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

[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!