BARF or raw feeding needn't be expensive. If you buy supermarket meat it will be. There are suppliers that will deliver chicken carcasses, lamb bones, mince etc. (such as Landywood and TPMS) - alternatively find a nice friendly butcher that fillets his own meat, they have to pay to have the bones and scraps taken away and are only too pleased for you to have them.

As has already been said, variety is the best policy and it should balance out over the course of a week.

You can feed raw chicken wings, chicken carcasses, chicken and turkey necks, lamb necks, lamb ribs, rabbit and beef knuckle bones - as well as minced chicken, lamb, beef, fish and tripe. Also feed cooked veg, rice and pasta - I include 1/3 mug of Autarky complete dog food.

A pea sized blob of garlic puree daily will help keep fleas and worms at bay (but is not a substitute for regular worming). You can also add a little SA37 which is a mineral and vitamin supplement and I also give dried seaweed once or twice a week. The oil from tinned fish or the fat from the sunday roast is also good.

For training treats I cook some pigs liver mixed with garlic puree in the mirowave. They also have a little cheese, raw apple or raw carrot as a treat.

Thanks to Mys, Sansorella and Christine and their advice I started feeding my 3 month old pups raw, they are now 6 months old and I can honestly say they have never looked back. There were always runny poos in the past and I also found out that dried stays in the gut 14 hours as opposed to 4hours with raw. So over a period of 2 weeks (whilst my dried ran out) I changed them to raw. They have a raw egg (with shell) twice a week, chicken, pet mince from the butchers, chicken carcass, ox heart, pureed veg - in fact everything that everybody else feeds. The end product is no longer smelly and runny and is therefore easy to dispose of, plus as they use virtually everything you feed them there isn't a lot of it anyway. I do give mine supplements,
as well as garlic, they have evening primrose oil (1000mg)
omega 3 (500mg) and vitamin B complex - which their breeder has just recommended I put them on for their nervous system, although I have been heard to comment that maybe My nervous system needs it!!!!! They are now nearly 7 months old and doing well.

Thanks everyone, as I think I have said before I dont have alot of room for storing fresh food until I move at the end of the month, I have been feeding Loki burns puppy with some tripe, its prepacked tripe which I buy from my local pet store, I have just started buying the different types of minced meat, they all say they are just meat minced and packed and gm and aditive free, I have brought fish, rabit, lamb and turkey to try to get loki used to eating different meats (I have always found I have to introduce him to new foods very gradually as he gets an upset tummy easily) which I am feeding with the burns but more meat and less burns than before and was going to give a few meals of proper meat i.e. chicken wings a couple of nights as well so when I move and can feed him raw properly it wont be so much of a jump. Is this ok?

Hi H, tell me what`s his age & what does he weigh more or less?

and how many meals is he fed now??

I put mine on it gradually over a period of weeks whilst I ran my dried food down, but I do know if others who swopped over straight away with no ill effects. As it is a natural diet I would imagine this is because the relative digestive enzymes are already present and so it doesn't need to be introduced gradually.

He is just over 5 months weighed 12.5 last time he was weighed at the vets a couple of weeks ago and has two proper meals a day, he stopped eating dinner so I just give his interactive toys through out the day, i.e a stuffed kong or his treat ball etc

Hi Hannah
I switched to feeding raw about 3 months ago and our 9 month old GR loves it. He was kibble fed previously and I too worried about getting it right as he is still a growing lad but the worry of getting it wrong does lessen as you grow more confident with raw. As someone else said previously feeding kibble can be a worry too .

We don't have a lot of room for storing his food either and most of his food is from the supermarket - he gets about 900g a day but I am still playing with amounts - and costs about £5-£6 pw to feed which is still cheaper than the kibble he was on previously.

Hopefully I will soon grow in confidence to not weigh everything he eats!

Good luck with the feeding.

Lizzie