Raw Food - Advice Please!!

Hi, as many of you know, i am the proud owner of a 9 week old newfie.

At the moment i am feeding her 4 meals a day. 3 meals are a mix of royal canin giant babydog puppy food and tripe mix and the 4th meal is readybrek, made with goats milk and an egg popped in.

I have seen things mentioned on here about raw feeding but i am a complete novice so please put up with me. Can i add to royal canin food some raw liver,hearts, kidneys or a mixture of all or is it not that simple and i need to do a complete raw feeding diet. I was thinking just maybe one or two meals a week.

Or would it be best just to cook it and mix. I am trying to find some other idea's to keep her food interesting.

thanks any advice welcome

Hi,

I feed all three of mine on a completely raw diet, I think the general opinion of those who write the books is that it is best to feed all raw or all not. One of the problems you may find with mixing a good quality kibble along with raw meat especially with a very young pup is that they may end up with too much of certain protiens etc which is just as bad as not enough. Although I am a big fan of whole foods it is something that you really have to research well and decide whats best for you and your little one.

Hope this is of help to you, wishing you luck in your quest

p.s it is a fallacy that dogs get bored with food, they have half the tast buds we do and have three main responses to food, Tastes good, Tastes bad, and indifferent. Obviously if something tastes good they will eat it, but they will never go "oh no not beef again"

Hi,

I have a 10 month old Jack Russell Terrier, she has always been a picky eater, but we seemd to have it sorted with Royal Canin puppy for small dogs. However, she will only eat this if i mix a bit of raw food, so i tend to put about a quarter raw food in. I use the frozen meat you get from pet shops i think they are by natures menu. She has been on this for a month or so and is looking really good. I also consulted my vet before feeding this diet and she said it was fine so long as you don't overfeed as the Royal Canin is a complete food. So if you just adjust the amount of complete food when adding the raw food this should be fine.
Hope this is some help to you.

Mixing raw meat with kibble in the same meal together is not a good idea they are digested differently, carbohydrate will ferment wile waiting around to be digested, if you want to feed raw meat and kibble you should feed one meal kibble and another raw meat, but there is no point really, one or the other, raw meat should be fed to a dog with raw bones for a balance.

And raw egg, I only feed my dog the yolk because whites bind to the biotin that a dog ingests and prevents it from being absorbed. Cooked eggs do not do this.

My two get the whole egg "including shell"... couple times a week.

It is generally advised not to feed kibble and Raw in the same meal as they digest at different rates.

However, you could feed in separate meals if you wish.

I feed my both my dogs (one is a Newfie) on raw diet but occasionally they get a meal of Naturediet (wet complete food) if we're away from home.

If you do wish to embark on raw feeding, please do your research carefully as nutritional balance is so important for a growing giant breed pup.

The book 'Natural Nutrition for Cats and Dogs' by Kymythy Schulz is a good starting point (and the authour is a Newfie owner too )

Going off at an angle here - appologies to those who haven't eaten yet. Fingal suffers/ed from blocked anal glands and (as a favour) the vet 'squeezed' them clear whenever I visited.

Ian mentioned raw egg (with shell) we now often put used egg shells in his dinner as the hard/roughness when 'passing' is supposed to prevent the build up.

Phil

Here are some links with information on raw egg white and the bad effect it has on dogs.

http://fermat.nap.edu/books/0309034965/html/35.html

http://mooreshaven.com/pets/dogs/saf...foodslist.html

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:8...ient=firefox-a

http://www.ssdts.org/information.htm


I don't think there is any question about it, raw egg white is not to be fed to dogs but its ok if its cooked

I feed my dog whole eggs - both yolk and white. If you go to the BritBarf site and search it's archives you can find many discussions about feeding whole eggs.

It is fine to feed whole raw eggs IMHO>