[AndynJ]

Well I'm not really a dog person, this is our second collie in 25 years, I'm a perfect collie owner obsessive, work is serious, play is ok as long as its full on then crash.
So we have always fed him ( 2 years old now) working dog 18-21% protein dependant on time of year and work load, he is fed twice a day weighed quantity.
Recently I have started to feed him rabbit, fresh (still warm) or cooked if frozen, rabbit replaces one meal,
Questions
1. Is a whole rabbit about the same as a large portion of protein biscuits
2. Rabbit bones are they ok or not ?
3. Cooked rabbit good or not so good ?
he is out with chickens all day in an acre or so, he looks after them against predators, so he's constantly keeping them together, he has other jobs to do that mentally tire him out, he puts the chickens away at night then collapses, we sometimes check to see if he is still breathing.
If we go out we kennel him though he can get out if he needs too.
Our collie is superb, he's 100% working dog, I can walk him through a field of sheep without a lead and he won't do a thing, I don't treat him with food or big cuddles, the rest of the family do but our relationship is business, he does his jobs he'll be fed, housed and respected.   

[doganjo]

I have never fed raw intentionally so I can't compare teh values;  but my dogs occasionally eat rabbits my cat brings back, if I don't get them first.   So they eat everything, fur, bones, flesh.  I try to get the guts away from them and I like to use the skin to cover training dummies.  Never done any of them any harm, but I do worm them more often if they have had a couple of bunnies.

[funkyfish]

Does he get anything else with the rabbit? Just meat is deficient in many vits and minerals. Rabbit is also very low in fat- which is needed in a diet for minerals and fat soluble vitamins. I would also feed a little carb in the form of rice or pasta.


As a vet nurse I can tell you that a dog needs to eat 1/3 veg, 1/3 protein, 1/3 carbs. depending on what is fed it may be deficient in  vits and mins, so add a couple table spoons veg oil, crush a human multivit and min, and some brewers yeast for vit b12 and some green tea leaves for antioxidants to help with repair of tissues. Add a good quality glucosamine and Chondroytin supplement such as yummove. So you can see feeding a qood quality dog food is cheaper and easier in the long run.

[SallyintNorth]

If he's eating the caecum then he's getting plenty of veg with his rabbit    As a collie he should also browse vegetation as needed as he goes about his daily business.

If you can get a natural wholebake biscuit, something around 10 or 11% protein, no more, let him have that to appetite alongside the rabbit.  That will meet his carb needs.  If he's not getting a proprietary complete feed at all then I would add cod liver oil, or fat from your own meat (but not if you've used salt in cooking.) 

There's a risk with small bones, of course.  Your call - but there is also enormous value in terms of calcium etc, and the health of teeth and gums.

IMO raw meat is about twice as nutritious by weight as cooked.

A high protein diet can have two downsides.  1) it can make them rather 'hyper' - you'll soon spot if his behaviour tends in this direction, and cut down the amount of rabbit he gets.  2) it can lead to kidney problems in later life.  By the time you spot that he's drinking a lot of water, the damage is well advanced.  They need a lot less raw meat than you think; maybe he only needs one rabbit every other day?

[happygolucky]

Mine sometimes eat the odd "find" but they never appear to get sick, I think more the case of bought raw meat is more a risk of salmonella etc., but wild stuff, I would think fine, but not cooked bones as they become different like cooked chicken bones...I dare not feed raw as I would have no idea if they are getting the correct amount so I feed working dog food and they appear OK but who knows.......? I often get asked about dog feeding and its  interesting, there has been many threads on here, some of the cheap foods are not bad and some of the most expensive ones are not that much better........depends on the dog I suppose.......

[SallyintNorth]

I did mean to say, yes you will need to worm at least once every 12 weeks if you are feeding raw wild rabbit

[shygirl]

we have fed raw rabbit. never cooked them - they just got them whole, and often still warm. they ranged from young one to old ones so sizes were variable.
i think you would have to judge his diet by eye as to how much kibble it replaces.
i know with my labrador, he is a the perfect weight but within a week i can see if if he has lost weight or put it on, and can adjust  his diet. might be more difficult with a long haired dog.
we dont weigh our dogs food, 3 get get as much as they want, but the labrador is restricted. depends on his exercise level and what he finds to eat in the woods. (often comes back with a deer leg  )
do you shoot the rabbits or breed them? we bred ours so im not sure what to do the lead pellets if they had them, im sure they are poisonous.

[Steph Hen]

I feed whole rabbits when I get them. My vet a few years ago told me that rabbit was a good dog food, but not to mix with dry food in the same meal. (i.e. don't add a leg to the top of the food or as a snack after the meal) because aparantly they have different requirements for digestion.

I know that rabbit meat is very low fat, (and rabbit starvation in Huddson Bay trappers) but plenty of the rabbits I take here have a decent layer of fat on them. As well as the muscle, fat layer, gut contence, bones and marrow, there's also liver, kidney, heart, blood, lungs and brain. Quite a lot of nutrients in that mix!

Its a few years since I researched the topic, but when I started rabbit hunting, I wanted to know if it was a good dog food... at the time, the only bits of research that suggested game was not a suitable dog food were only looking at the muscle and bone contributions.

[shygirl]

(and rabbit starvation in Huddson Bay trappers)

can you enlighten me? i watched a great programme on hudson bay the other day - who do you think you are with that comedian chick. really interesting.

[mab]

I'd heard about the Hudson bay trappers, but I thought it was a lack of vitamins rather than fat (though I could be wrong).

I've fed raw meat / cooked meat / fish, all with bones to my dog for 6 years without trouble, but then she chews her food thoroughly - if I had a dog that gobbled food I would be more wary.

[ladyK]

The guideline when feeding raw is to feed 2-3% of the dog's weight per day, so you can work out based on that how many meals a rabbit would replace.
The ratio should be 80% meat / 10% bone / 10% organs to be sure you got the nutrient balance right, but if you are feeding a whole rabbit you can't go wrong. Surely a raw rabbit is a more appropriate/digestible/nutritious meal for a dog than a cooked one, so why go to the trouble of cooking it?
A healthy dog should not have any problems digesting raw bones, it's cooked bones that are dangerous.

I have been feeding my dogs & cats like that for several years (I do add a bit of fish oil and a pinch of taurine powder for the cats) and they do really well on it.

[AndynJ]

Wow thanks everyone, interesting and educational, I cook the frozen as I'm concerned about it defrosting and gaining bacteria, so it goes in the slow cooker wife & dog then share it.
If he has them on the day of catch I don't cook them, he is getting about 3 a week at the moment.
After writing this morning and then thinking about it I've been a bit soft with him today, fussed him a bit
 
Thanks again

[shygirl]

i never used to gut them either, though they always left some of the intestines by choice.

[Steph Hen]

I'd heard about the Hudson bay trappers, but I thought it was a lack of vitamins rather than fat (though I could be wrong).

And Shygirl,

Lean protein isn't a food that should relied upon for human's entire diet. Its to do with the urea by-product and the effort required by kidneys to keep the blood filtered. There is a maximum amount of protein that can be eaten and urea safely excreeted, and its less than a normal person's daily energy requirement. The trappers would have been working hard and been cold, so needed way more calories, but being stuck with a winter of nothing but thin wild rabbits. The trappers face eating more than 'safe' levels of lean protein and overloading their kidneys. Its also vitamins, but people do alright on an animal only diet... its the lack of any fat or carb that causes problems. People can live on a diet of mostly fat, very well! Common sense suggests that relying on only one specific food source (like wild rabbit) isn't an ideal diet.


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Thought I'd check on Wiki (I wasn't too right):   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation
Its called protein poisoning, its the liver that can only process 285-365 g protein/day, ~1,000 - 1,500Kcals, (kidney also limited), otherwise, end up with too much ammonia and urea in blood (potentially fatal).

[SallyintNorth]

The guideline when feeding raw is to feed 2-3% of the dog's weight per day, so you can work out based on that how many meals a rabbit would replace.

So a 56lb lab x collie would want 56 * 16 * 0.02 = 18oz meat a day?!!  I think that's a bit much.  Mine, which were very well-exercised pets, got 4 to 6 oz good quality offal a day (ox heart, cheek, kidney, that sort of thing), plus a couple of handfuls of wholeweat biscuits and an egg every other day.  Raw beef leg bones maybe once a week.  Vet always said my dogs were the healthiest, had the best teeth, spot on the right weight, never looked their age, etc., etc.

I found I couldn't feed raw meat when I got into working collie types as pets, they got too hyper, so I switched to feeding Chappie or similar.  Now with working collies that work, they get 1/2 and 1/2 Chappie-and-biscuits and a low protein high energy complete feed.  If I give them the high protein 'working dog' type feed they again get too hyper.

I'd love to be able to feed them each a rabbit every other day