BARF & Kibble, if you do, come and talk to me pleeeeeeease.

[HoneyDragon]

Hullys on Burns and thrives. She loves raw food. I know you can't mix in the same meal. But noticed on here that lots of people do some kibble some raw as separate meals.

This old be great for us. Both practically and economically.

However reading RF forums they go on about weeks of vomit and shitting as part of detox, and infer kibble will be a very bad thing indeed.

She already has the odd frozen chicken wing, raw carrots, sardines, whole egg etc through the day and hasn't exploded.

The only real stomach issue was when she was given rawhide which resulted in an £80 vets bill.

Please tell me I am safe to proceed

Sorry should have explained better. I want to do kibble for breakfast and raw for tea.

I would never ever feed kibble and barf. You could feed barf and natural instinct or prepared barf type meals. But ditch the kibble

But why? I don't understaaaaaaand

Some forums are fine with mixing raw and kibble (as separate meals) others act like you are murdering your dog

To be fair some forums act like you're poisoning your dog by feeding it kibble at all, lol.

As far as I know, the issue is that they digest at different rates - so I can't see any issue with having them at different meals.

If its working for you and your dog just do it . My dog eats pedigree kibble , its what they sent home from Battersea and yes I know its rubbish . I've tried a couple of times to move him onto better quality food ( orijen /fish for dogs ? )mixing it gradually etc as recommended but he either won't eat them or they upset him . He is perfectly healthy and so we've now decided to let him get on with it . Every morning after his first walk he has raw chicken ( wings or a quarter) ,he loves it and in the evening he has his kibble ,he has the most stable bowels in the dog world and to date has never had a stomach upset ( prob tempting fate now) . Hopefully I'm not killing my dog ,if I am he will at least die happy !

Right. So if I try introducing raw as a more regular feature of her diet I'm not murdering her, nor will her bum explode

I was too scared to post on a dog forum, I know some people, like you Iredog are really good advocates of all raw. But you are nice about it and not scary .

My dog's bum only explodes on kibble, lol.

I tried raw for a month, but he's an awkward git and wouldn't eat too many things to be happy with it - so he's on wet food and the raw stuff he did like as snacks.

I am one of those heathens who feeds both raw and kibble.

We moved to raw when our family was joined by a beautiful blonde greyhound with a very sensitive tum. We fiddled around with his food then he had a very bad attack of colitis and was very ill. We moved him onto raw and he never looked back - he gained weight, thrived and lived the rest of his days with us as a very happy contented dog, with a gorgeous coat, lovely firm poos etc. At the time we were a three hound family so it made sense to move all the dogs over to the same system. We installed a chest freezer in the garage, and all was well.

However, when we went away (not often) we'd take kibble with us for ease and convenience (though not for our sensitive boy) - don't think my MIL would appreciate having bits of raw tripe over her kitchen. Even though we were predominantly raw, we were never super evangelical about it and were/are quite happy to feed the odd Bonio, pigs ears etc. We found (sensitive dog aside) that all the dogs were quite happy to switch to kibble for a weekend, and though the poos weren't quite as small or firm as they are with raw, were fine.

Where we are now - our beautiful blonde boy passed away last year and we are now a FOUR hound household. Quite simply, the economics of raw feeding for four were too difficult for us. It may be different when you have access to a really good local butcher, but we've moved to a compromise, also one of our dogs only has four teeth, so she was never going to be able to manage bones, etc.

Our dogs get Harringtons kibble for breakfast - the size of the bits is such that the dog w/o teeth just hoovers them up. In the evening, we get the frozen bags and like many raw feeders, feed a selection of things like tripe mince, beef chunks, chicken wings, etc. All the dogs also regularly get things like tinned sardines, leftover pasta, rice, veggies etc. We have no problems with poo (exploding or otherwise). If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd def revert to a fully raw diet but we feel this is a compromise we can live with. Kibble is also great if we are away with the dogs - much easier.

All four dogs are looking really well, with gorgeous glossy coats, and nice poos. I take them to training classes regularly and the teacher always comments on how well they look and in a dog show last weekend, judge commended one's condition (all are veterans).

If you have a dog with a sensitive tum, and you find raw works for you (as it did for us) then I'd recommend sticking more rigidly to it. But if you've got a selection of gannets like we have at the moment, then your choice of food is dictated by what's best for your dog, bearing in mind cost and convenience.

I mix raw and kibble. Some days he has nothing but kibble, and some days all raw, and some days one for breakfast and one for tea. If I feed kibble, I sometimes put a raw egg on it. He also has meat/veggie scraps, as well as pasta and rice. In fact, he's rather partial to a Yorkshire pudding . None of this upsets his tummy, yet cheap kibble does

It is not a matter of being a heathen feeding both kibble and barf. However it is not great for your dogs digestion.

If you have ever had a dog that has been sick after eating kibble maybe some 6 hours later you will see that the kibble is still whole, slightly swollen but still not digested. Kibble is designed to be slow to digest as it makes the dogs feel fuller (and increases the risk of bloat and stomach cancers due to this but I will not get sidetracked ).

So if you feed one meal kibble and one meal barf the dogs stomach acids have to work very differently for each meal. Dogs that eat barf have much more effective stomach acids if you mix the feeding your dog will not develop the correct acid to 1. digest the barf food easily or to digest the kibble slowly.

However you can feed wet food as well as barf as the digestion rate is similar.

If you do want to mix the feeding then feed the kibble in the evening where it has a longer time to be digested by the dog and when the dog is less active.

I mentioned to our vet we were feeding raw yesterday at one of my many visits . She wasn't particularly over the moon it has to be said, mentioned how hard it was to get the right balance of nutrients for dogs, higher instances of campabacteria (sp or even name, she mentioned it briefly but serious stomach issues for a dog and can be passed easily to humans etc), how much money and research the dog food companies plough into kibble etc.

I did think to ask her if she would advocate me feeding the dog Bakers then but refrained, I like her and the other vet a lot and they have been great with our puppy and his myriad of issues. Or why most companies still use grain in their kibble as a filler.

A friend of our who trains Springer pups for the police to become sniffers suggested we put some of his kibble in a glass of water and see how much it swells up. Amazing.

That said, we have a big bag of expensive and grain free (!) kibble to use up. I can't bear that level of waste so he will have to live on one meal kibble the other raw until we get through this.

Idirdog - interesting explanation thanks. The book I bought from Amazon about feeding raw by Karina Macdonald states that she couldn't find a valid scientific reason for not feeding both, although she doesn't herself, but I think from memory was written a while ago to be fair and quite basic, which is what I wanted.

At least I'm doing it the right way round then! My boy also loves the pedigree sachets ( has never liked tins) so maybe I will swop to more of them and less kibble ,but he has his kibble in a treat ball outside if the weather is nice and he really enjoys that as well !

Iredog, that is interesting. As when she has vomited that's exactly how the kibble comes up.

When she has done this its always been about 4 hours after her evening feed

I used to be evangelical about raw feeding, then changed my mind. I think dogs, as omnivores, are meant to eat a huge variety of foods, although it might take a while for them to get used to it if they've been on a limited diet.
Dog was raw fed till PIL's looked after him for 3 weeks. They felt sorry for him not having breakfast so gave him Wainwright's kibble. He was fine, no digestive or poo problems, so we carried on with this and reduced his evening meal a bit.
He must still have strong stomach acids despite the kibble, eats anything he can scavenge - typical lab - with no ill effects, rotting seagulls etc, ate a whole turkey carcass he found in the woods at Christmas and was fine apart from white chalky poos.