losing my way a bit with raw, anyone fancy a raw chat to get me back on track?

[ditavonteesed]

cherry has been on raw diet for over a year, and I love it, when we got eric he was on some really crap kibble so I swapped him straight to raw, I didnt trust myself to balance it properly for a puppy so I gave him fish 4 dogs for 1 meal and raw for the rest. this worked really well but cherry started getting constipated, so I decided to switch her to half an half, which worked great, she has barking heads for one meal and raw for the other. now i am starting to wonder if I have been doing it wrong all along and I should switch them back onto full kibble as at least I know they are getting everything they should be.

No even if you are not getting the balance right it is better than kibble.

Raw mince and biscuit everyday is better than kibble so if you throw in a bit of variety you have a much better diet.

If constipation is an issue just cut down on the bone content.

You feed your family ok you can feed your dogs - it is easier!

Work on a variety of meats, some days meat on bone, a few eggs, sardines if they can eat it, liver cake for treats job done. A nice healthy dog to boot.

I buy the minced meat with bone and everything in it, they have that for most meals, chicken wing or turkeys necks twice a week, one meal a week of boiled egg and sardines (cherry is always sick if she eats raw egg). I assumed the minces had organ meat in it, but am not sure now and dont know how much organ meat I shoukd be feeding them. I have bought a bag of veg now as I wasnt giving them any veg, thoght thisd might help with the constipation. (I dont have a blender) at the shop I go to they seel dried liver so I use that for treats.

Also lost it with the quantities, people keep saying cherry is skinny, i dont think she is but am starting to wonder, she is a border terrier and weighs 6.5kg, i was giving her one third of a pound a day. eric is 5 month old cocker spaniel, should weigh about 15kg full grown, I was giving him 2 thirds of a lb of emat as well as his kibble. but I cant remember how I worked it all out.

Sounds like a great diet to me. You have the offal covered in the treats
Variety in the meals. Some minces have organ meat and some have bone some don't, so you could check this to help with constipation. I would cut down on the turkey necks if they are constipated. Necks have quite a high proportion of bone to meat.

Most dogs you see are overweight so I wouldn't worry too much what people say. She should have a waist, be full of energy and mischief - if that is the case I would say you have it spot on.

3% of her adult weight is the most she should be having. I would go for a little under this and see what she looks like and what poos etc are like.

is she constipated and struggling to poop, or it is just less solid with the mix? people think ralph is constipated, he isnt, but does solid poo's, if your used to a dog on a kibble poo's then it does seem odd iyswim.

no she was defianatly struggling to poo, takes her a good 5 mins and she is proper straineing (sorry tmi)
so wings better than necks?
I dont tend to give many actual bones (rbs and stuff) as they get a bit possesvie and I dont want any fights.

going to have another go with the percentages then, been spending a fortune on the kibble as ony the best and I could do without the cost tbh.

wings are ideal raw food due to the % of meat/bone. always have wings in the freezer.

If she is constipated stop all wings and bones for a while and see what happens and add more offal - not too much or you will have the other extreme!

Sorry to Hijack but where does everyone buy their raw food? I'm thinking about switching but dont know where to start?

by offal do you mean tripe, they have green tripe quite often, I buy a box of mixed meat so they get a couple of evrything its the other bits that I have to think about that was starting to over whelm me a bit.
just calculated and I think I may have been under feeding them
at 6.7kg cherry should have half a pound a day and at estimated adult weight of 15kg eric should have a whole poind. neither off them have visble ribs though, they have wasits and you can feel but not see their ribs.

just realised cherry has put weight on since I first calculated it, she used to be about 6kg, that must be why.

ok just got back from the park and had someone else going on about how thin cherry is and it is obviously because we raw feed her, then started a discussion between themselves about how irresponsible raw feeding is and how vets dont approve and dogs dont live as long in the wild. actually the last vet I saw told me how great cherrys figure (???) is and how I should continue to feed her as we are because it is obviously agreeing with her.

my dad often asys ralph is too thin. he isnt. my dads dog is overweight.

Dita, far too many dogs are actually overweight, and it's one of the saddest things to see, as it increases the chances of heart disease, diabetes, joint strain and makes arthritis so much harder to manage. It sounds as though Cherry is a beautiful, healthy weight, who's getting a great variety of food. If your vet is happy, then you should be. Are the people at the park qualified canine nutritionists or vets? If not, then off they fuck. And as for the vets don't approve thing - some vets don't because they are on a hefty commission selling overpriced kibble.

If our vet had any concerns about ours, I'd be listening seriously but generally we present with three clients, who have a healthy weight, good teeth, settled digestions, a twinkle in their eye and coats which are incredibly soft, smooth and glossy. One of ours is very elderly and has arthritis so her weight is very important. She is beautifully lean, yet looks healthy, glossy and happy with nice muscle tone. Our hydrotherapist often comments also on how well she looks.

We switched because one of our hounds has a very sensitive tum and was not getting on with kibble. I am not a raw "purist" - ours still get the occasional Bonio as a treat fgrin, and good quality kibble is a perfectly acceptable food for many dogs. But when you see the crap that is in some of the commercially available dry foods, why would you want your dog to eat that? I cannot believe that a cereal based diet for a carnivorous animal is the way to go, especially one that is stuffed with sugars, additives and other crap. Pet food is a multi billion pound industry. Think of all the mad adverts for special pet food for "small" dogs or the products that boast they are part of your dog's "five a day" (when dogs don't need five a day!!).

Raw probably isn't for everyone but it can be a perfectly healthy way of feeding your dog, and is probably much more like how most dogs ate until the introduction of commercial pet foods in the 20th Century. It would be like us saying how on earth did we manage before the introduction of hte Big Mac.

I switched originally when we had cherry spayed and she wouldnt eat anything but meat. I have just been down to the raw food shop for a chat, that always gets me back on track.
I think part of the problem with cherry is that she has a smooth coat, so all the other borders look twice the size to start with.
feeling a bit sensitive at the moment, my mum keeps trying to nick cherry, she is a fairly anxious dog and my mum says she would be better living with them where it isnt so loud (she is only joking) and then she started telling me how she is too thin and she saw a really big border the other day and it looked much happier, despite the owner of the other border telling her that the dog was over weight. people seem to be so used to seeing overweight dogs ambling along, cherry gets a lot of excercise and is always running about like, well like a young terrier should be. Eric is also quite slim but he is a working cocker and I think most people are used to seeing show cockers which are completly different.

As a novice dog owner, llike with the dc's, I find it hard not to take the word of people who seem onfident even though i do a lot of research and only make decisions based onwhat I find.

Just wanted to haphandly barge in on the side of dry food. I'll grant you there are bad ones, but some of them are of a very high quality, and avoid the problems of nutritional balancing entirely. I can highly endorse Wainwrights, on the very enthusiastic recommendation of our vet, and also have a silky smooth border. And apparently Chappy is also brilliant.

Miserybusiness I get chicken carcass' from my butcher, he gives me 12 at a go for FREE! Also massive bags of wings (think full Tesco carriers) are £2. Lamb bones/ribs/etc are free when I buy a weeks worth of our meat for meals. The prize choice minces from PAH, or just regular mince from the supermarket that you'd buy for spag bol type of thing. Eggs from the chickens in next doors garden. Sometimes throw a bit of leftover cauliflower or whatever in the bowl or orange bits DD has been chewing on. Got some ox tail and turkey mince in the reduced section of Tescos last night. So I've enough food for my 5 month lab x to last till Xmas at least, for £6 or so. I'd recommend totally, pup is thriving and his coat gleams! Sorry for hijack OP!!!!

miserybusiness, sorry I didnt answer you yesterday I must have cross post with you (hope your not the poster who hates x posts). we have a feed shop near us that sells all the meat, several people on here use landywoods or there is another one but I cant remember the name and google is not coming up wwith anything, it is berry something.

landywoods werent aking on new customers when i called a few months back, so we use berriewoods

here

Thanks everyone, we're looking into changing.
Pup has totally gone off kibble, she wont eat it so we've slowly moved on to Nature Diet but we are moving to Germany next month and I thought if we just switched to Raw it would be easy to feed her anywhere rather than pay for her food from the UK and get it shipped to us.

Thanks for the advice

MiseryBusiness, I buy from Albion Meats
www.albionmeatproducts.co.uk/
They?re really helpful and have a good selection.

Talk to me about the Prize Choice frozen meat blocks, somebody please?

My dogs weigh about 15k each - how many of the blocks would they need per day, roughly?

Do you just mix it with mixer?

I just feed by eye really when I give the prize choice blocks? Sorry that doesn't help! Rec amount is 2-3% of adult weight to be fed a day, u could work it out from that? The blocks are 400g I think? crap at maths. Chicken carcass and wings are great, dead cheap or free from butchers. No need for mixer. I feed mince slightly frozen to last longer!

Don't they need a bit of crunch with it though, for their teeth?

No they don't need mixer and agree with InthePotty 2-3% of bodyweight split over two meals a day.

If they are on a raw diet they will get the "crunch" from the raw bones that they will also get.