How much Liver and Raw or Cooked?

I've bought Storm some Lamb's Liver and was wondering whether to give it to him raw or cooked and also, how much to give him? I've heard that raw can cause the runs, is this true?

Basically tonight, I want to give him some raw food and apart from the Liver, he's also had a tiny bit of raw beef mince today and a raw beef bone. I've also got some pilchards for him to finish, would it be ok to just give him some Liver and Pilchards tonight for his dinner? He had his kibbles this morning, with some Naturediet?

Sorry for all the questions! I'm just a bit confused as to how I can feed him, without just giving him the kibbles and Naturediet twice today and I really want to give him some raw, but all we have is pilchards and liver today on the menu. Tomorrow I can get some other kinds of meat.

I would be wary of giving any significant amount of liver when you're feeding a complete diet - these diets will be supplemented with vitamins, such as vitamin A, and liver is very high in that. It's actually possible to overdose in vitamins and sometimes it can have some nasty side effects, so personally I wouldn't risk it. Cooked liver treats would contain lower amounts because of the processing, but I'd be careful with raw liver. If you're introducing a raw diet, you need to be careful that you don't unbalance the diet too much - a little raw here and there won't be any more harmful than a few treats a day, but if you're feeding him half on a balanced diet like kibble, and half on an incomplete/unbalanced raw diet, over time it may have some negative effects.
Personally I would see how his tummy reacts to plain raw meat before introducing liver. Offal is quite rich and dogs can sometimes react with a bit of an iffy tummy - not because it's raw but just because it's different. Too much liver can cause the runs too so when you do introduce it, only introduce a little bit. If you're following something like the prey model diet, where you give 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% offal, you should aim for half of your offal to be liver and half other sources ideally (I get mixed pig offal from my meat supplier but sometimes pick up kidneys from the supermarket - heart doesn't count as offal in raw feeding as it's really one big muscle).
So for example, a 30kg/66lb dog (not sure how big your boy is), you'd feed 2-3% of his weight which would be 0.6-0.9kg/1.3-2lbs a day (meat, offal, and bone)
5% of that would be liver, so it's only a maximum of around 0.3kg/0.7lb a week. You can either give small amounts daily or larger amounts 2 or 3 days a week, I do the latter and give it with bone (to counteract the fact it loosens the stools).
Some dogs won't like the texture of raw liver, Casper just scoffs it down but Kiki got fussy after a few months and it needs to be either chopped into little bits and mixed with her mince, or lightly cooked (flash fried or part-cooked in the microwave) before she'll eat it. The cooking will lose some nutrients but it's better than the dog not eating it at all! Other options would be to blend it and make meat & offal patties, or to put it into treats or something like that.

I would personally suggest that you do a little more research before you delve into raw, because it is so important to know what balance to give. A complete diet like Naturediet or kibble has had all that work done for you, but with raw, your dog's health is in your hands, so please do loads of research. I would then suggest starting with one plain source of meat such as chicken (or you could do beef, if he's OK with the mince he's had today, but it is quite a fatty meat and some dogs can have adverse effects), you could start with a few scraps of just plain raw chicken/beef, then move onto a chicken leg/small beef rib every so often, so the dog gets the hang of eating bones. Once you know he's OK on that, you can start feeding the right proportions (80:10:10 or whatever method of raw you decide on) and introduce offal. Once you know his tum's OK on that, you can introduce a new protein source, one at a time, e.g. fish, lamb, tripe, etc. - that way if he's a bit sensitive to one time, you'll know which one it is (my two get a bit windy if they have too much lamb) and can exclude it from his diet.

Agree with the above post completely, I raw feed and wouldn't suggest anything like liver as an introduction to raw, in fact I don't recommend it raw at all, I cook it for mine. It's very high in vit A, and can make them loose, even when they're used to raw. The best food imo to try as a newbie to raw, is chicken carcasses or turkey necks, chicken and turkey are by far the best 'all round' meat/bones, they have a good nutritional range. I feed mainly tripe and chicken, and give them lamb bones and offal as an occasional meal and/or extras.

Thanks for the replies.

I have put the liver into the freezer for now.

The raw diet sounds quite complicated. I think I would prefer to just give small amounts of raw food i.e. a little mince, pork chop, chicken leg etc. on a regular, maybe weekly basis and give the Naturediet and kibble as the main part of Storm's diet. I do know that too much of certain vitamins can be harmful and I would rather have it done for me (without wanting to sound lazy!), but just give small bits of raw meat on a weekly basis, so he still gets some benefits of a raw diet.

Does this sound ok??

Unfortunately doing it that way could unbalance the diet. A bit like if you were eating a complete diet, say you were on one of those shakes/soup diets, and then you kept eating a steak here, a portion of chips there. Not only would you probably put on weight, but it would mess up the amount of proteins, carbs, fats, etc. in your diet and would defeat the point of the nicely balanced shakes/soups in the first place. Supplementing a complete wet food/kibble could lead to the dog getting too much or not enough of different parts of the diet - say you cut down and gave 1/3 less of the complete food on the days you gave bits of raw, to avoid your dog putting on weight, if that raw isn't unbalanced then that's 1/3 of your dog's nutritional requirements that might not be met.
Raw does require research but once you've got the hang of it it's not that hard. I would either go the whole hog and read/learn as much about it as you can, or just give the odd raw treat, and I mean small portions once a week, if that frequent, so you don't mess up the balance of your dog's diet.
If you want an easier way to cut some of the additives, fillers, etc out of their diets you could scrap commercial bought treats for homemade ones. E.g. use that liver you bought, mix with some oats, make a healthy stock by boiling a chicken carcass or some other kind of bones from your local butcher (bin the bones though, cooked bones are too risky to feed), mix it up to a doughy consistancy, spread across a pyrex dish and bake at a low temperature until it starts to go solid. Remove, let cool and chop into bitesize pieces, freeze the excess in batches, and voila, nice healthy liver flapjack that most dogs will do backflips for!

To be honest, although I'm not a fan of half and half diets, I do know a few people who feed it, and their dogs seem absolutely fine on it.

As long as you are giving your dog a good range of nutrition, whereby it can derive it's nutritional needs, it shouldn't be a problem. The people I know that feed half and half type diets, have working dogs, so it's usually something like Skinners they use as the complete, with chicken carcasses and green tripe the other main staples of the diet, with similar additions that I put into mine, offal, eggs, appropriate left overs etc.

I did this thread a few weeks ago now, it's one I've posted a few times on different forums. Raw feeding isn't all that much more complicated, it does take a bit more forethought, but it's mainly remembering to lift things out of the freezer in time to defrost.....

http://www.dogsey.com/showthread.php?t=130721