Raw food diet for Dog - Vegetarian needs help!

[Magentus]

Hi all,

We have a new family dog - Bonnie, a rescue lurcher. She's been with us for 2 months now and has settled in well, but appears to have some allergies we are hoping to cure with a raw meat diet, as well as all the other good things that come with a more natural canine diet.

Problem is we're all vegetarian! We've started her off with turkey and some pork mince from the supermarket mixed with some veggies but I wanted some advice about buying directly from the butchers (I have never been in a butchers and have no idea what to ask for).

I have no problem handling meat etc but we don't have much freezer space at the moment so have to buy smaller amounts until we remedy that situation.

I have read (and digested) the previous raw meat diet thread but need to be more 'butcher savvy'.

I'm grateful for any advice you all have.

 

[Dogoak]

Our neighbour feeds his Deerhounds on a barf diet. He has a licence, from DEFRA I think, and he gets his meat from the knackers yard which = dirt cheap. there are certain conditions, can't have other animals, fridges/freezers are separate and have to be labeled. Maybe worth looking into?

 

[Magentus]

Cheers Dogoak, I have been raiding the Barf diet website for info! I will look into the knackers yard - I wonder where our nearest is. I guess it's going to come down to bulk buying which means getting more freezer space.

Cheers for the info.

 

[woof]

When I was a dog handler, we had a specialist diet for dogs with certain food intolerance's, but we later changed & put all dogs on the same diet & that was a dry food which was salmon & rice pro plan by purina. Now I'm retired I've been allowed to keep one of my dogs, but there is no way I can afford purina, so I use salmon & rice mix from other manufacturers.

Rob

 

[Dogoak]

Cheers Dogoak, I have been raiding the Barf diet website for info! I will look into the knackers yard - I wonder where our nearest is. I guess it's going to come down to bulk buying which means getting more freezer space.

Cheers for the info.

The neighbour got his two freezers off the local Freecycle

 

[Macaroon]

I agree with the Salmon & Rice diet Rob mentions above; I've kept all my constantly active Springers on Skinner's Field and Trial version of it and have never had a problem. It's a working dog food so is vat free, which is always a bonus

Many years ago I spent an awful lot of time and effort feeding them all with fresh meat and veg., both cooked and raw, and I have to honestly say that using the above-named kibble they're every bit as healthy and free from dietry problems as they ever were..................and my dogs really are out dawn to dusk pretty much every day of the year.

 

[promazine]

I feed our boxer a raw diet - it is based mainly around chicken quarters.

If your going to be doing it in small amounts initially, you will be hard pushed to beat buying chickens from Aldi, and fish, liver, hearts etc in the reduced isles of tescos to supplement the chicken.

We only get good deals from butchers when we buy quite a bit in one go.


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[Robbi]

Our lurcher is on dried food and always will be, one advantage you might want to think about......Have you ever tried to "poo pick " for a dog on a raw meat diet ?

Dried food is good

 

[Mesquite]

Have a look at this website.

It's what the wife and I referred to when we changed our dogs then cats over to raw feed. It was the best thing we could do for them. They're a lot healthier all around, one of the cats skin condition has cleared up totally meaning we don't have to inject it with steroids ever 8-9 weeks.

As for picking up their poo, raw fed dogs are a hell of a lot easier to pick up after as they aren't expelling all the undigested cereals that are used in dried food to bulk it out. In fact you have to be careful not giving them too much bone as that turns it into bullets and bungs them up somewhat

 

[Robbi]

I really have found it very different to that, our Lurcher is as good as gold on a dried diet, but when some friends looked after her for a weekend and they fed her raw meat it was an awful mess.

 

[Adze]

I really have found it very different to that

Sudden changes in diet often cause... err... upsets, shall we say? They adapt quickly, usually.

(I have never been in a butchers and have no idea what to ask for)

Butchers are people too! Just ask your local one the same question you asked here. You'll be fine

 

[Mesquite]

I really have found it very different to that, our Lurcher is as good as gold on a dried diet, but when some friends looked after her for a weekend and they fed her raw meat it was an awful mess.

That's because it wasn't introduced in a controlled manner over a period of time. Also because the change wasn't maintained it was a shock to your dogs system hence the mess. It's a well known side effect from chopping and changing the diet.

If it's done slowly and with care to introduce individual meats to learn what agrees with the animal and what doesn't then there's no problem at all. It usually takes about 3-6 weeks to go 100% raw fed.

If you look at the ingredients in dried food the amount of cereals used it amazing. Dogs certainly can't digest this properly and as a consequence usual do much larger bowel movements than they would on a raw feed.

 

[promazine]

It's amazing how many dogs aren't actually allergic to the dry food itself, but the storage mites that inevitably find their way onto the food.

In regards to poo - ours does smaller, less smelly, really firm poos that go white and crumbly in a few days.

Also, weaning onto raw doesn't have to be a slow process - different dogs react in different ways. Ours went straight on to it with no problems at all - in fact, for a boxer dog she was particularly less "windy" than before


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[Macaroon]

We speak about "Dogs" as if each of them were the same as the other; but they're just like people, each as different from the next as we are. I've had two pups from the same well-bred litter which were as different as a cat is to a dog - temperament, trainability, health and general disposition as different as you could find. So there's no hard and fast rules about what to do, when to do it or how long to take over it - learn your animal first, then do what it needs in the way it needs it done.

All the raw sites I've read bang on about dogs being CARNIVORES, and make a real big thing of it as if it was something we forgot about with the invention of supermarkets, most owners know full well that dogs, like humans, are omnivores.........and I've never known a happy, healthy dog who only eats raw meat, all mine have always had daily veg and fruit in abundance and been the better for it

 

[Magentus]

Yeah, we are doing a sort of two thirds meat one third fruit/veg thing at the moment. After only 2 days she is pooing less and the stools are firmer than when we fed her cans and kibble. Cheers for all the advice everyone. Keep it coming.

 

[Toddy]

We used to be puppy walkers for the Guide Dogs for the Blind. All of the local butchers kept a small chest freezer full of packs of their own made 'dog mince'.
I asked about it for the puppies, and one told me that it was just tough cuts, left over scraggy bits scraped off the bones, etc., and two teaspoonsful per pound of something (can't mind what now) just to help bind it together. He said it was perfectly edible, just a bit cheugh (tough and chewy for us). He said it was fine raw, but recommended that we cooked it for the puppies.
It's sold at about a fifth of the price of ordinary shoulder steak mince.

Maybe worthwhile asking your local butcher what he does with his offcuts ? there's no 'mechanically recovered meat' machinery in a butcher's shop and his scraps have to go somewhere.

M

 

[promazine]

All the raw sites I've read bang on about dogs being CARNIVORES, and make a real big thing of it as if it was something we forgot about with the invention of supermarkets, most owners know full well that dogs, like humans, are omnivores.........and I've never known a happy, healthy dog who only eats raw meat, all mine have always had daily veg and fruit in abundance and been the better for it

Id have to disagree with you there :

http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/are-dogs-carnivores-heres-what-new-research-says

From a non - raw food website

Feel free to come over and meet our boxer dog any time - not eaten any vegetable matter in about 4 years now!


Dogs can, and do eat veg - but they eat it because they can, not because they need to. If you put a bowl full of grapes down infront of my dog - Id bet my mortgage she'd eat the lot, even though they would kill her. Same with chocolate - just because they can, doesn't mean they should. Thankfully with veg, it doesn't really do anything (good or bad) so I don't see any harm in adding it to a dogs diet. Those owners that have dogs with allergies, might find their dog improves vastly if they remove it from the diet though.

Lookup the data on their mouths, jaws and teeth, and take special note of the makeup of their saliva - it's only designed to start the digestion process of meat, and quite literally does nothing with plant matter. Nothing at all like our "omnivorous" saliva.

Please don't take the above the wrong way - it's meant as informative, not a look how wrong you are kind of post sometimes the written word can be taken completely out of context - it's especially easy on forums!

Of course, you know your dogs - and if they are happy and healthy, that's the important bit. As the old saying goes - if it ain't broke...



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[Toddy]

In the wild dogs consumed vegetable matter as part of their diet….they ate the guts of the animals they hunted, and from all accounts of wild dogs, etc., the guts are a choice portion to them.

M

 

[Macaroon]

I'm in no way scientifically trained, and don't purport to be an expert in canine nutrition. I've kept hard-working dogs of various breeds, mainly Springers and Longdogs, for upwards of fifty years now and the general consensus amongst my peers who've kept similar packs is that working dogs should have no more than twenty five per cent protein in their diet; exceptionally hard work may justify twenty seven per cent, but any more will result in damage to the liver and kidneys due to the inability of these organs to process ammonia, the main by-product of metabolising proteins, beyond those levels.

Purely by anecdotal evidence and that of my own experience, I've never known high protein fed dogs to be as fit and psychologically sound as those fed within the above levels.

But as I say, I'm not in any way an expert and these are just my personal observations, nothing more. As you quite rightly say, promazine, if it ain't broke..............As long as you've found a way that that both yourselves and the dog are thriving and happy that's more than many people go to the trouble of ensuring, more's the pity.

 

[santaman2000]

Lots of good advice so far. I tend to agree with Macaroon and Toddy. There are advantages to both schools: Raw meat feeding and kibble feeding. However I don't think the butcher is the one I'd ask for an opinion about what's best for the dog. I'd rather ask the veterinarian.