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

[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.