Inspired to RAW feed...

[swallowedAfly]

by all the encouraging posts on another thread. i have a dog and a cat and am going to try RAW food with both of them.

my lab is 13months old and happy to try anything food wise so i'm hoping she won't be too difficult to switch over. as an experiment of her willingness to experiment i gave her a raw egg today, after she'd mouthed it a bit and looked confused i cracked it slightly in her bowl and she loved it - lapped it all up and proceeded to eat the shell too. good sign i'm thinking

tomorrow i'm going to try her on chicken drumsticks, not sure if this is a bit ambitious bone wise to start off with but worth a go. have just done my online shop and have bought a load of chicken wings, thighs and some pigs liver (read a good tip for making training treats out of liver on the other thread). i also bought some whole sardines as after reading up i'm going to aim to give her whole fish once a week. am thinking just chicken for a few days then try adding in a bit of liver and if all is well give her a fish meal at the end of the first week.

as for the cat - well he caught a wood pigeon yesterday and tucked into well so i'm thinking his instincts should be in working order to deal with raw meat. i think initially i will just a few pieces of raw chicken off the bone then maybe progress onto a chicken wing - not sure if a cat will manage bone like that but i guess i'll find out. he'd happily live on fish (sometimes feed him canned fish and both the cat and dog get the skin whenever i prepare fish so know they both like it) but whole fish does not come cheap so i'm hoping he'll take to meat too.

so i guess i am looking for encouragement, support and words of wisdom. what can i expect with poos initially? and do you think my lab is likely to believe she is starving or something given she's used to kibble and the fill up of carbs? i plan to feed her twice a day (only used to put kibble down once a day).

it's not just the physical health that i want to do it for but the sense that she will really enjoy it and have a lot of fun eating you know? it takes some work presumably to work your way through raw meat and bones and she loves to eat things she has to work at so i feel like this will generally bring more pleasure into her life and channel that love of food into quality and physical work rather than just hoofing down dried synthetic stuff.

okay so this morning i have fed the dog 4 raw chicken drumsticks (300g).

it took her a while to keep picking them up and repositioning them in her mouth but she soon got the hang of it and chewed, dropped, chewed, dropped until she got to the crunching through bone stage and worked them down to swallow. don't think she ate too fast.

she loved it and was looking round for more afterwards

so long as her poos are ok and she doesn't have any bad reactions health wise i can't see switching over being a problem at all with her.

sounds dumb but it was a real pleasure to watch her eating and it felt 'right' that that was how she was meant to be eating as a dog. fingers crossed it all goes well.

quick question if anyone reads this - will it hurt to eat the odd bit of cooked food as a treat? we are going to a friends for lunch later and no doubt people will offer her plate scraps - she likes veg and stuff - i know she doesn't 'need' it but will it harm her or disrupt the diet?

It sounds like your dog has already got the hang of it. Lots of different ways of feeding a raw diet, my lab is 19 months and we followed guidelines from the Yahoo rawfeeding group. No veg or cooked food or raw mince.
Start with just chicken for 2 weeks - chicken legs, or quarters if you can get them as wings/drumsticks not meaty enough. It takes time for dogs stomach to produce enzymes, etc to digest bone and raw food, so best to just stick to chicken at first, then gradually introduce other meats after 2 weeks.
I was warned that dogs can have retching/vomiting episodes in the early morning when starting raw feeding, because the food digests more quickly than kibble. Acid in empty stomach makes dog feel sick and they bring up yellowish mucous, my dog did this at 3 am for a couple of nights, loud retching woke us up but this phase passed quickly.
He's been on raw for 5 months now and I love watching him eat, he enjoys it so much. The kibble used to be inhaled in 20 seconds, he never used to chew it. He always had sloppy poos, now they're small and hard and he only goes once a day. He eats chicken legs, pork ribs, beef and tripe chunks from PAH, small amounts of liver (given home dried for training treats) and kidney, + various other meats on offer in Asda ie bony stewing lamb chunks.
You get used to poo watching, if a bit loose give more bone, if straining/constipated give more meat.

thanks for responding. i'm defrosting a chicken for tomorrow and chicken thighs are arriving tuesday with my groceries so will switch to those then. she's been absolutely fine so far. if fruit/veg doesn't hurt her i think i'll still let her have the odd scrap here and there such as the pear and apple cores she loves but i won't give much or often - from what i read she doesn't need it.

i've got liver coming that i'm going to dry into strips and use as training treats.

Re fruit and veg, they don't need it as such but enjoy a taste usually snaffled from guinea pig hutch. Mine gets the odd scraps.

If it helps, my lab x (8m, 22kg) gets 4 wings/carcass for brekkie, then a carcass (rabbit, chicken, ect) for tea, with leftovers sometimes thrown in. Green tripe from PAH 2 times a week, (don't breathe when u open bag and feed in garden!) Oily fish every now and again. Don't go out of my way to feed liver as its left on the carcass'. I'd make best mates with your local butcher, its soon cheap and easy like this.

I don't think fruit/veg does any harm but they don't need it. Even if they did need it I wouldn't have to give my dog any because he finds it himself, he enjoys half eaten apples and bananas on walks, also goes through phases of grazing on grass and other vegetation. If he manages to swallow a whole banana skin before I prise his jaws open we get a large banana skin poo the next day but otherwise no ill effects.

thanks for responses.

day 2 here. yesterday she had nothing but chicken and an egg, today she has had a mix of chicken breast and drumsticks for breakfast that she much enjoyed. have not seen any wretching or anything and her poo was harder and smaller this morning than usual - i presume grains and carbs create the big bloated poos in dogs.

i can't believe how easy it's been! she chews really well and hasn't struggled at all and really enjoys it - much tail wagging throughout.

i definitely need to find a butcher. we don't have one in the village and i tend to rely on online shopping for groceries but don't fancy feeding her at supermarket prices so will need to make a weekly bus trip to somewhere with a butcher.

are chicken carcasses what is left over after taking off the breasts, legs and wings? so they'd normally throw it out or use for stock or something? what else is cheap and good - someone mentioned pork ribs but any other ideas would be great.

want to have some ideas before going to talk to a butcher.

i'm also thinking this is going to make travelling with the dog so much easier. i took her and my son to the peak district for a few nights at half term and having to lug 4 days worth of her dried food on top of all of our clothes and stuff on trains was such a pain. much better if i know i can just go to a supermarket or butchers wherever i am and buy whatever is on offer and have her eat it straight off.

Swallowed - how do you know what quantities to give? This is something I'd love to try in due course but feel I need to do lots of research first - perhaps you could point me in the right direction? I will look at the Yahoo group mentioned by Uptown as well. My pup literally inhales her kibble in seconds and I'm now putting it in a kong to try to recreate the experience of actually chewing (after all, chewing releases endorphins in dogs' brains and is part of the experience of being a dog!).

Just to add that when we switched our lab x (10 months at the time) to raw, we did it gradually over about ten days - mixing raw food with his kibble to start with.

He has definitely appeared LESS hungry since moving to raw, not more!

Uptown, what's the guidance on raw mince that you mentioned?

the guidance i read is to use 2-3% of your dogs ideal weight which is her weight for my dog because when she went for jabs recently the vet said she was perfect build and to try and keep her there. she is only 26kg fully grown (small for a lab) and i'm giving her 600g of meat and bone.

i was told not to mix or transition with dry food because the dry food is slower to digest and hangs around in the digestive tract where as meat digests fast - so the dry food could lead to digested meat being clogged up in there. all i read suggested you just feed dry one day and the next switch totally to raw - this is what i've done and have seen no problems so far.

raw mince from what i read is inappropriate because it's all mushed up for a start - they need to chew and need bone. a dog wouldn't eat mince in the wild. the raw feed sites i looked at didn't agree with pre packaged raw meals that mince and prepare food.

and imagine mince in your teeth - bleurgh!

oh and chewing is actually part of the digestion process - digestion begins in the mouth for all of us. as we chew the stomach gets ready and we are breaking down and extracting nutrients and making the food something that the stomach will be able to extract nutrients from far more readily.

That's interesting re the mince. We were told to give mince and rice, mixed with bran in the morning. At night the dog gets Vet's Kitchen biscuits with 4 chicken drumsticks. I've never noticed any issues with the mince before!

rice and bran are grains - they don't need them and they're not good for them.

if you mix biscuits and raw meat you are apparently creating a mess in the digestive system as they digest at totally different rates. so basically digested meat that needs to get out is going to be trapped in there with undigested biscuits.

poor doggy. Clearly I need to review his diet! Thanks for the guidance. Any recommendations of books/articles to read?

don't be sad i'm sure he's fine. google and good stuff comes up. it's really not complicated so don't think you need books or anything. it's literally get raw meat and bones (e.g. chicken legs), weigh 2% of their ideal weight, divide in half and throw one half in the garden a.m and the other pm. oh and watch them to make sure they're chewing properly etc. eventually vary the meats and imo feed whole oily fish once a week (whatever is cheap) and feed a little liver for extra goodness.

no supplements needed, no grains needed, that's it.

i'm surprised by how easy it is. we've all been brainwashed by the pet food industry to think feeding them is terribly complicated and there is so much 'stuff' that needs to be given to be nutritious. codswallop it seems.

Its really easy, isn't it? I had all sorts of preconceptions about raw, but its no problem at all.

We were told to do it in stages, interesting how different people give different advice! In any case, we had no problems at all - but then again, Mouse has a hardy digestive system (probably due to all the rubbish he likes to pick up and chew good mix of genes ).

We give a mix of raw pre-prepared, and raw chewable. Just easier for us to fit in freezer. But absolutely, they like and need to chew - Mouse used to eat sticks all the time, but although he likes the occasional nibble on a stick when bored he just doesn't pounce on them like he used to.

Thanks Swallowed - I like your common sense approach

Mince disappeared down my dog even quicker than kibble, 2 gulps and it was gone, no chewing at all, then he'd sit there expectantly waiting for more food. When I read a bit more about raw feeding I found that ideally dogs should have large pieces of meat that they can sink their teeth into. The bigger the better so they have to use their paws and jaws to rip it into smaller pieces. This starts the digestive process and is also very pleasurable for the dog.
It makes sense to me to give a lot of food at one time rather than smaller meals more frequently. More satisfying for the dog to have a big meal and very predictable poo wise.
I've cut down his breakfast but can't bring myself to stop it altogether as he always looks so expectant in the mornings, so he has about 150g in the morning and the rest, 500g, in the evening and then he goes straight to sleep for 12 hours.

yeah i don't think mince would even touch my dogs teeth - it'd be one gulp and the same expectant face you got uptown

the other thing i read is that dogs can eat out of date meat, rotten carcasses etc without harm. now i don't intend to feed my dog these things but it does put things in context so i won't be worried about putting meat out to defrost in a bucket in the barn overnight for example rather than handling like i would for my child. and if a piece of meat looks just slightly dodgy and i can't face eating it (i am squeamish about meat and always thinking things are off that most people would eat) i'll give it to the dog.

can't wait to see her tackle a huge bit of meat like a rabbit! and i sadly get really excited at the idea of finding bargain meat for her.

If a dog's digestive system can produces enough acid/enzymes to disolve bone it should see off a few bugs easily enough. My lab has caught and eaten 3 pigeons over the past few months - he doesn't chase them, they get blown into trees when its windy, presumably bang their heads then sit by the path dazed and waiting to be eaten. I'm amazed at how efficiently he eats every scrap, takes him about 15 mins, beak, feathers, feet, nothing left. Next day just a small tidy non smelly poo.

yay another convert to raw.

we use chicken and tripe blocks and chicken wings/carcasses as the main staple of ralphs diet. he does wait for my toast crusts in the morning, and i try and get freeze dried liver treats.

if you have a chest freezer or a lot of freezer space like i do, then you can bulk buy from somewhere like berriewoods www.berriewoodwholesale.co.uk/ or find a good local butcher. i get 15kg of carcasses for a couple of pounds, he has 2 of those a day when i can get them.

haha! i thought watching the dog eat was mesmerising but it is nothing compared to watching a cat take on a raw chicken wing! wow!!! those little teeth crack through bone and he has amazing technique. i thought giving him meat on the bone would be too much for him but he loved it and devoured the lot and then, unusual for him, he had a really thorough, thorough washing fit.

think i can safely say raw feeding is a success with the cat.

the dog only had a wee breakfast and i gave her the bulk in the evening. i put it in a bowl in the back passage and she rearranged into a pile on the concrete floor and just stood wagging her tail and grinning at it and circling it for ages before starting. gave her whole big chicken legs tonight so it took a bit more work but she was fine

all seems to be going very smoothly. just need to befriend a butcher.

swallowedAfly - that's really interesting, my dog does the food arranging and circling as well It was such a surprise when he first started doing it, as I'd been used to him polishing off his kibble in seconds. He seems to enjoy the anticipation, this evening he had a chicken leg quarter, lamb kidney and some tripe. He took it all out of the bowl and moved it around till he was pleased with the arrangement, ate the soft things first then settled down with the chicken between his front paws.

I'm amazed your cat ate a whole chicken wing, mine will only eat raw liver which she can't have all the time so is still on kibble.

oh wow - it must be some kind of instinctive thing then with the food presentation

i know i was amazed at the cat too! he even did this weird thing where he'd part swallow great big bits whilst chewing on the tail end of it and then wretch it back up as if his throat was working on it too. sorry if that's a bit gross but it all looked like he knew what he was doing. he also had a little growl to himself even though no one was anywhere near him. massively relieved as i couldn't afford a pure fish diet. i only gave him half a wing though - need to weigh him and see how much i should feed him if i'm going for it from tomorrow.

i have very happy animals tonight

I think you're right about it being instinctive, perhaps dogs arrange the meat and circle round it to make sure its dead.