The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Pets & Working Animals => Dogs => Topic started by: lunanlife on September 24, 2011, 02:54:49 pm
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Hi
Does anyone feed the BARF diet to their dogs and if so do they have any good sources of information?
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We do and we also sell it in our shop. Dr Ian Billinghurst is probably the leading writer on the subject but if you have any specific questions, I am more than happy to give answers based on our experiences.
Feel free to ask anything.
Ian
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I feed mine raw and they are doing really well! Also happy to answer any questions - but don't pretend to be an expert. I think the poo speaks for itself. When you feed kibble the poo seems to be equal in quantity to what you put in. WHen you feed raw the poo is about 1/3rd of what you put in. To my mind they are making more use of the food.
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I have 2 dogs, a GSD and a Border Terrier. I started feeding them raw meat on the bone this week. I fed them the bones in the morning and their previous dry feed mix at night. They have taken to eating the bones well. The bones I feed at the moment are raw bones left over from our pork cuts. I also can get other sources of carcass bones as well as whole rabbits.
What I would really like to know is the quantities for feeding? I have seen on a number or websites that blended vegetables and fruit are added to the raw meat diet. I don't think my dogs would eat this by itself it would have to be mixed with minced meat.
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I am lucky as my dogs will eat anything, they love bones and raw meat as much as a bowl full of cooked vegetables Rusky my old boy will only eat all his veg if we hide a yorkshire pudding at the bottom but he has always been like that and at 13 I am not about to change his ways
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Hello lunanlife.
The veg isn't mega important. If you look at a rabbit (which is perfect for thr dogs by the way), then you need to replicate the ratio of bones to meat to organs and to what 'veggies' would be in the rabbits stomach. Obviously, there wouldn't be much.
If you do go over to BARF, then personally, I would cut out the dried food. It can create an inbalance.
The point made earlier about poo is also valid. Dogs on raw food absorb much more of the food.
Finally, most importantly, DON'T stress about it ;) The breakdown of food ie meat and bones etc should balance out over a week or fortnight perhaps. Not every day.
Congratulations on making the change.
Ian
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tom lonsdale's book 'raw meaty bones' is imo they best source of info out there.
mine get meat, bones and offal. for veg matter they get what they find ie grass and blackberries!
dogs do not produce the enzymes needed to break down the cellulose walls in vegetable matter, so unless it's cooked (mine haven't figured out the hob yet) they can't digest it anyway ;D
one word of advice though, ask 100 raw feeders how to do it, you'll get 100 answers saying the other 99 are awful.
does your dog have plenty of energy?
are his teeth clean or getting cleaner?
is his coat shiny? is he the right weight?
check,check check?
you are doing fine! we've fed dogs meat since we first domesticated them, keep it simple. your dog will love you even more :D :dog: :dog: :dog:
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I would be happy to feed raw but I'd be scared I'm not giving them enough. How do you work it out?
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there is a formula of something like 5 % of the dogs ideal weight per day or summat like that.
but in easy terms i have 2 border collies.
if it's chicken for tea, they'll have a half each. if its tripe its about a pound. chicken carcasses? 4 each. beef skirt again about a pound. if i get rabbits, they'll have one each and go without the next day cos i can't be arsed with chopping fluffy bunny up ;D
if they get skinny feed em more, if they get fat feed em less! i would say the dogs weight would show within a week, you wont starve your dog, i promise!
i would start with chicken, and it would go something like this.
smallie type, terrier, toy poodle, dachie or a cat. 1/2 a chicken portion.
cocker, large terrier, whippet. 1 chicken portion.
medium size woofer, springer, collie, toller, etc 1 1/2 (in my world it would be 1 one day 2 the next cos i'm lazy!) or half a chicken.
labragator, goldie, staff, big lurcher, greyhound, gsd etc a whole chicky.
the actual preparation in my place is.
take meat out of fridge, unwrap, hand to dog.
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My 2 dogs are very fussy. They are very good in eating the amount of food that they need. If they are not hungry then they won't eat food put in front of them.
I feed them the dry food as well at the moment as I thought a gradual change might be better. I will give less of this the more bones they get.
Both dogs spend nearly everyday working alongside me so they are very active. This is probably the main reason why the limit the amount they eat by themselves. There has been no visual sign of less energy as yet.
They do graze on grass as well and are often bring it back up after. So would it be ok to limit the amount of veg to very little?
Do you all feed the dogs outside? (hygiene reasons)
Do you skin the rabbit/chickens before feeding?
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i dont deliberately feed mine any vegetables unless i happen to chuck em a bit of my carrot etc.
i dont skin or gut rabbits unless they've been shot with an air rifle in that case i cut off the head (where they were shot)
chickens are fed as is. unless they are cull bird, then i'll skin them because i'm too lazy to pluck or clean up feathers if i feed the birds feathers on ;D
i feed outside normally because i live in a caravan and there isn't room for them to lay down and have a good chomp. but my last dogs were trained to eat theirs of their mats.
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The quantity is around 2 to 3% of body weight per day. So for example my big setter is around 28kg - so when he is working a lot he gets upto 1 kg a day, when it's out of season he gets 700g. However my littlest setter Jenny weighs 19kg but is really slim and fast - so she gets about 700g if I feel she's too skinny. I don't weigh it out - I just guess! I get a mixture of Durham Animal Feeds minced chicken or turkey (which has bones minced up in it) and Natural Instinct which is dearer but has a few veggies and additives such as Vit C and flax oil etc. For anyone nervous about switching from dry Natural Instinct is really good, and is reassuring until you get the confidence to do your own thing!
If this works - I think Jenny is a really good advert for raw feeding :-)
(http://i589.photobucket.com/albums/ss334/HelenShepherd/PICT1151-1.jpg)
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I have been watching this thread with interest.
When I started with dogs (crumbs, it's about 50 years ago now ::)) you fed them meat and biscuits. Proper biscuits made out of whole grain - basically oven-baked bread pieces. Some people cooked the meat and some fed it raw. If you fed raw you needed to feed about half the quantity of cooked as it lost so much in the cooking.
I fed all my dogs pretty much the same way until I started with working collie type dogs. You can't feed them as much meat protein as this; they've been bred for generations now to do a lot of work on maize and not much else.
Anyways, until the collies, I would feed a 20-25kg well-exercised pet dog about 4-6 oz raw meat plus a couple of mugfuls of biscuits a day. (4oz-6oz is about 120-180g.) Maybe add a raw egg every other day. Gravy to taste if I had some to spare. Big marrow bones (always raw) to knaw on 2-3 times a week. Carrots and other crunchy veg (yes raw) pretty much as they wanted them. If they were putting on weight I'd reduce the biscuits and cut out the gravy. If they were too slim I'd increase the veg, biscuits, and give them more table scraps including gravy.
The raw meat would be in chunks to maximise chewing - one small lamb's heart would be one dinner and they'd get it whole or in two chunks.
Vets always told me my dogs were fantastically healthy and had tremendous teeth. But they did stress that it was important not to feed more raw meat protein than I did, as otherwise I would do for their kidneys at an earlier age than they should start to fail. Dogs are not designed for as high a protein diet as cats, I was told, and hence the need to keep their animal protein intake as low as possible consistent with providing the essential nutrients for an active life.
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That's very interesting Sally, and sort of ties in with what mine get - should have mentioned in my post that eg the 700g mine get is not all meat but with mixer biscuits too, but I will keep an eye on their protein intake.
Also very interesting is what you say about sheepdogs and high protein levels. I've heard before about them getting hyper on too much protein. When I was a kid on the farm they all got fed WInalot mixer biscuit and that was it - seemed to do ok and put a full days work in. Can I ask what you feed your collies please?
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it is amazing how every animal is different in it's need!
my 2 are both border collies and do really well with no added biscuits, and all the raw meat, offal and bones they want. a point to remember when calculating protein amounts though is, 100 gms of chicken does not equate to 100 grms of protein. i think it's about 40 gms per 100 gms.
sally it's odd isn't it, if i feed mine maize or oats, they are so hyper they are a nuisance!
i wonder if different breeding lines or geographical location has any factor in how different dogs deal with different foods.
hmmmmmm, i may look into this further! (we need a rubbing of the chin icon!)
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Also very interesting is what you say about sheepdogs and high protein levels. I've heard before about them getting hyper on too much protein. When I was a kid on the farm they all got fed WInalot mixer biscuit and that was it - seemed to do ok and put a full days work in. Can I ask what you feed your collies please?
I feed my collies a mix of three main ingredients.
- Autarky to meet the main nutritional requirements, I feed exactly half of the recommended daily amount for dogs of this size. The other half of their ration is made up of :
- Tinned Chappie to appetite and managed to maintain the correct weight. For Dot this is up to one small tin a day, for fatty-boy Skip it's less than half that
- As plain a proper whole-grain biscuit (with as low a protein content) as I can get. In order of preference:
- Natural Choice Wholebake (can't get it up here, sadly)
- Waitrose Wholewheat Mixer for Adult Dogs
- Laughing Dog
- Pointer Terrier blend (I'd like it better but for all the ridiculous artificial colours)
If they are doing a lot of work (and I mean hours and hours of collecting and driving sheep in hundreds of hectares of moorland) they get an extra half-portion of Wag Worker the day before, the day itself and the day after.
I'd prefer to feed raw meat but they are almost unmanageable on it. The exception is the extras they find at lambing time - they seem to be able to eat any amount of afterbirth and it does them nothing but good. But of course they are doing quite a bit of work at that time of year!
BH feeds his working collie Sneyd's Wonderdog. My two like it but are noticeably more, shall we say 'lively', on it!
I have no experience of feeding maize but have been starting to feel that collies would probably do best with maize for breakfast, a bit like me having my porridge. Then they're not working on an empty stomach but are not over-stuffed and heavy-gutted when you want them to work. They could have their proteinaceous feed at bedtime, then they've all night to quietly digest it. However, I don't know quite what sort of maize (kibbled? flaked?) to feed - does anyone on here feed collies maize?
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sally it's odd isn't it, if i feed mine maize or oats, they are so hyper they are a nuisance!
i wonder if different breeding lines or geographical location has any factor in how different dogs deal with different foods.
Aye, that is fascinating. Are yours working collies from working stock?
I've had two rescue collie cross dogs, both in the South-West (one Bath RSPCA, one Bristol), both of whom really only needed cardboard and polystyrene and couldn't handle much raw meat. I got one working collie in Devon; he could handle more protein than the pet collie crosses, but would be more aggressive with difficult sheep if he had too much. Skip and Dot are both of working stock; no idea where Skip originates from though I suspect it is the north west; Dot is a product of local working collies.
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yep, red dog (go on guess what colour she is :D) is from a shepherd near crickhowell in wales, though she isnt keen, read nervy of sheep. pilot is from an old time cowman in glastonbury, passed on now so i dont know if his line will continue.
neither registered, neither particularly trained for stock work but handy enough with my basic knowledge to be useful for me :dog:
as for feeding maize, why not try cheap cornflakes?
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Our Border Terrier also laps up all the overspill that comes out of our bruiser which bruises barley and wheat. The GSD also has some of this as well but isn't quite as keen. I was a bit concerned about them eating this at first but the little one especially loves it and it doesn't seem to have any ill effect on him.
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Some local gundogs and collies are fed on a muesli style food such as Cobbydog which has maize as an ingredient. You can get it at local farm supply shops. The poo is awful though :o
I think what's coming out of this interesting thread is that if you know your dog(s) by trial and error you can come up with a diet that best suits them as individuals ;)
edited to add - Sally -Durham Animal Feeds will deliver Natural Choice Wholebake biscuit if that's any help. You need to order a couple of bags though to get free delivery.
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edited to add - Sally -Durham Animal Feeds will deliver Natural Choice Wholebake biscuit if that's any help. You need to order a couple of bags though to get free delivery.
Thanks for the tip, Shep. We're more than 70 miles from them - but I will ask our local supplier again, and tell them DAF have it in case they can tie in with deliveries or something.
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I think what's coming out of this interesting thread is that if you know your dog(s) by trial and error you can come up with a diet that best suits them as individuals ;)
yup, and that, i believe, is what is best for any animal ;D
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Just gave them both a couple of cull chickens skinned. Not interested in eating it at all! They are nervously looking at it wondering if they are going to get into trouble if the dig in. Have put it in the oven for a wee minute and will try again.
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also try cutting into the chicky a little, first timers sometimes don't realise its actually food!
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Hello :wave:
I came on here today to find out more to help my Lab,I have given her raw bones and she is much more content with this rather than the dried food.Is there anything I cannot give her?
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my 'rules' are;
no cooked bones.
:)
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I don't know whether it's still true, but in my younger days Labs fed fresh meat could be prone to getting 'sweaty pads' - basically the pads crack and are painful. Ours got it, the vet said to give him a maximum of 3oz fresh meat a day, plus bones and make up the difference with raw crunchy vegetables - he was fine after this. This was a well-exercised family pet, not a working dog.
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Ok Sally,I have rabbit,duck and venison in the freezer,she has had venison-just a weeny amount though as I believe it may be too strong a meat? and the rabbit and duck? just to confirm,where you said try 3oz plus bones per day,so would you cut them up into little pieces-like in quarters and give her just once piece?
Mel
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We used to chop the meat into chunks a bit smaller than 1" cubes. But I think you can give it in bigger chunks - it's good for their teeth for them to have to chew.
You may be okay feeding more than 3oz per day with your lab - but it wasn't with ours, and in fact I fed at that sort of rate up until I started getting the working collies and always had very healthy dogs.
Back in the sixties we were feeding raw meat with wholebake biscuits + raw crunchy veg + bones. Oh, and the occasional raw egg. If you aren't feeding any cereal / bread / biscuit / rice I'm not sure what you would need to make up that part of the ration.
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although many like it and do well on it, dogs don't actually have any nutritional carbohydrate requirement, strange but true. but please if you choose not to feed biscuits etc, make sure you provide EDIBLE raw bones (not just hooge marrowbones) otherwise you will have icky sticky tarry bums all round :o
mmmmmmm niiiiice :D
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Although I never buy supermarket meat for us, if I am there I will always pick up some of their chicken wings as the dogs love them - treat for lunchtimes sometimes if i think they are a bit hungry
Otherwise old veg from the garden chopped up in the food processor with a bit of olive oil, mostly raw meat bought in 3kg packs from pet shop
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I have 2 dogs, a GSD and a Border Terrier. I started feeding them raw meat on the bone this week. I fed them the bones in the morning and their previous dry feed mix at night. They have taken to eating the bones well. The bones I feed at the moment are raw bones left over from our pork cuts. I also can get other sources of carcass bones as well as whole rabbits.
What I would really like to know is the quantities for feeding? I have seen on a number or websites that blended vegetables and fruit are added to the raw meat diet. I don't think my dogs would eat this by itself it would have to be mixed with minced meat.
There is some debate on the net advising pork is no good for your dogs,never heard of it myself but I am giving Bun the same.
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There is some debate on the net advising pork is no good for your dogs,never heard of it myself but I am giving Bun the same.
There used to be a strain of salmonella (S. choleraesuis) that was specific to pigs and was fatal to any animal that ingested it. It was very rare, but because it was always fatal, no-one my age feels comfortable feeding raw pork.
I'm afraid I don't know if the bug is still about - but I can't see how it would have been eradicated so I guess it must be.
I expect there are better antibiotics now, but the onset and progress of the infection are so swift there would not always be time to get a diagnosis and treatment.
So I for one, would only feed raw pork from my own pigs and never ever feed pork raw that I'd bought at a butcher or in a supermarket. Simply not worth the risk.
Other salmonellas are very common in pork, chicken and fish. Although thay can infect dogs and cats (and humans), a healthy animal should be able to shake the infection off. Priobiotic yoghurt is a good remedy, I've always found!
HTH
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There is some debate on the net advising pork is no good for your dogs,never heard of it myself but I am giving Bun the same.
There used to be a strain of salmonella (S. choleraesuis) that was specific to pigs and was fatal to any animal that ingested it. It was very rare, but because it was always fatal, no-one my age feels comfortable feeding raw pork.
I'm afraid I don't know if the bug is still about - but I can't see how it would have been eradicated so I guess it must be.
I expect there are better antibiotics now, but the onset and progress of the infection are so swift there would not always be time to get a diagnosis and treatment.
So I for one, would only feed raw pork from my own pigs and never ever feed pork raw that I'd bought at a butcher or in a supermarket. Simply not worth the risk.
Other salmonellas are very common in pork, chicken and fish. Although thay can infect dogs and cats (and humans), a healthy animal should be able to shake the infection off. Priobiotic yoghurt is a good remedy, I've always found!
HTH
Sally,
Thank you so much for this information,I am only feeding bun on the bones and such from my own pigs,other than that she has beef and such. I put bun on the Barf diet around 10 days ago,however,I don't know why but she does seem bloated,she has plenty of exercise as well.early this morning she did sick up some tiny pieces of bone and I am wondering if her system does not like the bones. I am not giving any bones until she looks ok,just plain meat.
I do worry about her,she can be a bit of a piggy and has been on a diet for a while now as has to have an operation to remove a fat lump shortly.she lost lots of weight which was good,but like I said,since starting the Barf diet,she actually looks like she is putting on weight again?
Mel x
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Watch the quantities, Mel - you have to feed way less raw meat than you think can possibly be enough, as it loses so much in the cooking.
My standard daily ration for a 25kg well-exercised pet dog is 4-6oz raw meat, 2 cupfuls of wholebake biscuits, cupful of raw veg. 1 egg every other day. Marrow bones & rib bones several times a week. Mind, I keep my dogs lean (ribs easy to feel but not sticking out) so they can run to their hearts content.
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It might be worth whizzing up some raw veg and mixing it in with the meat - apples, greens, courgettes, carrots - I add a drop of olive oil, some water and then stir it all in together.
some Barf info says more veg than meat, some says no veg - so trial and error I'm afraid!!
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early this morning she did sick up some tiny pieces of bone and I am wondering if her system does not like the bones.
this is her system doing what it should. as she isnt used to eating bones it'll take her a lil while for the ol juices to get going enough to break down all the bone. what hangs around in the stomach not getting digested yet,will get ejected rather than left to hang around to cause problems. to me it is just a sign that she is adapting slowly ;)
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Hi, just looked back at this topic as I find it interesting, its easier for me to feed a dry dog food to our 4 dogs but they are a bit fat at the moment and I often wonder if I would be better off giving them raw food.....I still am unsure if to mix in veg and what sort of raw? I see stuff in the pet shop for sale but its quite expensive, I often see reduced meat in the supermarket too, so anyone there to suggest proportions for Labradors that are medium sized and also, types or raw, can you give a chicken? for instance, or what about fish? confused.com
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They are only fat if you can't feel their ribs. All Labs can look fat because of their build. Look at that one winning Crufts this year - i went over him and he hadn't an ounce of fat - it was all muscle, but scores of people went on facebook and slated him saying he was fat - total rubbish. I suspect yours are quite muscled as you are out every day with them, like me.
I would reduce their dried food, no need to change to raw. Won't make any difference anyway if you feed them too much. I wouldn't have a clue how much raw to feed mine and their weight would vary till I got it right. It can be more expensive too.
Check what the levels are on the bag and feed the lower end of that. If they get too thin increase it till you get them at the right weight. My dogs are all weighed at the vet every time i go with one of them so i can keep an accurate check. But mine run weight off very easily, Labs don't run like Brittanys do :innocent: so you need to be more careful with amounts fed.
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I loved that winner at crufts, I suppose as dogs that live and work in cold conditions they need their extra layer of muscle etc but I know our dogs, they are like me fat ::) , even Steve has put on some wieight. Its since having the pups, not the usual long walks as steve works every day, was weekends up until last week, so they do not go the miles they used to and still get the same amount of feed, for a while, when the pups were around, they often got a bit extra when the pups had finished.....I have just reduced their food now....(not mine) and have begun to get them out on longer walks, not forgetting the pup needs less of a walk so I realy could do with giving the oldies and extra walk or putting the pup back in the car, there I am sure she would cry!! Rohan was never fat before but she looks a little chunk just now and she is so agile, the very funny thing is, Rhum, the mum of the pup, runs as far away from her pup as possible, then comes back and plays chase me with her...its so unusual as Rhum used to stay buy my side on walks and it was Rohan who was miles away with her mum...Islay is fat too, she needs a very small amount of food, think I will mix in some cabbage, I have loads of that...saying all of that, I am still tempted to go to raw!!! A man who is interested in the house, a farmer always gave his dogs raw, even from young pups, he bred French bulldogs! Going out on another shoot I noticed how slim the other labs were....and the other people! :innocent:
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Don't forget shoot dogs are purely working strain - your dogs have some show strain in them. And Working people often keep their dogs very thin - too thin in my opinion.
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According to my vet slim is only too thin if you can see more than the back 2 ribs, too fat is if you can't feel them (as you say Doganjo). I like to keep my dogs slim, especially the ones who do agility. Exercise is SO much harder if you are carrying extra weight ( I can vouch for that personally!) and its not fair on the dogs. I feed raw and find that they don't put on weight as easily with it, if I need them to put any on I add mixer biscuits for carbs. You could give raw a go HGL - you can add whatever veggies you are eating yourself - just blanched or cooked, they can't absorb raw veg it comes out the same as it goes in!
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:thumbsup: ....I may give it a go in the summer.....hate to think of a cold winter with them hungry...
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We don't feed the full barf diet but we do feed a home prepared food. Jades breeder who breeds the pups for the police started us off on it.
They get Rice with mince and veg cooked into it then they also get either raw meat with bones or raw whole fish (guts,heads etc inc) on top of it.
All of ours are doing well on it and the condition of the coat is fantastic
We have also just found a source of full skins of Green tripe so from Friday they will also be having this added
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A dog breeder friend was asking about the Barf diet and I wondered if some dogs eg Labs, would not fully chew the bones etc as they eat so fast, I think if I fed ours they would not crunch up the bones well enough and could get blocked up..I did wonder about the fish as we have some raw Mackerel and its very bony......I normally cook and de bone it and its messy and smelly so is that OK just to give them raw? The other thing that puts me, and I suppose some others off is the less convenient storage, I have big bins with the pup and the adult food in and its clean, any raw meat would need better storage!! I did used to give my first Lab raw offal but gave up as the smell made me heave!!!
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We give sprats whole, herrings, mackerel, codling, sardines etc we cut them into 2-3 pieces for smaller dogs and whole for the big dogs
Sprats are on at Morrisons at the moment at £2.49 a KG :thumbsup:
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:thumbsup: :thumbsup: , well that will save me cooking them then! we had a huge bag of Mackerel and Herrings so they are in the freezer for the dogs !
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Forgot to say give them them outside as they do tend to eat them like a bone and the smell of fish does linger if they eat them indoors ::)
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I cooked a lot of fish last week and had visitors and had to use loads of spray etc to get rid of the smell. I gave our pup some mackerel this morning and she wiped her face on my PJ's and jumper!! Not a great smell! ::)
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:roflanim: worst we have had is one of the small dogs managing to carry a sprat into the lounge and burrying it under a cushion without us knowing :o
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:roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim: ....I put a status update of how smelly I was this morning, first fish then poo collecting and dropping some down my leg!!!!!! Never mind, I had a good spray of Katie Price perfume in B&M ::)
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Hi everyone, if you don't mind I would like to give you my personal experience as my mother's little helper when she bred dogs (all big/giant breeds, we had Great Danes, Newfoundlands, Sharpei, Alsatians and Labradors + a couple Dalmatians).
What I remember clearly is: when they were fed on commercial diets, the effects on these dogs was hugely variable. Some dog food was awful (bad breath, lots of loose poo, ragged coats), others were ok, others were good (no bad breath, poo ok, coats ok). However, the best results ever were when my mum started going to the local chicken abattoir and used to buy carcasses (what is left once breast, wings and thighs are chopped off, still lots of meat on them), and also those wings/thighs that couldn't be sold because bruised/broken etc. My mum would take the lot home and mince it up fine, bones and all. Then freeze what was in excess.
Our dogs loved the chicken mince and ate it raw. Some of them might get a handful of cheap biscuits full in fibres if they were a bit constipated, otherwise nothing else. Poos were very small and well formed (even in the giant Danes!), glossy coats and lots of energy, but not mental.
However, many years have passed since and I have become a vet. I have seen many dogs brought in at the surgery because they ate bones, not just cooked but also raw. Bones can cause obstructions in the best of cases, and gut perforations in the worst. I have seen dogs dying whilst on the operating table trying to get the bones fragments out - too much intestinal damage. I have also seen dogs with bad lesions in their mouths because of eating/chewing bones. Cooked bones are the worst as they will splinter and break easily, but raw bones can do that too especially if caved bones like you find in birds. Rabbit bones can be as bad. Generally the big marrow ones are a bit better and less splintery, but I am still wary of them.
On the whole, I don't disagree with BARF diet, as long as it is not just meat. Wild dogs don't go for the muscled leg of deer, they go for the belly and herbivore's guts (with fibres in them). Only after they got that, they will start on the actual muscle and bones, and often leave it for days to "mature".
I think that if the meat is raw is fine, most dogs like the taste of it, but I would always mince it fine like my mum did. That way, the risk of bone pieces/splinters is much reduced and you still get the benefit of this diet.
Having said that, some dogs never really take to it, so as it's been said before it's trial and error for the individual dog.
Good luck, and try to avoid whole bones please!!
:wave:
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Oh dear!!! ::)
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I've got frozen tripe in my freezer that i got from someone earlier this year - mine would go daft for it, but like Sandy I can't bear the smell when its defrosting. To be honest when I did feed it to them they got fat. I can see it going in the bin unless anyone near Clacks wants it.
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I did buy tinned tripe a few years ago but it made the dogs fat too......I also used to buy frozen minced chicken, That's better.....maybe I shall just keep to kibble......
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Never had a problem with ours being impacted but then again getting the rice and veg cooked in cheap mince gives plenty of oils to counteract with the bones . My theory if all is doing well don't fix what isn't broken ::)
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I feed Natural Instinct - which is frozen complete raw dog food including veggies etc. I only give bones every few weeks just to clean their teeth. I think the old style barf diet of lots of bones just leads to blockages, I prefer to feed raw rather then barf.