The RAW meat and BARF dog food thread

skypie123_2

I am very very new to this with my pooch after the advice of some lovely people on here.
I started my Scraggy with this due to awful diet allergies (scratchy, rash, foot biting, ear probs)
He has only been on it a week but his fussy feeding is surprisingly extended to feeding raw meat. He doesn;t seem to like pork much (he leaves that), or chicken (he just hid that) or liver (sniffed and walked off) so today we are trying beef.
I really thought he would be wolfing the meat down.
Anyway I thought it might be an idea to have a thread where people can learn about it (ie me! ) and swap ideas or advice.
Anyone else here doing this?

cinderellacomplex

I am gradually shifting my dog to more raw and the advice that I have been given is start with one meat - I used chicken - and gradually introduce others once the dog is happy. Echo wouldn't touch the chicken at first but it was because she wasn't sure whether or not it was okay to eat, she really wanted to try lol. It took her a while to brave it, and a few more days to eat it without hesitation when it was put down. By the end of the week she was happily munching it the moment her bowl hit the floor :P

skypie123_2

Did you just feed chicken (and nothing else) so that it was the chicken or nothing?

ali-t

mine both love it but I currently use it to supplement feeding kibble. My staffy gets very constipated with raw, regardless of the meat/bone ratio and my rott is generally fine on it. It is true that their poos are firmer but they also poo a lot more frequently when eating raw. I can go through 8 poo bags on a walk if they have both been raw fed the previous night.

I bought the Ian billinghurst book when I was looking into moving over entirely to raw and although it is good, it is also expensive.

I think a good butcher is your best friend when feeding raw as I get boxes of chicken carcasses and bags of lamb necks and ribs from my butcher very cheaply. I tend to find that sometimes the supermarkets are cheaper than the butcher when buying things like chicken wings, legs, thighs etc. my butcher also provides tubes of minced offal which I feed every so often. The thought of handling kidneys, hearts and livers makes me a bit sqeamish so ready minced tubes of it are a dogsend!

cinderellacomplex

Well I'm still feeding dry as well but on the days that I included raw it was chicken in the morning (no dry) and dry in the evening or something similar. I didn't want to switch her too much because I'm in the states right now and my sister is looking after her for me - asking her to feed raw might have been a bit much! When I get back I'm going to get a little more serious about it.

It did take her quite a while to get used to eating the chicken. On the first day I put it in her crate to persuade her because that's her 'safe place' and then she seemed to realize that it was okay to go for it.

HannahIOW

I heard that pork is poisonous to dogs and that's why dog food is never pork flavoured? Can only ever find chicken, lamb or beef.

ali-t

HannahIOW wrote: »

I heard that pork is poisonous to dogs and that's why dog food is never pork flavoured? Can only ever find chicken, lamb or beef.

Burns sell a pork based food. One of my dogs gets the runs with pork in the form of chops and bones but both of them love pork sausages, bacon, ham etc.

lisawood78

My dogs (giant!) eat a mixture of raw chicken on the bone and raw mince. We did used to add veg but it goes right through them.
Nice hard poohs, one each per day whereas before it was lots a day and very sloppy (euccch!)
Great thread.

jimbugalee

Our 12 week old puppy is fed on a BARF diet (has been from weaning stage) and he's getting on fine.

We feed 1 x chicken wing and the same amount of beef/tripe with sometimes a little bit of liver. He also has a tablespoon of veg once a day. This has to be liquidised otherwise doggies can't digest and won't take the nutrients from it. He also has a raw egg occassionally and some fish.

I wanted to buy the Ian Billinghurt book but as someone mentioned it's soooooooooooooo expensive.

Our next challenge is to carry on with the BARF but try and cut the costs. If we buy the 'Prize Choice' frozen food it's about £4.50 per 2kg bag which lasts about a week. So a bag of chicken and a bag of beef means we're spending £10 a week on food. I think we might be able to get chicken wings cheaper from somewhere like Costco. Not sure about the choice of beef/tripe there though!

I am also going to bulk buy the veg, liquidize and then put into portions and freeze. This saves me sorting it out every day plus he gets a full range of the veg he needs.

Good thread!

Don't have any problems with poos. He usually goes 3 times per day (he has 3 meals per day) and these are solid and even solider if left in the sun to bake! We are hoping the bones will clean his teeth and we won't have a 'doggy breath'. I think there are so many other benefits too. I wouldn't change to other dog food now.

skypie123_2

I was going to ask about eggs. Scraggy loves the odd raw egg I've given him but how many is it safe to give per day/week?

jimbugalee

I would say about 1 per week/2 weeks if they were adult dogs. Give them the shell also.

oooh forgot to mention a really cheap raw meat supplier 'Landywoods'. They only deliver once a month and think you have to buy in bulk but it's super cheap. We just need a bigger freezer!