some time about certain lines/dogs requiring carbs for maxium health. Genetics driven? Possibly. Border collies have been maintained for centuries on cheap mutton, milk soaked oats, fish, and whatever rabbits/small game they could nab. When I have a "starver", it's very interesting to see them change if fed even 2 tbsp of soaked or cooked oats a day for a week. Is this genetic? or ill health at some molecular level? That remains to be seen.

 

Juliet de Barlcai Levy's books are a very old, very interesting read on natural animal health. She even mentions giving her dog an occasional can of corn....

 

I still feed vegetables. The dogs like them, and pick their own if they get a change. I used to get all worried about the "rules" of raw feeding and now I just do what works for us. My dogs do best when they get a full variety of stuff.

 

A lean meat that you haven't mentioned using is rabbit. It's easy to raise, and often easier to buy. Border Collies do remarkable well on them.