Feeding a dog the BARF diet

[Kara]

what exactly are you feeding?

I feed pork & beef ribs, pork neck bones, chicken backs, chicken necks & turkey necks for raw meaty bones. This is supplemented with heart, tongue, liver, kidney, spleen, pancreas and green tripe from beef, sheep & bison, as well as rabbit, lamb, goat, venison, bison, duck (usually ground) salmon (filets or canned), raw eggs...basically whatever I can get my hands on from a GOOD source to make my dogs' diet as varied & nutrient-rich as possible.

Our boys eat DARN good!

K~

[purplemuffin]

True, but I have a family of wussies! They have enough trouble using raw food to cook with, I can't imagine them even touching a bag of dead stuff that they don't eat! Hopefully by the time I am on my own I will know someone I can trust to do that for me who can handle a little bit of raw meat!

[SquamishSerpents]

feeding raw will absolutely change your dog's life. our dog was an overweight pudgy dog, and his hips crackled every time he stood up. now he acts almost like a puppy again! he springs up at walk time now, he's lost about 20lbs since starting on the raw, his fur is soooo much shinier and healthy looking, and he's just generally more active and happy. and NO SMELLY DOG FARTS! god, that was the worst! his poops are also way way easier to clean up.

we have a friend with a very small chihuahua x pug and his dumps are bigger than my 75lb black lab x rott cross!

[Highline Reptiles South]

I feed pork & beef ribs, pork neck bones, chicken backs, chicken necks & turkey necks for raw meaty bones. This is supplemented with heart, tongue, liver, kidney, spleen, pancreas and green tripe from beef, sheep & bison, as well as rabbit, lamb, goat, venison, bison, duck (usually ground) salmon (filets or canned), raw eggs...basically whatever I can get my hands on from a GOOD source to make my dogs' diet as varied & nutrient-rich as possible.

Our boys eat DARN good!

K~

I'll have to look into this more. My lab has always had skin and stomach problems. During hunting season I supplement with venison heart/liver/kidney/pancreas.

[Don]

Heck, I'm doing good just to keep my dog out of the cat food and taking the people food off the counters!

[Kara]

But I would be interested in learning more about raw diet options. Are there any options out there that are comparable to the convenience and cost of high-grade commercial kibble?

Depending on what you choose to feed & the resources in your area, raw can be very cost-effective, especially compared to the price of high-grade, premium kibble.

Convenience is raw diet's only drawback, IMO. You can get commercial raw diets, like Bravo, Oma's Pride, etc, but you'd still have to find a source for raw meaty bones and tripe, as most commercial products are typically just whole-ground animals...good stuff, but not necessarily a complete diet. If you're buying RBM in bulk, frozen, you'd have to thaw & repackage into meal-sized portions & then store in your freezer. Then there's the matter of thawing out the food for daily feedings, and if you're thawing enough for a couple of days, where you want to keep it so it stays refrigerated.

For perspective, Ryan & I buy 160 lbs of raw meaty bones at a time, and that lasts us about 6 weeks. It takes about 36 hours for the 40-lb boxes to thaw out enough to repackage, and repackaging 160 lbs into the quantities that we feed in a day (3 meals x 2 dogs) takes about 2 hours for one person, including time spent stripping fat & skin off of the chicken necks. Our main supplier is about an hour away from us (one-way) so we tend to buy a bunch at once. We get better pricing that way, and don't have to drive in as frequently to pick up food. It's a labor of love, but not terrible, and TOTALLY worth it IMO.

HTH!

K~

[JLC]

Depending on what you choose to feed & the resources in your area, raw can be very cost-effective, especially compared to the price of high-grade, premium kibble.

K~

This is probably my biggest concern when it comes to attempting a raw diet for Mira. With as frequently as we move...and the constant unknown about what's next....my local resources are always a mystery.

My ability to store large amounts of frozen food is also rarely more than a single standard family 'fridge that also has to hold all the family food. We can't haul around big box freezers with each move that may or may not have a place to live in the next house.

I think I'll look into what sorts of commercially prepared raw foods I can find in national chains (if we ever get sent someplace that doesn't have a petsmart or the like, then what I feed the dog will probably be the least of my worries)....and how they compare in price to the dry food I buy now. (Which ain't cheap) Would you say that such food is significantly better than high grade kibble...even if it's not as completely rounded out as what you're able to provide?

[Kara]

Judy, I think it would be doable, especially if you have access to a varied, commercially-available raw diet (Bravo comes to mind), and/or enough of a variety of RMB, muscle & organ found locally.

If you had the option for even a compact chest freezer (3-4 cu. ft) it would make storage easier. Something that size would work for a single dog, doesn't take up much space, and isn't as cumbersome to move as a standard deep-freeze. Additionally, it would allow you to take advantage of finding various foods on sale and storing them, if you can't find a bulk supplier in your area. It would also eliminate the issue of storing the dog's food next to the family's ice cream.

With a little bit of work & resourcefulness, you can feed a complete raw diet. The key points are to ensure a correct RMB/muscle/organ ratio, and to feed as much variety as you possibly can. This doesn't mean you have to go crazy feeding the more exotic stuff however, if you were limited to only one food source (i.e. just chicken) it would be necessary to take another approach to feeding.

[starstrukk]

I have always supplemented my dogs with raw meats and the like, and wouldn't really mind switching to a raw except for- how do you figure out how much to feed your dog? I play enough of a guessing game with dry kibble, so I think it would be rather scary to do so with foods that will very directly affect the dog's nutritional intake.

Also, it seems like everyone else here just has a couple dogs... with 5 dogs I wonder if it really becomes any cheaper.

That's just my two cents.

[purplemuffin]

Is there a list of certain breeds that need different nutritional needs? I know at least with kibble that certain breeds need certain extra nutrients to compensate and it seems like bigger dogs and little dogs have different dietary needs. I know I want a corgi, any advice on them? Is the raw diet basically a fit-all-dog diet because it gives them full nutrition unlike kibble?