Raw/Whole Prey Diet Appreciation Thread! *graphic warning*

God damn it guys....
I was taking a bath. I was about to rinse the shampoo out of my hair when my boyfriend comes rushing in to show me some left over rat guts that the ferrets did not eat. I didn't have my glasses on so I couldn't see and he pushes his hand too me to get a better look and he freaking drops the rat organs into my bath water by 'accident'.

Damn it........... :mad:

LOL...Language, Satomi, lolol. But seriously funny. And one day you'll look back at this and laugh. :P

Whoops. You'd be flustered too if someone dropped rat guts into your nice clean bath. Lol:p

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Originally Posted by satomi325

God damn it guys....
I was taking a bath. I was about to rinse the shampoo out of my hair when my boyfriend comes rushing in to show me some left over rat guts that the ferrets did not eat. I didn't have my glasses on so I couldn't see and he pushes his hand too me to get a better look and he freaking drops the rat organs into my bath water by 'accident'.

Damn it........... :mad:

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New moisturizer? :p

This is kind of a weird place for me to jump in, but I wanted to let you know why you might have had a hard time finding guinea pig feeders at a good price.

They are insanely slow breeders. Gestation takes 68-72 days in general, and they shouldn't* be bred until 5 months of age. If they aren't bred before 8 months, their pelvic bones actually fuse making farrowing impossible without a C-section. On top of that they are really susceptible to pregnancy toxemia** and prolapsed uteri. The mortality rate is really depressing as well, at 20%-25%. That's the chance for the sow, the pups, or a combination of the two. With the common sized litter being 2-4 it's a pretty low production rate. I found the life span of my breeding sows on average to be 2-3 years shorter than the non breeding stock.

I showed cavies for about 9 years and it's all a rather depressing beauty contest, now that I'm out.

*Sows can easily double in weight when pregnant, making movement difficult. Less movement = buildup of ketones = usually fatal especially without steroids or antibiotics.

**They can get pregnant as early as 4 weeks from a boar as young as 3, exponentially increasing the chance of mortality in the sow.

Lol sorry I'll step off of my soapbox now.

Thank you for that info. It was very insightful.

:)

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I got those asterisks mixed up. Always realize the dumb things after the editing period has passed. And thank YOU for not freaking out! I can't talk snakes with my guinea pig people, and it can be hard talking guinea pigs with snake people.

Just wanted to say also that I love reading your posts; they are all so insightful and interesting reads!

I have to tell you some downsides to raw feeding besides the obvious of a little more elbow grease and noggin work.

It is difficult to find a dogsitter or a dog kennel who is willing to take on raw feeding.

They don't drink water as often (enough moisture in the raw food) so they don't find the need to drink water after eating so they would walk around with blood breath after eating.

White dogs are a pain to keep white around the mouth. After gnawing on raw meaty bones, the hair under their chin turns brown.

These are old pictures...

My parvo pup, not too long after she was released from the vet hospital, cleaning up after her dinner. (That's right, I put a parvo pup on a raw diet!!! :O )
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c8...g/Pets/025.jpg

My other dog gnawing on some meaty pieces.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c8...g/Pets/014.jpg

This is my senior cat (RIP) who was converted to raw at 12 years of age. I need to double check my dates, but I think she was 17 years old when I took this picture. (I swear I have a picture of her as a kitten dated 1991, and she was put to sleep in 2011 about a month before what I thought was her 18th birthday, but may actually have been her 20th birthday.)
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c8...10_phoebe2.jpg

Raw fed! I'm just sharing because I think it's a great picture. Not to say a non-raw fed dog can't be athletic (because we all know they can be!), but I love showing what great shape my dogs are because there are a lot of naysayers out there.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c8...ts/alley10.jpg

Another bone-gnawing photo. (Note for anyone not familiar with raw: She doesn't get bones like this except as a rare and supervised treat... these heavier weight bearing bones can cause teeth to chip or crack, especially in over-zealous dogs. Better bones to feed are non-weight bearing bones. Even those can sometimes cause chipped or cracked teeth, again especially with over-zealous dogs, but are less likely to do so than the heavier and harder bones.)
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c8...lley_bone2.jpg

This freezer has since been replaced with something bigger. The bigger freezer now has the bottom 3 shelves dedicated to pet food, with the top 2 shelves dedicated to people food, and the door shelves a mix of both (pet food on the bottom door shelves, people food on the top, reason being I do sometime get non-human grade food, such as green tripe, and I don't want to risk any dripping onto human food, just in case). This freezer was entirely dedicated to pet food (with human food relegated to the tiny freezer attached to the ridge).
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c8...at_freezer.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c8...t_freezer2.jpg

Little jumpy at first but video of my kitty eating a mouse
http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps3d01fe91.jpg

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...psd8ae7476.jpg

My ferrets sharing
http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps881fd4a3.jpg

I watched a tutorial on teaching a dog how to catch a frisbee. This video shows the play session with Angus after I got my head full of teaching dogs to catch a frisbee. Towards the end of the hour - his energy is starting to get really drained - I finally got him to jump at the frisbee but he has not yet managed to catch it... ALMOST, though! 2 months later, he can catch a frisbee in the air with the best of them.

A very active English Bulldog. Quite a happy sight to see. Raw fed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ7DzWIuHT4

Oh, wow, what an awesome thread! So happy to see so many raw feeders on here!

I feed my dog and cat a prey model raw diet, they're doing fantastically. The dog's been on raw for years but the cat was just switched over this year. I'll have to get some pics :).

Well then...... I guess I should thank my ferrets for leaving me such a gracious and thoughtful gift......>__<;; lol

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/12/31/ejuge7er.jpg

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My dog is a Lab/Newfie cross and I had noticed his coat lost some of its sheen in the winters here. Since adding olive oil to his kibble and increasing his salmon in his diet he bounced back quickly and once again has an almost waterproof coat.

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Originally Posted by Raven01

My dog is a Lab/Newfie cross and I had noticed his coat lost some of its sheen in the winters here. Since adding olive oil to his kibble and increasing his salmon in his diet he bounced back quickly and once again has an almost waterproof coat.

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That's great!

Fish oil is great for coats. We like to give fish oil pills daily to our dobermans. Their coats look very shiny and bright. And when we meet up with their litter mates and mother for play dates, the non-fish oil dogs don't look as good as the ones who do get fish oil.

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I feed my bobcat hybrid kitten whole prey. I'm trying to get my adult cats to eat it, but they are so picky because of their last owner.

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...pse3a7afac.jpg
http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps5a3fa99d.jpg
http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...psc1e712b3.jpg

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Originally Posted by satomi325

That's great!

Fish oil is great for coats. We like to give fish oil pills daily to our dobermans. Their coats look very shiny and bright. And when we meet up with their litter mates and mother for play dates, the non-fish oil dogs don't look as good as the ones who do get fish oil.

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Do you use fish oil pills made for dogs or human grade ones? Bandit's coat is looking great but I love the idea of adding in a little bit of fish oil.

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Originally Posted by missriss2012

Do you use fish oil pills made for dogs or human grade ones? Bandit's coat is looking great but I love the idea of adding in a little bit of fish oil.

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Human ones from Costco.
The dog version is the same thing but more expensive.

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Love the video of the rat hunting! Thanks for sharing that. I give both dogs fish oil with every meal but just feed an "active" formula from the local Big R to them. They have shed less since getting the fish oil, our whole reason for doing it, but I feel like they would do better on a whole prey diet, however I feel like feeding 120+ pounds of dogs whole prey would be incredibly pricey.

I'm feeding 3 dogs, 50-60 pounds each and spend about $70/month max. Which is actually less than it cost to feed them TOTW.

If you are already feeding a high quality dry food(Orijen, Evo, Acana, TOTW, etc etc for example), raw comes out to be about the same price or less.





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My 20 lb dog costs $15 a month to feed. Raw is cheap when done right :).

Nomming on a tasty rabbit!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...psecd99fcd.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...ps7bbf3ee3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...psdd95253e.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...ps2a86e573.jpg

Looks like some good stuff Satomi!
Ever find yourself wanting to try it? ;)


I don't think I would ever be able to bear watching one of my animal crunch on a large rabbit like that, I would probably barf just from the noises... the blood and guts really don't bother me, it's the sound of the bones being crushed
Just hearing my cat eat a mouse made me nauseous.:puke2:

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Originally Posted by Kat_Dog

Looks like some good stuff Satomi!
Ever find yourself wanting to try it? ;)


I don't think I would ever be able to bear watching one of my animal crunch on a large rabbit like that, I would probably barf just from the noises... the blood and guts really don't bother me, it's the sound of the bones being crushed
Just hearing my cat eat a mouse made me nauseous.:puke2:

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Sorry for responding so late. I totally missed your comment.

Thanks!
I've actually contemplated trying one of my rats (cooked)....... I know! Crazy!
But the ferrets make it look so delicious...


I don't think I'd want anything else they eat though... The rabbit is really messy, so that's a 'no' for me.
Ferret food for ferrets. People food for me!

We used to eat rabbits, my mom would breed them for meat. They were really good. Almost tasted like chicken, and that's not a joke lol.


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Originally Posted by Kat_Dog

We used to eat rabbits, my mom would breed them for meat. They were really good. Almost tasted like chicken, and that's not a joke lol.


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My grandmothers family used to breed them in Germany when she was there. I've never personally bred them but I've eaten ones that have been hunted and they do taste extremely good.


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I've had rabbit before as well, the meat melts in your mouth like butter. It is delicious. 😊


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I love rabbit. I'd like to get a breeding colony going some day for food purposes.

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps5aff12a1.jpg

Dang! Look at that coat!! Shinyyyyyy.

Great looking dog!

I can't wait to get a doggy some day to feed raw to :)

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Ok...

so fairly close to getting 1 or 2 ferrets....want to know what the correct and cheap done properly way of kibble/raw diet is...

I currently can't feed 100% raw diet yet...this will change when I start breeding my own rats.

I already mentioned it in your ferret thread.

Join Holistic Ferret forum or their Facebook group. They have all raw info there.

But top 2 kibbles I would look into would be Wysong or Orijen Cat-Kitten.
Nature's Variety and Wellness Core are a good second and still better than most ferret specific kibble. These two can be found at your average pet store. I've only been able to find Orijen at feed stores or pet boutiques. I've never seen Wysong in stores, but can be bought online.

Orijen also has a rewards program. For every 12 bags you buy, you get at least a bag free. A friend of mine got up to 3 bags free.



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LOL,
Sorry abotu that....

yeah on those websites now...thanks Satomi!!

ok...general raw diet question...

where does everyone get the meat/animals from for the om nom noms?

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Originally Posted by OsirisRa32

ok...general raw diet question...

where does everyone get the meat/animals from for the om nom noms?

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Ok let me rephrase...

are raw diets predominately live rats/mice/rabbits/birds....or are f/t doable? similar to feeding reptiles a f/t diet?

It can be whole prey(live/pk/ft). I order FT rabbits and large poultry. I PK large rodents from my breeding colony. And I offer live rats/mice/chicks that are smaller than small rat size.

Or you can do prey model raw which is just a formulated combo of store bought meat, organs, and edible bone that you offer.

There are examples of prey model raw(or simply called frankenprey) diet schedule on holistic ferret page.

There is also freeze dry raw you can feed.

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