Raw meat diet????

jonon9

Hi everybody before I ask my question Il give a brief background on the matter. Iv a 13 month JRT and for the past 5-7 months its been an itchy time we been to the vet a number of times to try diagnose the problem but to no avail, her condition was when ever she eats turned her red in the skin her eyes would run streams of water and she be very itchy but it doesn't seem to put her off shes still mad to play etc.

Now we tried nearly every type of dog food available in pet shops and vets, shes currently on Burns holistic dog food but still her condition is still at her, so just today the vet gave her another look over with another vet to find out and they thing she has dermatitis and she may always have it, so I said ok if its incurable I'm sure we can control it as it seems certain foods bring it on worst then others and the vet said have I ever thought about a Raw Meat Diet.

Sorry about the length of the post but my question is there anyone here that tried or using the raw meat diet for their dogs/cats I want to learn everything before I go down that road.

Also I be very edgy giving raw chicken wouldn't that not cause salmonella??

Really much appreciate the advice

Jon

suziwalsh

You can buy a commerical raw food that is called natures menu...I think its a super choice for anyone looking to give the raw food diet a go but is nervous about it all...

http://www.foodforpets.ie/

Lots of information on the RAW FOOD diet or BARF as it also known, believe there is a huge thread about it on boards.ie...


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056461557

The Sweeper

I feed my dog raw. I have a 30kg bull terrier/bull arab mix (aka 'a mongrel' ). He also reacted to a lot of commercial food so I moved him to raw.

Every week he eats:

Chopped steak and kidney, kangaroo and chicken and kangaroo
Chicken necks
Chicken wings
Turkey wings
Lamb shanks
Lamb's liver
Beef oxtail
Beef liver
Beef brisket bones (a fatty, meaty soft beef bone that he can eat entirely)
Marrow bones

He gets all of it raw. He also gets a share of household leftovers, though no cooked bone - he doesn't get onion or garlic (poisonous to dogs), even cooked, so by 'leftovers' I mean at breakfast he'll get the leftovers of scrambled egg on toast or bacon and eggs. From our dinner he'll get gristle, skin, fat, meat scraps, leftover pasta, any pumpkin, that sort of thing, but he won't get the remains of a bowl of french onion soup!

It's done him a world of good. There are some drawbacks - no matter how fresh the food is he seems to love taking at least some of it, stashing it until it's stinking and then tucking into it, but honestly the only time that dog had gastro, I'd had him on raw for 8 months from puppyhood after him reacting to commercial food, and at the age of about a year I went to move him back to commercial kibble. I moved him onto Royal Canin 4400, which is a high calorie food. Two weeks later he found something buried outdoors - the sort of thing he'd have normally eaten with impunity - ate it, and we ended up at the out of hours vet because he couldn't even keep water down and was dehydrating rapidly and needed an antiemetic.

I know some pro-raw folks say that commercial food unbalances the PH of a dog's stomach, and from our experience I can see where they're coming from on that. Fed raw, he seems to have an acidic stomach and gut that means he can handle raw food very happily.

My dog eats slowly and carefully, so I've never had a problem yet with feeding him chicken necks or wings - he chews and crunches his food and with larger pieces he'll tear it into more manageable bits. He looks good on it.

jonon9

Thanks a lot phew! I thought I be branded a mad man. I'm gonna give the raw meat a go and see what happens I think the transition will be easy as shes very slow eating the bag food shall we say to lets say a piece of chicken or ham(its Christmas) for some reason shes got a thing for carrots raw I hate cooked carrots as well.

One another note shes a JRT at 9.4kg how much to feed her?? some say 2% of the dogs body weight?

The Sweeper

Yeah go with the recommendations of 2-3% of her ideal weight (NOT her body weight - if she's too thin she needs to be fed up, too fat she needs to diet, so you aim for her ideal weight).

Try her with some chicken necks first. The balance of meat / bone / liver is important (offal, except liver, counts as meat) is important, but it doesn't have to be perfect in every meal - it's more of a 'balance over time'.

Ham isn't raw meat - it's a cured meat with additives and brine, so steer clear for her.

TooManyDogs

Another raw feeder here. I also feed blended up veggies to their diet. I find if I skip the veggie portion of their diet they start eating my grass! There's a religious debate whether you should be only feeding meat and bones or also adding blended up veggies.

If you're going to be feeding raw I'd start becoming very friendly with your butcher, he could be your best friend

jonon9

Thanks everyone, I'm gone boss eyed reading everything but one question i like to ask is when starting do I just give it to her straight off or slowly introduce it to her.

Chris_Heilong

yep, just give it too her, Chicken is the best to start with, Chicken thighs can be bought cheaply from Tesco and can be given with the bone, move on to other meats after chicken, such as beef, pork and lamb. As already said 2-3% ideal body weight, 2% if laid back 3% if given lots of exercise.

Cherry Blossom

Make sure to freeze everything for 2 weeks before feeding to kill off any bacteria etc. I wouldn't feed pork but if you do you need to freeze this for much longer.

TooManyDogs

adrenalinjunkie wrote: »

Make sure to freeze everything for 2 weeks before feeding to kill off any bacteria etc. I wouldn't feed pork but if you do you need to freeze this for much longer.

Freezing doesn't kill bacteria, it keeps the bacteria from breeding but that's it. Freezing pork for a minimum of 21 days significantly reduces the number of trichinosis paracites

The Sweeper

Um, I might be shot for this but I've routinely given my dog raw that hasn't been frozen first, and no problems. I don't feed raw pork at all.

I have a pet meat supplier who does freeze the steak and kidney and other meats, because he sources them straight from the abbatoir, but the rest of it - shop to fridge to dog routinely. After seeing what he digs up from the yard and scoffs sometimes I just don't worry about it any more.

TooManyDogs

Freezing will kill parasites but not bacteria so freezing fish and pork can be beneficial if its not going to be cooked otherwise feed fresh no problem! Mine is mainly frozen cos I only get meat once a week

Cherry Blossom

The Sweeper wrote: »

Um, I might be shot for this but I've routinely given my dog raw that hasn't been frozen first, and no problems. I don't feed raw pork at all.

It was my local butcher that told me this, he feeds his danes raw, so I'm not sure how accurate this is!

The Sweeper

TooManyDogs wrote: »

Another raw feeder here. I also feed blended up veggies to their diet. I find if I skip the veggie portion of their diet they start eating my grass! There's a religious debate whether you should be only feeding meat and bones or also adding blended up veggies.

If you're going to be feeding raw I'd start becoming very friendly with your butcher, he could be your best friend

Can you tell me exactly what you do with the veggies?

Gus is picky. He's a really difficult dog to feed because he's just downright weird about food. He won't touch his food until you've walked completely away. The cats eat out of his food bowl and he just watches them. If fed something he doesn't want right now, he walks away and leaves it. I have never, not once, taken up food and offered the dog something else instead, so it's not that he thinks 'I'll wait this one out and get something better'.

A fornight or so ago I had a 900g rib eye steak on the bone in the fridge for the OH. Took it out, opened the packet - smelled ripe. I gave it a wash and offered it to the dog. (I wouldn't do that with anything other than beef.) It's one of the few meals the dog took off me and ate immediately - normally he wouldn't have a bar of a fresh steak and would leave it for hours.

I haven't been able to figure out how to get the vegetables into his diet so he simply doesn't get them, but I'd happily pad out his dinner with additional bits and pieces to make him feel fuller and get him used to eating more.

(Gus is extremely lean - on good weeks he'll eat up and on bad weeks he'll ignore his food - he can swing in weight by 4kgs and if he gets sick or goes into kennels it's like the flesh melts off him. I've never met a dog like him for weird attitudes to food.)

EastTyrone

Im aware i may be stating an argument or whatever about ethics and whateer but I have a gundog for hunting. I feed him on dry food, however when ever I kill a bird or animal he routinely gets cutting of meat from it or theres times I could go out and kill a couple of rabbits for the dog. After all a dog and a cat are domesticated predators and feeding them raw meat is the diet they would be easting if they were not domesticated. I know of men too who would only feed their dogs on a fish diet as the fish is high in oils and proteins that the dog needs for energy.

TooManyDogs

The Sweeper wrote: »

Can you tell me exactly what you do with the veggies?

I have a huge soup pot that I use to make veggie gloop. I roughly chop any starchy veg (potatoes, carrots, parsnips etc) and simmer them for 15 mins and turn off heat, then I chop and add whatever else is going to go in - fruit, mushrooms, tomatoes, celery, frozen veg, cabbage, sea kelp tablets, vitamin E, eggs plus shells, and anything else I find in the kitchen! . I blend everything up as I go along with a stick blender until roughly smooth, box and freeze it and spoon it over their meat and bones. I'm lucky that mine are complete knackers and will eat pretty anything but they wouldn't raw egg shells until I blended them