Feeding Your Dog a Raw Food Diet - Cheaper

Mrs_Poodle

Sorry, I should have put this post in Stickys thread on feeding pets. I've got my L plates on!

I have four large dogs and try to feed them a raw food diet as I believe that done properly it is much healthier than feeding them cooked pet food. I had been using Pets at Home where a 2 kilo bag of frozen tripe was in excess of £3.30. I have started useing Landywoods - they deliver once a month and have a wide selection of meat/tripe/bones and very reasonable prices. For example, frozen tripe is about 30 pence per pound - much cheaper than Pets at Home, so I can feed four big dogs for under £1.50 per day. There is a minimum order (£40) which is a lot of meat, so you will need a fair bit of freezer room for it. Although I do need to allow for the freezer costs, I live miles from the shops and so save on petrol. They deliver to many parts of the country, but not all. Another similar supplier is TPMS.
www.landywoods.co.uk
www.tpms.co.uk

Milford_Cubicle

If you live in the North, there's a company called DAF petfoods based in Durham who are similar to Landywoods: http://www.daf-petfood.co.uk/wb/
I'll be using them next year when I swap to BARF.

LADY_A_5

Rem with raw diet that you may need supplements.
i know with my new bengal kitten im getting that raw needs to be supplemented as raw has no taurine in it and that is an essential.
dont know about dogs tho?

scheming_gypsy

i've been feeding mine BARF since earlier this year and i won't go back to tinned or dry.

Rather than ordering online you can approach local butchers or abbatoirs as they need to pay for disposal. I have 2 sources where i get it from.
One is 3 miles away and will save me a bin bag or 2 a week which, depending on what bones, will last around a week. I have a friend who has about 10 crates delivered every week, as she breeds Northern Inuits, and i can take as much as i need. I have a second hand chest freezer that i try and keep full so my weekly feeding cost is probably less than £1 as its just petrol and electricity costs.

Rio is currently in a cage (use the cage to seperate at feeding time) chomping on a bone. As well as the bones i suppliment them with fresh veg and veg peelings. For Christmas tea they'll be having a fresh turkey leg and raw veg!

I can also get minced chicken (bones and waste) for 10p a lb but there's a minimum order.

It's a very cheap and healthy way to feed, even cleaning up after them is easier as there's no runny poop. They take all the nutriants from the food and there's very little 'waste'.

You can also feed them shot wild rabbits (just remove the shot first) whole, fur n all.. just throw them to them and off they go.

Just remember its raw food only, no cooked bones as they shatter and can splinter, and don't feed anything too small.. such as chicken wings to a big dog that will gulp them down as they can choke on them.


If you shop around locally at butchers, even ask on Freecycle for info on where to get BARF, you can feed your dogs a very healthy and natural diet for almost free.

karenn_3

I love the BARF diet - and so do my dogs.

I found Landywoods to be very unreliable with their deliveries, and if they are out of an item I often ended up with 75% of the order in tripe - and sometimes their tripe can be shall we say - rather ripe

Innocenti

I would never feed my dogs anything other than the BARF diet. My english bull terriers have the most sensitive stomachs in the world and they can only eat the BARF diet without it going through them and having the most awful poo's!! And it is so cheap too. I mix their meet with frozen veg and let it all defrost together then throw in some biscuits to keep their teeth clean.

Milford_Cubicle

I have looked around here for a butcher willing to supply me the relevant bones, but I've only been able to find one which gives away ribs and that's it.

I'm going to have to use a supplier because of that.

scheming_gypsy

what kind of ribs?
with my 2 the lamb ribs are the ones that get demolished. Any other bones, they strip the meat off them and then chew the bones but don't completely eat them all.

Milford_Cubicle

All ribs. Lamb, pork, beef. I've not given her pork or beef because of her age, but lamb ribs she's demolished in minutes. I fed her a huge one on its own for lunch today and 15 minutes it took her to completely eat it. She absolutely adores them and the chicken wings I feed her too, I'm going to have no issue swapping her to BARF when I get a chest freezer

I think it might depend on the breed of your dog. Smaller breeds might struggle with bones, whereas bigger ones are better equipped? I may be wrong!

scheming_gypsy

all dogs can be fine on it as they all pretty much come from the same place (wolf family). It just depends what you feed them, no point feeding a great dane on chicken wings or a yorkshire terrier on a cows thigh.
they all have the same teeth just different sizes so its a matter of feeding the right sized food really.

Kimberley

I feed my Oscar a raw diet with Instincts TC from this company that makes the raw food diet complete for cats and dogs.
http://www.felinefuture.com/