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

[Newbie Ball]

What did you guys/girls feed to your dogs at first? To get them use to raw food diet.
I've read Chicken is the best option, since it is better on their digestive systems at first is this true? Or can I start him on another meat?
Also when you first started feeding your dog the raw diet, how long you wait to introduce the organ meats? (Including the heart)

I also read chicken backs are good for dental hygiene for my dog, what happens if I can't find him em? Are there alternatives? (This includes turkey back, / neck.) in the worst case.

[satomi325]

I haven't done this with a dog. But for ferrets. However, same concept is used whenever introducing new foods to anything really...

You mix old foods with new food.
Start out with a very small portion or raw to old kibble. Like 25% raw to 75% kibble for a few weeks then gradually go to 50-50%. And eventually 75% raw to 25% kibble etc, etc.

I've always introduced organs from the start. It won't be a complete diet otherwise.

And its much easier on carnivore to digest raw than commercial foods. They're designed and evolved to digest such foods.

Just chewing the raw meat itself is great for dental health. Bone is helpful, but the meat acts like a tooth brush too getting rubbed into the nooks and crannies. Dogs have a slicing motion with their teeth when they chew. Meat gets up in between each tooth compared to a dry kibble that breaks at the tip of the tooth when being eaten.


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[sorraia]

What did you guys/girls feed to your dogs at first? To get them use to raw food diet.
I've read Chicken is the best option, since it is better on their digestive systems at first is this true? Or can I start him on another meat?
Also when you first started feeding your dog the raw diet, how long you wait to introduce the organ meats? (Including the heart)

I also read chicken backs are good for dental hygiene for my dog, what happens if I can't find him em? Are there alternatives? (This includes turkey back, / neck.) in the worst case.

My dogs were easy to switch. Basically they said, "Meat? I can really eat this and not get yelled at? Cool!" I did have them on whole prey for a little while, that was a little harder. Basically had them eating regular raw (meaty bits, organ, etc), then gradually added cut up pieces of whole prey, gradually up to whole prey.

My dogs' diet is based on chicken and other poultry, and I think that's what I started with too. It is easier on their stomachs, and my one dog gets extremely gassy if she has any kind of lamb or pork, and will get gassy if she gets beef on a regular basis. Just start slow and see what your dog can tolerate. At this point I don't remember how long I waited to introduce organ, but I want to say it was a couple weeks.

[satomi325]

I haven't done this with a dog. But for ferrets. However, same concept is used whenever introducing new foods to anything really...

You mix old foods with new food.
Start out with a very small portion or raw to old kibble. Like 25% raw to 75% kibble for a few weeks then gradually go to 50-50%. And eventually 75% raw to 25% kibble etc, etc.

I just wanted to clarify that this is for ferrets. They won't eat kibble and raw at the same time. They'll eat one or the other depending on the ferret if both types of food are presented at the same time. Most imprinted ferrets will always go for the kibble. And all raw fed ferrets will always choose the raw over kibble.




In dogs, they'll probably eat everything at the same time. So its best to keep raw and kibble in separate meal times since the digestion rate is different for both types of food.


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[anatess]

I LOVE THIS THREAD!!!!

My dogs - 2 English Bulldogs and a Bichon Frise are on Prey Model Raw.

They started off as kibble-fed (rescues). At first, I went with good quality kibble (BB Wilderness and Earthborn Holistics) but I was having a hard time with the English Bulldogs... EBs are known for genetic food allergies... so I went with PMR.

PMR is a whole prey diet. No plants needed. It's what dogs eat if they were dropped off in the middle of the amazon forest. It is difficult to get an entire animal in an urban area though because they don't just sell whole chicken in the stores with guts and stuff. So, we had to do a "frankenwennie" kind of thing... buy body parts to make up the whole prey. So, the rule-of-thumb of frankenwennie is: 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, 5% other secreting organs. Hearts, tongue, and gizzards are grouped in the 80% and so is tripe (green, with contents!... not that bleached stuff from the grocery). Secreting organs can be kidneys and brains. I started my dogs with 3% of their expected adult body weight worth of food per day. That amounted to 1.8 lbs per day on the EBs and .45 lbs on the Bichon. My dog only eats once a day.

Now, we're Snake people - so we have pretty good sources of good whole prey like Rabbits and Chickens and Quail and Rats, etc. But, for most folks, when they think rabbits, they think that chopped up stuff in a foam container and shrink wrapped... So, if I had access to Rodentpro and the like, my switching method would be to get one of them big rabbits from rodentpro and give the whole thing to the dog. But, since it would be too expensive for me to do that, I went this way:

Day 1 - Fasting (no food, not even treats, just water)
Day 2 - Went with chicken first because I couldn't find whole rabbits that I don't have to butcher myself (my initial preference). So I bought one whole chicken that had the innards put in a bag inside it per dog. Got it from Wal-mart. I chopped it up into quarters and I gave one leg quarter to each EB(amounted to less than a pound). I gave the bichon just one drumstick.
Day 3 - Fed another leg.
Day 4 - fed one breast
Day 5 - fed the other breast
Day 6 - fed the rest of the chicken - wings neck, innards.
Day 7 - fast

Did the same thing the next week except now they get 1.8 lbs worth of chicken the bichon gets .45 lbs per day but no more fasting on Day 7.

3rd week I added beef chunks. So they get one leg quarter or one chicken breast or the rest of the chicken (like week 1) and then topped with beef chunks to make 1.8 lbs. By this time, the dog's poop was turning white so I reduced the bone.

4th week I replaced beef chunks with pork chunks and replaced chicken bone with pork butt bones.

5th week I replaced pork chunks with whiting fish.

6th week I replaced chicken with turkey and replaced fish with beef.

7th week - I balanced the liver and secreting organs to make their percentages of 5% each. So, in the 1.8 pounds, I had 1.5 ounces of beef liver and 1.5 ounces of beef kidney per day (I fed little pieces of organs daily because when I gave them a whole chunk of liver on day 1, they went cannon butt on me)

8th week - I started gorging and fasting... they would gorge on Saturday (3 lbs of food) and fast on Sunday. Then I increased it the next week to 4 lbs of food and fast on Sunday. Then I increased it the next week to 5 lbs of food and fast Sunday and Monday.

After that - I can mix everything up depending on what's on sale in the local meat shop. They gorge and fast in the same manner. If I get meat that's spoiling in my meat-for-humans freezer, they get to gorge on it.

[anatess]

And now for pictures!!!

The not-for-human-consumption freezer:


Bullie:


Angus:


Gizmo:


When I was researching PMR diet, one of my big concerns was how to contain the mess. A lot of people suggested using a towel/blanket or feeding outside. I decided to attempt training the dogs to eat over the bowl/placemat. I'm really very happy with the results. I'm not the trainer in my house. I'm actually the wimp - my husband is the trainer. But, he's been so busy lately that he hasn't found time to do anything with the dogs so I attempted to train the dogs myself. I am going to take a moment to pat myself on the back because I still can't believe I did it! With 2 English Bulldogs for that matter (known for resource guarding). And on PMR which is a high-valued resource that a lot of dogs get territorial with.

So, presenting today's dinner... gone in 2 minutes and 30 seconds...

[Anya]

Alright, you guys have convinced me to at least give raw a shot. I just wish I had a diet plan tailored to my 20 lb dog.

My big question is...where would I get my supply?? Where do you guys buy all your meat?

[Mike41793]

Alright, you guys have convinced me to at least give raw a shot. I just wish I had a diet plan tailored to my 20 lb dog.

My big question is...where would I get my supply?? Where do you guys buy all your meat?

I really think anywhere you'd buy meat would be ok. I don't think the dogs need anything more special. The key is to buy it in bulk to save money. You might be able to get deals from a local butcher if they have certain cuts that are cheap or undesirable to sell to people...? Idk, i'm still learning myself. Someone else could help more.

My dog is very old and most likely getting put down pretty soon. I, and my family, are 100% dog lovers so im sure that we'll be looking for a puppy pretty soon after Mystic goes. I've already been researching raw diets because that's definitely the direction i'd like to go with this dog. Between seeing Coleslaw's, Satomi's and Pookie's dogs i was 100% convinced.

[anatess]

Alright, you guys have convinced me to at least give raw a shot. I just wish I had a diet plan tailored to my 20 lb dog.

My big question is...where would I get my supply?? Where do you guys buy all your meat?

Anya, your first decision is whether you'd go with PMR or BARF (okay, PMR is BARF without veggies so that was a misnomer).

I went with PMR (just made more sense to me) but BARF also makes sense so just read up on it to see which you prefer.

Now, to tailor PMR to your 20lb dog, your first question is - does he have currently health issues that requires a special diet? If no then you can either go with whole prey (your dog is small enough to eat a big rat or a couple quails or a rabbit - if you get your snake food frozen you can check to see if your frozen snake food source offers different prey other than rat). Or you can go with rule of thumb - 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, 5% other organs like I mentioned in a previous post spread out over time.

So then you start off with 3% of your dog's body weight as a daily serving. So, 3% of 20 lbs is 9.6 ounces... or 10 ounces to round off... per day. Then you adjust up or down depending on how your dog responds. So, if you got a big rabbit, split the rabbit into 10 ounce servings to feed the dog per day. Yes, the whole rabbit. Okay okay, I'm too urbanized, I actually take out the pelt (gets too messy!) and the intestines (I trust my source but I just want this additional step for my piece of mind regarding parasites) and cut out the gal bladder (because someone told me they fed their dog rabbit and they bit off the gal bladder and the dog stopped eating... of course, this is only ONE dog that I've heard this from so this is another one of those my piece of mind not the dog's).

Now when your dog gets to be a pro at it, you can just give the dog the whole rabbit let him munch as much as he can eat in one sitting (my dogs can devour an entire rabbit pretty quick), save the rest of the rabbit for the next day or if he ate a lot (gorging), you can skip a couple days before you feed him another one. Yep. Really as easy as dropping a rat in a snake's enclosure. That's one of the reasons I didn't bother with BARF - no pureeing of veggies involved.

And then... for variety... you need at least 3 types of prey sources: chicken, turkey, quail, rabbit, cow, pig, fish, rat, etc.

So, where do I buy stuff? I buy frozen rabbits and quail and chicken from the reptile store. They feed this to their giants and monitor. I buy the rest from the meat shop because they have better bulk deals than the grocery. I can buy 60lbs of beef hearts for 99 cents a pound and 30lbs of liver or 30 lbs of kidney for $1.19/lb and $30 for a 10lb package of whiting fish. And then they have deals like $1.29/pound on family pack pork butts or shoulders. By the way, I use pork shoulders bones as treats because it takes them all day to eat it and then they leave a big chunk behind.

Try it! Your dog will love it!

[anatess]

See, I find it much easier to explain PMR to snake people. I tell my non-reptile-loving friends about giving my dog a rat or a rabbit and they're like... EEEEEWWW!

Uhm hello... give the dog a bone???