[knightquest]

I'll have a good look round today 

[Sylvia]

I have fifteen dogs, weights ranging from 80 kilos down to 1.5 kilos and they are all fed the same thing. I can't be fussing with diets for big girls, diets for mediums and special diets for tinies.
 They all have butcher's waste (bones, hearts, livers etc) brown rice, veg i.e. whole raw carrots, lightly cooked cabbage and spinach, brewers yeast, garlic, cod-liver-oil and a bit of wholemeal biscuit. I get the butcher's waste free (he would have to pay to have it taken away) grow most of the veg. so my monthly feed bill is about £20. Even my tiny Yorkie will get through a raw chicken wing or scrunch up a carrot.
Also and I'm sure this is because of their diet I rarely see the vet. so save there as well!
I have a pack of happy, healthy, full of energy dogs.

[Sylvia]

Did I say 80 kilos?!! I meant 80 lbs

[doganjo]

Did I say 80 kilos?!! I meant 80 lbs

You did!  And I immediately tried to work out what breed could be that heavy    Reckoned it had to be a mastiff of some kind or a Saint Bernard, or maybe a mountain dog of a kind?

[kingnigel]

hi
just caught up with this thread
we feed barf to 9 of our dogs, we add things like garlic and sea weed but the total cost is just a bit under £2.45 a day as far as i can see.
we also spend less time at the vets than we used to when we fed kibble, our supplier is durham animal feeds, but wee get a discount because of the quantity.

we stopped feeding kibble because we felt that iams had fallen short of telling the truth about eukanuba, they said it had no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives.
hidden on the label is a line that says antioxidant ethoxyquin, which cause cancer, we lost one of out girls to cancer.  i think on the label they now say EC approved antioxidant,  if they are confident in what they produce they wouldnt hide behind a label.
sorry for the slight rant
kn

[knightquest]

Yes, if you shop around local butchers, you can get some good deals especially if you use a lot of food. I still feel that BARF is the best way to go. Even at our shop prices with our mark up, it's cheaper to feed BARF than B*K**S (can't bring myself to name 'em again or my tongue will drop out).

Iams do the invasive lab testing too. NOT GOOD!

Man, that 80kg dog would be big  Although, if you believe some of our customers (my {insert breed of dog} is this tall - as they illustrate a dog that is about 5 foot tall  )

Ian

[warmglo]

Course the cheapest way to go BARF would be to go rabbiting...   Not sure I could go that far tho...

[knightquest]

Course the cheapest way to go BARF would be to go rabbiting...   Not sure I could go that far tho...

Very True!

[doganjo]

Never thought of that - my cat is as good as any gun   Mind you he's a bit erratic - sometimes it's things other than rabbits

[Sylvia]

My "80 kilo" dog is a young, skinny Deerhound bitch! My whippets catch rabbits, or rather a rabbit because one catch is the signal for chasing the one with the rabbit round and round the field  shouting "Give it, give it!!" so giving  any other rabbit the chance to escape! My tiny  yorkie(left to me in someone's will) is an expert at catching fledgling sparrows though and one of these is a meal for him!
As for bones etc. go to your nearest Master butcher and ask him what he does with his waste. Chances are he has to pay the bone-man to take it away and will give it to you as long as you pick it up regularly and in quantity. Maybe two or three folk can get together and share.
I have endless disagreements with my vet. over my method of feeding he thinks I should be feeding mine the very expensive, processed food he sells. I worked it out, this would cost me about £90 per week???!!!!

[warmglo]

Sylvia - seriously  - you need to change your vet...

I'm looking into the idea of keeping rabbits and chickens for food - for us and the dogs! Going ahead with the chickens - I think - at least, I will when the OH gets thru with building his coup! (sigh) Men and their 'projects'!

[knightquest]

I've nearly finished my chicken coop/run..........been more like a career than a project 

How many chickens will you need to feed your dogs warmglo? We can only keep about 6 comfortably.

I get sick and tired of vets pushing processed food that has been brainwashed in to and over them 

Ian

[doganjo]

Sorry to disagree Annie but Breederpack is not Beta in disguise. Breederpack is a food made from the ingredients that no one else wants. The protein source in Breederpack comes from wheat and its derivatives. The better quality food uses meat as the protein source. Meat is obviously more expensive than wheat so therefore the price for quality food is more.

Except for Bakers which is PANTS anyway!

Just spoke to my supplier about this.  He was told by the company that Breeder Pack is made by Purina and contains Beta, Purina, Pro-plan, Winalot and probably Bakers too; and yes it is bits of everything but not the bits they don't want.  It is made up of the ends of distribution lines of each product and rebalanced.  And incidentally Purina also make Bakers.  Why do you say it's pants?

http://www.purina.co.uk/Home/Our+Brands/Purina+Brands/

I don't have shares in any of these - just want to know why people dislike any particular brand. As Tony said to me today he isn't an expert in dog nutrition, he just stocks the popular and well known makes if they sell well.  If they don't he doesn't keep them.

[knightquest]

The only thing that Purina make that is really good are the bags that the food comes in. They are a large multinational business who buy ingredients in bulk. Pro plan is probably their best food but it is not gluten free and contains lots of cereals. There is no explanation of what cereals and the meat is mostly from derivatives and not meat meal (the stuff we would eat).

In the line up that purina make, all the stuff that they don't use in their production line ends up in B*k**s. IMO It is close to being better if you feed the dog the bag instead of the food. They used to put a disclaimer on their food bags (they have removed it now) which said that you could not even store B*k**s near animal food in case it got into the human food chain let alone feed it farm animals.

B*k**s is only popular because of the advertising and the fact that the packaging is appealing. It is awful stuff - fast food for dogs. It won't kill em...............or will it shorten their lives?

'nuff said I think. Don't know who could read this 

Ian

[Moregin]

Hi Annie,

We feed our lot raw, again from Durham Animal Feeds.  With veg, bones from the butcher etc.,  We generally feed about 2% of the dogs weight per day, obviously increasing during the working season.

We've now raised three puppies on it (including Foose), and would have to think long and hard about going back to kibble. 

We're fortunate in not having windy dogs on raw food, but on certain kibbles they are unbearable. 

We'll be at the meeting on Wednesday if you would like a face to face chat.