Thinking about feeding raw? Suggestions?

[Mordy]

While it is true that dogs don't "need" veggies in their diet (as in no dietary requirement has been demonstrated through research), they don't do any harm and can help with two things:
- adding nutrients
- keeping feeding cost low (for people who are on a budget)

I would also recommend reading a good book or two on raw feeding before getting started.
"Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats" by Kymythy Schultze is a good one, and so are "K9 Kitchen" by Monica Segal and "Work Wonders" by Dr. Tom Lonsdale.

It's certainly not rocket science, but there are a few important things you need to be aware of. Christie Keith has a good article about this on her website.

Diet analysis is one of the things I do and I see a lot of feeding plans that people come up with and believe to be appropriate for their dogs, but they are often deficient in certain nutrients (especially B vitamins) and need to be tweaked to cover everything properly.

One wensite I always recommend is http://nutritiondata.com - you can search either by food or by nutrient and also use it to analyze.

 

[Saje]

My dogs are learning to love veggies more and more. They never would eat raw carrots but after feeding them cooked for awhile they'll now happily munch on them raw. They like fruit a lot too.

 

[weylyn]

You can actually download Work Wonders from Lonsdale's website for free:

http://www.rawmeatybones.com/book-ww.html

 

[Danegirl2208]

i feed prey-model also..no veggies, fruits or supplements. I'm so glad to hear that people are interested in switching!!

 

[ihartgonzo]

I think that is definitely a great idea for you, Labbreeder! Especially if you cannot find high quality kibble in your area. :0)

My Border Collie, who is 40 lbs and active, happily gets a little over 1/2 lb of RMB's per day. Fozzie, who is 20 lbs and a puppy, gets roughly the same. They are both really good weight, very active and don't ever act hungry. The recommended feeding for an average BC is more like 1.5 lbs, but amounts totally vary between individuals! Just keep an eye on the weight of your dogs - do they have extra padding, or are looking a little lean? You can easily adjust slightly more or less to their meals to perfect their weight.

My biggest staple RMB's are fowl... chicken, turkey, goose, duck, etc. They're also very cheap! Chicken in bulk (10-20 lbs) is only around $.30-.50/lb where I live. The others are slightly more expensive. The other RMB's they get are either lamb, pork, or rabbit, and they don't get these as often. Our butcher gives us large amounts (10-20 lbs) of lamb & pork RMB's and cuts that are not as popular or that they don't usually sell, for SUPER cheap. I always feed them their muscle meat meals with beef or lamb, because the RMB's of these meats can often be too big to feed as a meal but I still want to add the variety of red meats. They get organs here and there, and beef or chicken offal meals twice per week. They usually get 2-3 pulped veggie meals per week, as well, and they love them. And they get over-ripe fruits almost daily, and they love that as well. I feed kelp, fish oil, and a Solid Gold multi-vitamin as supplements, but not every single day. Balance over time is key, when you're feeding Raw. If you look around at local butchers & even if you know some hunters, you can find really great deals on almost any kind of meat!

 

[LabBreeder]

What about pork? I haven't seen anything mentioned about that yet. Is pork no good, does it not have the right nutrients, or what? I know mine will eat any kind of meat. I've given them beef, chicken and pork before (as treats) and they love 'em. It's even better if it's frozen.

Btw, I found a place about 98 miles away that sells pre packaged, home made, meat dinners for dogs. They want over $11 for 3 lbs though. It would be cheaper for me to make it myself if it's what I decide to do.

Also, what's the deal with everyone thinking if you feed a dog raw meat or bloody meat that they'll turn "mean" and "have the taste of blood"? I know it's not true, but where do they get it from???

 

[juliefurry]

I know Hannah doesn't do good on pork at all. She becomes very sick and gets diarhea really bad. Some dogs can not handle pork I guess, it's all in the luck of the draw. Try calling around to butchers in your area, I just called to today and to buy the chicken in bulk one is $30 for 40 lbs and the other is only charging 49 cents per pound. The other meats I can find for about 1.39 a pound.

 

[ihartgonzo]

My dogs love pork ribs & shoulder & hocks. Pork ribs are great for teeth, too! I think it has been mentioned in this thread . It's been fine for both of my dogs. There *are* recommendations for deep-freezing Pork before feeding it raw, though.

 

[weylyn]

I feed pork all the time. My pups love pork shoulders. We get it fresh, it's slaughtered and processed locally. Cheap, red meat. Two thumbs up here.

 

[juliefurry]

I'm not saying pork is bad just I know that my dog can not stomach pork and will get sick. She has a sensitive stomach though.

 

[Mordy]

I've made a similar observation with Quigley, Julie. Whenever I feed pork, I have to cut down the amount to about 2/3 of what I would feed of other meats or he gets diarrhea and gas.

Certain dogs are just sensitive to some foods and you have to figure out what works and what doesn't work. There are also a lot of dogs who don't tolerate chicken well, or poultry in general.

Each dog is different.

 

[elegy]

i'm only feeding hit and miss raw right now and mostly kibble, but i fed 100% raw for awhile. i got pretty much everything at the grocery store because i didn't have the freezer space to buy in bulk. i did ok. i got lucky several times and was able to get whole raw chickens for like $0.30/pound so stocked up like crazy. i was also able to get chicken hearts/gizzards for $0.10 so i used those pretty regularly to add extra meat to a boney meal.

liver was always always a fight until i started pureeing it with fish. then her royal highness would eat it.

i did feed veggies pretty regularly- i'd just buy a bunch, run them through the food processor until they were mush, add some apple cidar vinegar, puree some more, and fill small plastic containers with it and freeze.

i fed chicken, turkey, pork, beef, fish (canned, usually), duck (on sale), lamb (on sale).

my two pit bulls (45 pounds and high energy and 55 pounds and lower energy) both got about a pound a day, give or take. i was lucky- both of my dogs seem to have stomachs of steel. we had a few bone bits and bile pukes at the beginning, but they never got sick or especially gassy no matter what i fed them.

 

[LabBreeder]

I think Tira and Gunner's stomachs are pretty steely when it comes to meats. I gave them each a frozen pork steak (with bone) earlier today and they LOVED it! Neither one stopped gnawing and pulling and chewing until the whole thing was gone. Usually they get bored and walk away, but this held their attention. No scarfing or swallowing big chunks since it was frozen. No runs (actually really firm stool for Gunner this evening - he's usually firm, but this was good, solid firm.)...no puking up bones or chunks of pork. The only thing they did was go completely and utterly bonkers after they finished eating. They went running around the living room, bouncing off the sofa, bouncing off of each other, wrestling, nipping....it was an all out energy filled play fest!!! Do all dogs act this way after eating frozen raw meat?

 

[weylyn]

Actually, my dogs are pretty tired after their meals. They usually take a long snooze.

I'm glad they enjoyed their meal!

 

[LabBreeder]

Weylyn - Apparently they REALLY enjoyed their meal. I don't think it was even a 1/2 lb. (don't know exactly how much it weighed though). I know it was about 1 1/2 hand long (from palm to finger tips) and about a palm and a half wide. Corny way to measure, but the only way to do so after the fact.
It was a little over a 1/2 inch thick. They each got one. Man, I've never seen them that exuberant after a meal.

 

[DanL]

I use pork as a staple, it's cheap and convenient. All of our dogs love it and I've never seen them have any bad reactions from it.

Labbreeder- yet yourself a cheap food scale. We got one for about 10 bucks at a dept store. Weigh out your portions for a while, and then you'll be able to eyeball amounts a lot easier. I still weigh out their muscle meat portions but I'm pretty good at eyeballing things like leg quarters. I have to watch how much MM Bruzer gets because if he gets too much or too little he gains or drops weight too fast.

Regarding the raw meat/blood=viciousness/aggressiveness, I guess that myth started because people figured that if a dog tasted blood it would want more of it. Since a lion or tiger or wolf eats raw meat and are vicious, I guess that means a dog will be aggressive too. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

 

[Fran27]

Very interesting thread... I've been considering raw but I have two bigs issues...

First, that sounds stupid but I'm worried Tips will get food agressive over it. They love raw meat so much that the last time I gave them some, Tips picked up a fight with Boris when he just went close to his crate 10 minutes after he was done eating...

Second, what do you do when you have to kennel your dogs for vacation etc? Knowing Boris, no way he would go back to eating kibble if we started feeding raw.


My last issue I guess is finding places to buy the meat. I can't even find raw bones around here, grocery stores don't seem to have butchers and I've yet to find any meat cheaper than what we find on sale in grocery stores, and that's never under $1.5/lb... DanL, you need to tell me where you get that stuff

 

[DanL]

Sam's/Costco sells cases of about everything, thats where I get my leg quarters and whole broilers. I've held off getting a case of beef sirloin roast because its 80lbs and I don't have the storage for it. Things like cases of leg quarters, the chicken is already packaged, you get 6 packs of 7lbs each, so it's easy to deal with. Butchers will order you cases too but it comes in one big bag and you have to package it up yourself. Sam's also has these "cryo pack" meats like the sirloin or pork ribs/shoulders/boneless loins that are much cheaper. Think of raw bones not as bones, but things like chicken leg quarters/necks/backs, turkey legs/necks/wings, pork or beef ribs, etc. Not things like soup bones that have little meat on them.

As far as food aggressive goes- 2 of ours get a bit defensive amongst each other. Midnite will bare teeth at Gunnar if he gets too close. Bruzer growls (he's by far the worst one- he'll be so worried about the other dog that he'll actually leave his food to try and chase the other dog away, and then they walk right by him and eat it). Gunnar is the least food aggressive. He doesn't even pay attention to any of them. The other day he was working on a big pork shoulder and Midnite was trying to distract him to steal it. He just laid there and ate. She was sitting so close she was literally leaning against him and he didn't make a sound or display any body language towards her. What I do is give them about 10' between their bowls. I feed them out in the yard in the grass so they have plenty of room. I also supervise them to keep them from trying to steal food and make sure they are not having problems eating. Bruzer will often take his boney part of the meal and go to the other side of the yard, or try and sneak inside and go to his crate.

For boarding, I'd ask your facility. Maybe you can package up meals. This is what I did when my sister watched Midnite and Bruzer. I gave her each meal in a separate baggy with the dog's names on them, 1 bag for each meal with everything in it, all she had to do was dump it in a bowl.

 

[Mordy]

Fran, you can also search places like Yahoo Groups for raw feeding co-ops in your area. Since they are non-profit and a group of people can buy in wholesale amounts, you can often get things really, really cheap. My local one offers many types of meats, rmb's etc. for under 50 cents a pound.

 

[DanL]

Here are some pics I took today, Fran you can see how I set them up to keep them apart.

Gunnar and Bruzer working on some pork ribs.