I have been asked about food by many of you. Please bear with me if you’ve heard this before. Of course my desire would be for you all to continue feeding your puppy a raw diet. But I realize that not all of you can. I will cover raw feeding first and dry food second, I have been doing a lot of research and now have some recommendations in that area.
There are as many opinion about raw feeding as there are people to ask.  On the whole though they all agree that it is a good idea. My philosophy is, use common sense and listen to your dog. I feed meat and vegetables. Some people say dogs should have only meat, but I listen to my dogs and they really like getting veggies. In fact the only vegetables my guys don’t like are potatoes and tomatoes. But I’ve heard of Airedales that like even those. Their favorite veggies are carrots and corn on the cob. I feed my dogs raw meaty bones and a veggie-ground meat mash, with recreational bones and whole veggies thrown in as a treat when I have them. They get fed once a day in the evening and have a water or broth fast once a week. A puppy would not be fasted till they were over a year old.
Any books by authors Ian Billinghurst, Kymythy Schultze, Tom Lonsdale and Carina Beth MacDonald are good for learning more about feeding raw. Carina MacDonald’s Raw Dog Food is the best for newcomers. This website also has lots of good information. http://www.dearjubilee.com/diet/diet.html
I feed my guys as much of a variety as I can get my hands on. They get beef, chicken, turkey, pork, rabbit, and venison. I am planning on adding mutton to the mix if they like it. Oh and organ meat, heart, liver, kidney, stomach, lung, just about anything of that sort. They love it! Raw meaty bones can be a bit hard to get one’s mind around at first. I know I had trouble. The big question is, just what is meant by “raw meaty bone”? This site is wonderful for answering that question. http://www.rawfeddogs.net/Recipe/List A picture is definitely worth a thousand words.
There are many different places to get raw meat. The grocery store is the first place that comes to mind. It can also be pretty expensive. Watch sales and put a bunch in your freezer when you seen a good deal, just like you would if you were shopping for yourself. Don’t only shop at the meat counter, see if you can talk to the deli manager, some stores cut their own meat. Our local store does, I talked to the manager and they are giving me all the beef scrap I want for free. They would just throw it out otherwise. It is not bad in the least, it is the trimmings from human grade meat. Another option is to find a butcher or a farmer who raises his own meat critters. Ask what they do with their undesirables, tell them you’ll take it off their hands. If you word things just right you can really good deals. If you know someone who hunts tell them you’ll take all the parts they don’t want. I doubt you could get anyone to let go of antlers, but if you could dogs just adore chewing on antlers! They don’t go bad or look nasty either!
Co-ops are another good place to look. Here is one for those of us in the New England area,
pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/NERFS/
If you live outside of New England this yahoo group will help you find the co-op nearest you,
pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/rawfeeding/
This group is great have in your back pocket, there is vast experience on this list, both with raw and dry food. I would urge you to join no matter what you plan on feeding
pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ADTnutrition/
There are also companies that sell raw food, some sell plain ol’ raw meaty bones, bulk or singly and some sell premade mixes. Oma’s Pride sells both and they have the best prices.
www.omaspride.com/products.htm#bbvl
Bravo! is a company that only sells ground meat or mixes. I like my meat to be a close to the critter as possible but some people might be more comfortable with a more packaged product. Bravo! would be a good way to go or Oma’s mixes.
www.bravorawdiet.com/index.html
There are a few other companies, The Honest Kitchen & Nature’s Variety being two of them, though I nearly choked when I saw their prices!
www.naturesvariety.com/ & www.thehonestkitchen.com/index.shtml
I was doing some research the other night and found that feeding raw can cost less than high quality dry food even for the average family. Like learning to drive a car there is a learning curve but once you know how and figure out your resources it becomes just as easy.
Regardless of what you choose to feed you will need to have some raw food on hand for your pup. I do not feed any dry food so you will need to make the switch if you are going to. I would have enough on hand to take at least a week changing over. These pups have been eating beef, chicken thighs & legs, chicken, turkey & rabbit organs and venison. I will be able to send you home with a little bit of frozen meat if you need. The Bravo site has a handy little calculator for gauging how much raw food to feed at different ages. www.bravorawdiet.com/howmuch.html I would use it for a starting place then watch your dog and go from there. Right now I am feeding the puppies as much as they want twice a day. I keep trying to feed them three times a day but they are not hungry for it.

We will be right back after these messages! (The message being, I’m heading off to bed! Have a good night folks!)

Tags: food, meat, raw

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 6:50 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.