Do you use raw food - or have you found it too much hassle?

[loveyouradvice]

Hmm... I've realised that his Lily's kitchen is NOT giving him the best diet and have been reading up on Allaboutdogfood. (Great website!)

Although I love the idea of having all the benefits of raw food, I am a bit concerned it might be quite a hassle

What's your experience?
How have you made your life easier doing it?
What's your least favourite thing about it?

And what do you do when travelling ... my wee fella is a brilliant traveller but would love to take easy food with us - can he switch to freeze dried or something else for a few days?

Feeding threads always get heated.

A few things I have considered when choosing food for my dogs.

Many tinned and kible food has been recalled for safety issues. A tinned food in America contained a drug that was used for euthansia unusual but it is hard to be able to trace all ingredients. Load of recalls for ecoli and salmonella in commercial dog food. Only last week chappie was recalled.

So my thought process then went to food where I could source the ingredients and know in detail what was in the food.

That tended to take you to raw food but nowadays this information is more available from some food manufacuturers.

Loads of studies arguing for and against raw and for or against manufactured food. You can find a study to suit your argument .

What is important to me is that lean dogs live longer and a recent study on Golden Retrievers has shown that 90% of cancers are environmental or lifestyle based.

Taking this further many studies show that lean, well exercised and dogs on unprocessed diets live longer. The longest observational study to date on nearly 7000 animals by Norwegian researchers concurred that placing dogs on nontraditional, fresh food diets nearly doubled the life span in dogs.

The study by KetoPets undertaken by epigenetic scientists fascinated me . In this study a group of vets bought in stage 4 cancer patients from rescue centres. According to Rodney Habib’s TEDx talk these vets were able to slow down, halt and in many cases reverse the cancer. All this simply by adding unprocessed, fresh food into the dogs diet. This to me was mind blowing.

Building on this the Purdue University did a study and oneshowed some remarkable evidence. They wanted to see how this fresh diet might prevent cancer and help dogs live longer. They took a control group and an experimental group. They added fresh greens to the conventional diet of the experimental group three times a week. They found that there was a 90% decrease in the risk of cancer.

So conclusions drawn were if you feed a kibble diet and take out one third of the kibble three days a week and add in "real food" your dogs health will benefit.

Reference if you want to have a read (initially onScottish Terriers but read in and you will find the info on variety of dogs)

Raghavan M., Knapp D.W., Bonney P.W., Dawson M. H., Glickman L. T. (2005). Evaluation of the effect of dietary vegetable consumption on reducing risk of transformational cell carcinoma . Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, Purdue University, West Lafayette

And you felt the need to say that...why? What's the point in jumping in to throw personal insults at me? Does it make you feel better to randomly insult a stranger for no reason?

I suspect @Clymene was hoping that you might review/reflect on your posting behaviour.

I suspect from your response that you won't

@PollyRoulson

Feeding threads always get heated.

A few things I have considered when choosing food for my dogs.

Many tinned and kible food has been recalled for safety issues. A tinned food in America contained a drug that was used for euthansia unusual but it is hard to be able to trace all ingredients. Load of recalls for ecoli and salmonella in commercial dog food. Only last week chappie was recalled.

So my thought process then went to food where I could source the ingredients and know in detail what was in the food.

That tended to take you to raw food but nowadays this information is more available from some food manufacuturers.

Loads of studies arguing for and against raw and for or against manufactured food. You can find a study to suit your argument .

What is important to me is that lean dogs live longer and a recent study on Golden Retrievers has shown that 90% of cancers are environmental or lifestyle based.

Taking this further many studies show that lean, well exercised and dogs on unprocessed diets live longer. The longest observational study to date on nearly 7000 animals by Norwegian researchers concurred that placing dogs on nontraditional, fresh food diets nearly doubled the life span in dogs.

The study by KetoPets undertaken by epigenetic scientists fascinated me . In this study a group of vets bought in stage 4 cancer patients from rescue centres. According to Rodney Habib’s TEDx talk these vets were able to slow down, halt and in many cases reverse the cancer. All this simply by adding unprocessed, fresh food into the dogs diet. This to me was mind blowing.

Building on this the Purdue University did a study and oneshowed some remarkable evidence. They wanted to see how this fresh diet might prevent cancer and help dogs live longer. They took a control group and an experimental group. They added fresh greens to the conventional diet of the experimental group three times a week. They found that there was a 90% decrease in the risk of cancer.

So conclusions drawn were if you feed a kibble diet and take out one third of the kibble three days a week and add in "real food" your dogs health will benefit.

Reference if you want to have a read (initially onScottish Terriers but read in and you will find the info on variety of dogs)

Raghavan M., Knapp D.W., Bonney P.W., Dawson M. H., Glickman L. T. (2005). Evaluation of the effect of dietary vegetable consumption on reducing risk of transformational cell carcinoma . Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, Purdue University, West Lafayette

I'm busy at the moment but there are a lot of big claims based on very little actual science in that post.

As before - be careful of what you read in the internet

Yes I was just pointing out that you might want to read your posts again if you genuinely think that was polite engagement @raspberrysundaes. I know sometimes I cam be a bit of a dick on here on topics I feel passionately about

@veterinari * I'm busy at the moment but there are a lot of big claims based on very little actual science in that post. As before - be careful of what you read in the internet

If only it were read on the internet - 9 months of research for a uni module. Mainly food and behaviour mind you but I can give you over 100's of links if you don't have a life

Well said Polly.
It astounds me how a vet can be so unaware of the advantages of raw feeding that they would so strongly
seek to dissuade pet owners from raw feeding their pets.

@loveyouradvice. Before you start with the completes you need to transition starting with tripe then adding chicken in and each protein a few days at a time. There's loads of advise on it on the net and raw feeding groups on face book will help. Don't feed kibble and raw at the same time this is dangerous as they digest them completely differently abs the stomach changes to digest what they are eating so mixing can cause problems.

Just to give a balance view from vets the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society answers some of the points that have been mentioned on this thread with regard to contamination to humans

Poisition statement 2020

Also a website with interesting articles by vets in favour of raw feeding.

"Feeding threads always get heated."

You don't say!😂

"Don't feed kibble and raw at the same time this is dangerous as they digest them completely differently abs the stomach changes to digest what they are eating so mixing can cause problems."

Are you a vet?

@Veterinari

* *@Veterinari so are you telling me that if I walked into your vets practice tomorrow I wouldn't find a display of specific brands of dog food? Because if there is such a display you cannot pretend your practice isn't promoting those specific foods!!!

Well firstly I don't own a practice so I have very little control over what is stocked

The practices I work for sell prescription diets - you're right vets do promote those food because they're supported by evidence showing clinical benefits

Interesting isn't it that vets get grief for selling evidence based products that work. Would you prefer we stick to opinion and quackery?

This is like Groundhog Day

Evidence that is obtained from biased research done by the dog food companies!!! 🙄

@MiddlesexGirl

Well said Polly. It astounds me how a vet can be so unaware of the advantages of raw feeding that they would so strongly seek to dissuade pet owners from raw feeding their pets.

It's amazing how someone can make sweeping assumptions based on no evidence...

[quote PollyRoulson]**@veterinari* I'm busy at the moment but there are a lot of big claims based on very little actual science in that post. As before - be careful of what you read in the internet

If only it were read on the internet - 9 months of research for a uni module. Mainly food and behaviour mind you but I can give you over 100's of links if you don't have a life [/quote]
Please do - it saves me the job of searching if you have the evidence to hand - thanks

@PollyRoulson

Just to give a balance view from vets the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society answers some of the points that have been mentioned on this thread with regard to contamination to humans

Poisition statement 2020

Also a website with interesting articles by vets in favour of raw feeding.

Overall pretty sensible though I particularly like this point:

If the same concern for public health and the recommendation for banning raw food were applied to the zoo world, this would be a wholly impractical position. Several thousand keepers (including pregnant women) are feeding an RMBD every day to their captive carnivores (big and small cats, hyenas, bears, birds and reptiles) including raw meat and carcasses. If the feeding of RMBD were as dangerous as implied in some veterinary circles, we would have to close all of our zoos.

I'm not aware of any large carnivore keepers that live with their animals/let them lick them on a regular basis...

You have to admit the justification for refuting pathogenic spread in that statement is tenuous - it's basically yes we acknowledge that research shows it's a problem and that severe illness/deaths have been linked to raw feeding, but we don't think it's a problem cos dogs also drink out of puddles....

Don't feed kibble and raw at the same time this is dangerous as they digest them completely differently abs the stomach changes to digest what they are eating so mixing can cause problems

Are you a vet?
Most vets will immediately tell you not to feed raw so you aren’t going to get good advice there...

A lot of raw feeding people believe that carb heavy foods take longer to digest and that if you feed raw meat to a dog accustomed to eating carb heavy food the raw meat is digested much slower and that puts the dog at risk of getting sick from things like E. coli.

Why would you take the risk..?
If you can’t get advice from a vet because they don’t agree with raw full stop why wouldn’t you play it safe and either feed kibble or raw instead of mixing both together?

"Most vets will immediately tell you not to feed raw so you aren’t going to get good advice there..."

Yes, have already said that I am aware of this after Veterani has offered advice.....

THANK YOU to all of you who have posted about feeding your Dogs raw ... I'm making the transition and have learnt a lot from all of your posts.

Still stuff to learn but I've made a start and am going to look at the BARF facebook page for more info next.....

Huge thanks to all those who've taken the time to post research on raw and other eating ... very very interesting and much appreciated

"Why would you take the risk..?
If you can’t get advice from a vet because they don’t agree with raw full stop why wouldn’t you play it safe and either feed kibble or raw instead of mixing both together?"

It was the diet she was weaned on... This has been covered already by one of my previous posts....as I have already said we don't want to continue on this long term (have actually started a thread about wet food for giant breeds to get any extra advice)

I get that, I was just offering an explanation as to why you’ve been told not to mix them.

No need to offer an explanation, as I don't intend to continue raw feeding after Veterinari explained about the saliva issue since I have a Saint that's a significant point to take on board with DC at home. Thanks anyway 👍

We feed raw. My dog has allergies which is why we swapped. It took a while and my dog wasn't fussed on it. He still won't eat proper bones and meat chunks. We started on mvm completes. He wouldn't eat anything chunkier and was fussy with flavours. But through mixing- he'll now eat others. I feed palao ridge and the dogs butcher as well now. We make our own veg bits to add in when required. He drinks loads less on raw. And his poo is amazing. 🤣 Kibble poo makes me gag.

@ Veterani Please do - it saves me the job of searching if you have the evidence to hand - thanks

You did ask!

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Polly wow and thank you - I really appreciated your feedback earlier!

I feel like a lot of people are purposefully not understanding what Veterani is saying here. I have never once been to the vet and have them recommend the food that they sell for our healthy dogs, they never push their food on us. It is clear why when they have limited space and resources they would stock brands of food that cater to pets with specific needs.

We feed our dogs something like butter box that Veterani mentioned, they love it apart from the veg dodger who actively pushes the peas to the side.

I have never once been to the vet and have them recommend the food that they sell for our healthy dogs, they never push their food on us
Well I most certainly have!
I know quite a few people who have been recommended Hills science diet or Royal Canin for their perfectly healthy dogs and cats aswell.