dog food..

[kelli 1]

I feed Canidae to my 3 Border Collies and they are thriving on it. Lots of energy, no itching and nice shiney coats.

[Carson Crazies]

Becca, if you were going to make the switch from kibble to RAW, how would you go about it? Would it be a situation of weaning off of kibble and onto the new stuff? How do you get a feel for how much and of what they need? I am finding that I am just not pleased with what I find with commercial foods. Its a battle between itchy-scratchy or poop issues. Then how do you control for travel situations?

[sea4th]

3 oz for a 50 pound dog

Even though it's only one meal, with another later in the day, 3 oz. seems like almost nothing!

 

And when you said "relatively expensive meats", what sort of meats are you talking about? I consider myself lucky in that I don't pay over a dollar a pound for any meat, except occasionally organ meats. (I HAVE to keep cost down with the crew that I have). For example, I buy chicken quarters in 10 lb. bags for anywhere from 39 cent to 49 cents a pounds. Pork neck bones have gone up, but they are still under 1.00 per lb. (89 cents now).

 

Chicken necks, and some of the odd cuts & bones, (it's fun to hunt), I can get quite cheap too. Whole fryers one time on sale at 44 cent a lb. (I wish I had take a pic of Juta, my Mt. dog with this nekked chicken between her front paws.)

 

I picked up 10 lbs. of uncleaned chitlins for 6.00 recently. I never did have the nerve to open it & feed it, not after talking to some friends who grew up on chitlins. Backed down from that one.

 

So I know you can get quite creative with this diet and the dogs just love it.

[Sue R]

Rebecca - Would you mind giving us your week-long recipe? What type of meaty bones do you feed? Do you just get them at the grocery store?

 

Did I understand that your dogs don't get any solid food one day each week? What is the purpose of that?

 

How do you determine what you feed each animal to begin with? I would assume you can simply adjust up or down as needed, but what would be a good starting point?

 

Thanks!

[border_collie_crazy]

I cant speak for Rebecca but most raw feeders that I know of anyway fast their dogs 1 day a week, at my house this is done on sundays and they still get food but only meat and no veggies and whatever. normally I kno why, but I cant for the life of me remeber right now lol

[laurie etc]

I know some people who "fast" their dogs regularly - I don't on a regualr basis. But if they get a particularly large meal, or I see them having loose stools, I fast the next meal. Gives the gut a time to calm down and recover... My feeling is that working dogs do better with small amounts more frequently and regularly. In the wild, wolves could afford to gorge themselves, then lie around and digest for a day or so...It also didn't matter (to the wolves) if they had blow-out diahrrea from gorging, but that matters to me!

[Piper]

I've been considering going "RAW" for Piper and I know this topic has been discussed tons on the boards...so would be interested in seeing your (Rebecca) week-long recipe. I've started adding egg yolks when we have eggs, since hubby got his cholesterol checked (highly recommend doing that for yourself-not your dog).

 

Piper already fasts, without me doing it to her, she sometimes will go a day without eating, always has and so the next day I have to add some yummies to her food, which usually means shredded pecoro-romano cheese (we get from my in-laws in upstate NY). Eating isn't a priority for her.

 

I've tried adding the canned pumpkin and carrots to her daily kibble but she ate everything but the carrots and wanted nothing to do with the pumpkin.

 

Also, can't remember who posted about some dogs not interested in rawhides, that is my girl, she could care less about them unless there is another dog around.

 

Oh and right now she eats Nutro Wellness Lamb & Rice, but someone on our dog team just gave us a huge bag of Super Wellness - so will use that when she is done with Nutro. Most brands like that we have to order as they're not available here in town...my checked luggage sometimes is quite funny...appliances from Costco, 40 lbs of dog food...

[tildy]

I am waiting for week recipe too!...never realized that's what duchess was doing she also fast herself..but how can ya tell..she sooo picky

except when it comes to the kitties food..

[Shelby Kennels]

How do raw feeders handle food when you travel? I know it is imperative how safely raw meat is handled - especially when fed raw.

[Piper]

I don't think Piper necessarily is fasting on purpose...she just forgets to eat sometimes, that's my theory anyways.

[Shelby Kennels]

Here is an interesting read on dog food too by William Cusick. http:http://home.att.net/~wdcusick/free.html

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

I have freeze dried and canned stuff I feed for long trips. Short trips I can feed frozen food. If I get caught unaware it's really nice because I can just pop into the nearest grocery and get most of what I need.

[border_collie_crazy]

when we travel with the dogs we premake the breakys and put them in ziplock containors and we prepare all the bones ahead of time labled and in seperate ziplock bags so we never have to touch the meat on the trip really. and we keep it all in a cooler.

[tildy]

ok.....well.I thought to myself..I'll give duchess

some of this fresh gr round I have sooooo I dished out probally a cup or more...in her dish..it is still there!!!!..she looked at me as if I lost my mind....and I am sooooo wanting to try this RAW thing..because she itches...alot..

[Joe Anne]

I don't understand this raw diet. I agree that the kibble food processed today on the whole leaves a lot to be desired and I do think you have to really check ingrediants and do your research for as good as you can get and what is available, however... I don't see where raw meat and certainly bones can be guranteed any healthier in the long run than the dry food. I haven't heard anyone mention, bacterias galore in raw meat, salmonila! and what about all the hormones & antibiotics, fed to farm animals to make them grow bigger faster. What about "mad cow disease", found in the (I believe) spinal fluid of cows, and farm animals being fed diseased carcassas of other animals.

Also, has anyone ever visited a slaughter house!

Someone mentioned the dry foods having stuff that they sweep off the floor thrown into the kibble while processing... well you don't want to know where some of your "healthy" raw meat was before it was packaged and sent to the grocery store.

Our domesticated dogs are not wolves, the meat and bones they eat are truly free roaming, and except for the water, air and land we humans pollute, their food is truly organic and "healthy".

I will admit I haven't done much research on feeding raw, and I understand it is THE thing to do today..but let us remember, what that farmer fed her dog years ago, was probably pretty organic stuff and healthy too.

All you have to do is look around at young girls 10-12 yrs old, these days who look like young women used to at the natural maturation age of 19 or 20! I remember when the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture started to feed chickens and turkeys hormones to increase breast meat! And these days the craze is poultry and stay away from red meat and pork... so like I said how healthy is it really???

I have raised my puppies for many a year on Iams... and when they get close to a year, we add chicken (cooked) and rice with a little warm water and a 1/4 - 1/2 tsp of virgin olive oil. My dogs have all been relatively healthy, with beautiful shiny coats and I've had at least 5 live well into their teens.

Hey, I am open to being educated, I just worry about this raw diet stuff...too many diseases and drugs, cropping up for me...

PS... I am a strick vegetarian myself, so I just worry about pesticides in vegis!!!! LOL!!

JoeAnne, Mirra, Sitka Phoenix and Crew

[tildy]

I agree with hormones and girls age 9-12..my daughter is 11 and well developed for an 11 yr old!...have talked to her dr about this since age 8..I don't undersatnd this RAW thing either..but it doesn't matter cause my picker eater wouldn't eat the raw gr round I gave her...so I would start to add the oil..to her kibble....

[border_collie_crazy]

keep in mind that a dogs digestiv tract is a lot shorter in dogs, things like samonella effect epople because it just sits in our bodys while dogs almost never get it because it goes straight through. my dogs potty 5 seconds after they eat. I dont know about others but only the peoples meat comes from the store at my house, the dogs meat and bones come straight from the butcher at the same time its being cut, and we get them from an out of town butcher who does wild animals that hunters bring in such as deer and moose. we get pork from a differnt butcher and they cut it in small peices for us. chicken backs and necks from from yet another butcher. they all know the meat is for the dogs. the out of town butcher provides the bones free for the raw feeders, they tell you what days they butcher on, you come in the back with a bag and take as many as you like. I personally will never feed kibble again, couldent do it, Happy is a very sensitive dog, mmost here already know she is sensitive to vaccines, and she is also sensative to grains. shadow, who lives with a friend now according to vets should be dead right now, she should have died 5 years ago fro, premature aging, she litterally could not stand up, and we almost put her down, we made the swicth because of Happy, and shadow is going on 9 years old if you tell someone she is highly arthitic they would never believe you as she outlasts her young golden retriever brother.

[Tiga's_mom]

We've also been dealing with what we think is allergies. The vet said it likely is. We started feeding him Iams (out of ignorance, we're new at this) and shortly found out it wasn't good. We then switched him to Canine Plus, but still with the scratching. So we asked the vet again and she recommended Nutrience. Now he hasn't been on it for that long (2-3 weeks) but he's still showing signs of allergies. They did recommend one other food Medi Cal for allergies, but it's a lot more then any of the rest of the ones that we got. Not that I mind spending money on him, but there will likely be times when we can't spend that much on food (it's about double the price of what he's on now). When he was on the Canaine Plus, we started putting 1 tsp of oil in his food (he eats twice a day so 2tsps). It seemed to be helping a bit, but then we switched to the Nutrience. Now he LOVES the Nutrience, way more then the others, but the problem still persists. I just started adding the oil again, but it's getting really frustrating. I am on the east coast of Canada in a small city and there are not a lot of options. Most of the foods that have been mentioned here I've never heard of. I've also tried rubbing some aloe on his itchy spots and it seems to give a little relief. But keep in mind also that I'm living in the Maritimes in Canada and it's quite cold here with lots of snow, and we only got him in September so I don't know how he'll be in the heat. I'm leary of changing his food again to the more expensive kind too because the vet said that the Nutrience should help him, and since it isn't and nothing else has either, I'm just skeptical about spending that much more for something that may not even work.

 

Sorry this is so long, but I fell bad for little Tiga, he's digs and scratches so much that there are places in his fur that are much thinner. Not a lot, just the few places that he scratches. Poor little thing was probably through so much before we got him, I just want him to be healthy.

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Hmm, I never saw the requests for a description of "a week with raw fed dogs". I'm not a good example because my household is large and complicated by dogs who are few in slightly different ways. However, it can give you an idea of the full range of raw feeding, as I think it cover most of the varieties here among all my dogs!

 

First, why I do this: I was dissatisfied with the direction dog food was taking. I had at the time, two dogs that couldn't eat corn, wheat, or soy, and 80% of kibble today contains the stuff. The remaining foods, the premiums and superpremiums, either put other "things" in the formula that Ben, my most sensitive dog, couldn't handle (blueberries? barley? turnips?), or the formulae were superpowered, even the lower-calorie formulae like senior or reduction varieties.

 

A word about meat - any meat you feed will have whatever happens to American meat, unless you grow your own (which I do). So, kibble meat not only is subjected to contamination during processing, but it also contains the same hormones we all end up eating. And then on top of that it has had a great deal of the most vital nutrients processed out of it and combined with things it was never meant to be fed together with. Meat meal is not just cooked, it's put under high pressure, dried, and then the kibble itself is pressure cooked so it will stay stable at room temperature. By this time, many of the antioxidant nutrients, which are highly volatile, have gone out of the food and into the pot. This goes for ANY kibble, even superpremium brands. It's okay about the vitamins, though, they'll spray them back on after they are done cooking the kibble. Though we're not sure how well dogs process artificial vitamin sources - to me it's a little like eating Pringles chips all day and telling your doctor, but it's ok, I take a Centrum every day. Raw meat and bone contain a great deal of the enzymes that a dog needs to digest it. That's why if you feed your dog a raw meaty bone right now while his digestive tract is still used to producing extra kibble-digesting enzymes, the additional enzymes in the meat will scour your dog's gi right out. You have to start with less challenging whole food for a while, get the dogs gi back into a more natural condition, then introduce the meat and bones.

 

American poultry and pork, by the way, is hormone free - and if American meat has mad cow in it you'd better be more concerned for yourself and your family than your dog - there's no known form of prion disease in dogs, but there is in people (mad cow is found in brain tissue, by the way). But mad cow has yet to be found in the US. I can tell you why that is true if you want to know, but I don't want to lengthen an already long and boring post. It is true that American meat (and that of every other country) is full of antibiotics - that's another long story that I won't bore anyone with, but again, unless you pay a lot for your meat you can't get away from that.

 

So, the basis of my dogs' diet is flash frozen chicken I get at Aldi. I get it for around 40 cents a pound. The main meal is at night and consists of chicken (fed still frozen), and a dab of ground fruit/veg/egg/fish mixture. In the morning, they get a small meal of grain. Right now I'm cheating and feeding a kibble, Merrick - I'm trying it out to see whether it will work as a travel food. Other times I feed an oatmeal based cereal mixtured adapted from Volhard. Volhard provides ratios of grains and suggests the addition of yogurt, egg, and other ingredients to provide a balance of food-based nutrients. Every three or four days they get offal meat (liver, heart, etc). Every Saturday night they get only cottage cheese for the evening meal, and every Sunday they fast completely.

 

On Sunday afternoon I prepare a week's worth of the prepared meals (I freeze the veggie mixture in egg cartons). If I'm going to be gone on Sunday the following week, I do two recipies of the cereal and freeze individual servings in the egg cartons. If I use this frozen food, I supplement with "E", as "E" is apparently damaged by freezing.

 

I'm a bit of a fanatic about providing my dogs with sufficient E as that is the weak link in the home-prepared diet. Working dogs in the old days suffered greatly from damage to their eyes from a deficiency of antioxidants in their diets. Having a dog that came to us with aquired retinal damage, I don't want his problem to become worse on our watch.

 

I feed this way (with the grains) because I'm on a tight budget and simply can't afford to feed six dogs on just meat. I have two dogs that can't eat the grain - one is Ben, my canary in the mine - and the other is Maggie, who lately gets fat if she is in the same room with food. Ben gets green tripe in the morning, and Maggie gets a dab of it too, so she doesn't feel left out.

 

It's cheaper to do it this way but it's much more complicated. In the past I just ground up three or four weeks worth of the veggie mixture at a time and then plopped down their meat and veggies in one meal. It's important that the grain and meat be seperated, and the volume of the cereal mixture makes it imconvenient to mix large batches. But to compare, I have one dog that gets four ounces of grain and one and three quarter pounds of meat under my current system. She ate three to four pounds of meat under the old totally raw meat-based method. Most of the other dogs only eat one pound of meat with the Volhard-type approach and used to eat two to two and a half pounds on the strictly meat-based approach.

 

So that's the whole long boring description of how my dogs eat. I haven't figured out a way to feed 5 pounds of meat per dog per day, cheaply, so the guard dogs eat kibble, unfortuntately.

[Bounce]

I am on good terms with the local abbatoir and took the tour. I am very comfortable with how my dinner gets to my table. I am researching Raw for my guys, so far Tex and Sara have made the switch. Commercial dog food has hideous stuff in it. Rendered euthanized family pets complete with flea collars! I am lucky in that I live on a farm and can feed spent laying hens, rabbits etc to my dogs. We live in sled dog country and those dogs are fed alot of raw bones and meat. Local processing plants cater to the sled dog market. I can also get venison easily when a deer gets popped by a school bus. Can anyone suggest a comprehensive website for Barf and Raw diets?

(By the way, I just offered Tex a plate of leftover roast beef and gravy and he tried to pretend bury it with his snout. Any other mammal would have inhaled that. Crazy Texas.)

 

Edited to say that once again, Rebecca has answered most of my questions. I'd be lost without that girl.

[Northof49]

Three of the yahoo groups I am on are

 

NaturalRawDog

RawDogCanada

and

Rawfeeding.

[Bounce]

I fed everyone oatmeal on this frosty morning and it was a big hit. Fussy Tex wanted an extra helping. I will follow Rebeccas weekly plan and modify to suit as I go along.

 

Are there any problems with rice that I should be aware of? When I lived further north, there were areas where I could gather wild rice and I got into the habit of eating rice a few times a week. My dogs all like it with broth and veggies. I'm sure a large part of the worlds human population subsists on rice. None of my dogs have issues with grains (that I know of).

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

I highly recommend checking out Volhard's book if you do make your own. Dogs live short hard lives, especially working dogs, and it's important to offer a correct balance of nutrients. One of the keys is variety, the other is to gather a knowlege of what approximately the whole foods you feed offer, in terms of nutrients.

 

The nice thing about whole foods is that they not only contain nutrients, but they also tend to also contain the nutrients your dog needs to process the basics those foods offers. Like what I mentioned with the meat. It's really hard for a processed food to duplicate everything whole food offers, so that's a simple explanation for why it takes forever for a dog to digest kibble and only a few hours to digest whole food.

[SoloRiver]

All you have to do is look around at young girls 10-12 yrs old, these days who look like young women used to at the natural maturation age of 19 or 20!

 

It's true that the age of menarche has been getting younger (part of it may have to do with diet quality rather than hormones in food) but 19 or 20 is not the "normal" age of maturation. (It's hard to say what "normal" is, considering that it is so dependent on things like diet.) Keep in mind also that throughout most of our evolutionary history we were dead by the age of 25 or 30. Women who matured earlier would be at a selective advantage because they would have been more likely to leave more surviving offspring behind.

[juliepoudrier]

Becca,

I did a quick search on Volhard's book and found it to be listed as out of print. Am I looking for the wrong book?

 

J.