Just out of interest, if your just concerned with traceable meat....why has this led you to raw....rather than just cooking your own dog food?

Hi TW Well said crystalgirl

Well, I'm also interested in raw food for myself. My brother only ate raw for about 6 months and said it gave him so much more energy. As most of the enzymes you need to help digest food are killed off by cooking, raw sounds like a healthy way to live and helps you have a healthy digestive system. There's bowel cancer around in my family so I'm a bit sensitive to that I guess.
I doubt I'll ever be strictly raw, maybe not with the dog either, but I'd like to try it and see how it feels.

I totally agree with everything you say, particularly your last paragraph!!

Me too! I eat as much raw food as I can - every day I eat enough salad - leaves, coleslaw, cucumber, tomato, celery, everything raw. Nuts, berries, as much as I can of uncooked food. The only thing I can't manage is raw meat, I really don't fancy that, or raw fish, but raw feeding is the very healthiest way for us as well as our dogs, as unlike our dogs we don't need nearly as much meat and can live quite healthily with very little.

A very good friend of mine says that the one thing missing from the BARF diet is fur and feather - we should feed our dogs "whole" - not gutting, skinning or plucking - so as much as possible I encourage my boys to catch rabbits, squirrels, whatever they can catch, when out on walks and eat them whole, which they do with alacrity! The same with us - apparently, from our western diet we are missing eating insects - things like locusts, ants, are very important for us because of the keratin in the carapace's of insects like locusts, beetles etc. I don't think I could bring myself to eat such things, but I do eat a vast array of raw vegetables, salads, nuts, berries and seeds.

I can't believe what I'm reading here!

over here our wildlife is also under protection of the animal welfare act!

you wouldn't dare here to let your dog hunt for wildlife! it's called poaching!!!
if you would get chaught by let do them so, you really would get in trouble with the law!

in some of those cases, they even put the dog to sleep, when it didn't stop to poach

I love the wildlife too, not just my dog!
it always hurts me, when I see those dead animals along the roads, which got hit by a car
and then I should watch happily my dog killing them???
I never could let my dog kill any squirrels, rabbits or birds, or whatever
just happy, that not once she would go for to chase a mouse

...oh sorry, by that I just forgot...

totally rubbish, that with the getting taste for blood

is that vet left of the middle age?

Just a little question: are you a vegetarian/vegan?
Because if you're not then I don't understand why you're so upset. Millions of animals are killed daily for food and people thoughlessly buy meat in supermarkets but think it's cruel for a dog to kill and eat a mouse/rabbit. It's not, it's a million times more natural than farming animals for human food.

So you would happily let your home be over-run with mice and rats because, being wildlife, they are presumably also under the protection of the animal welfare act?

actually no, I'm not a vegan nor a vegetarian and wouldn't even waste one thought of it to get one

talking about natural? well, it is natural for humans eating meat
but I know what you mean by farming of animals for food in connection of supermarkets?
well, that meat there certainly comes from factory farming, I absolutely dislike, so you wont really see me buying any meat there
gladly I earn enough, that I can afford the bit more expensive meat or sausage at my local butcher right in the next bit bigger community, even the meat for my dog I get there

so of him, I really know, that he sells only meat of ethical raised and ethical slaughtered animals, as I even know the farmers of whom he gets it

but nevertheless I will say, that sometimes I also get stuff in the supermarket, when I've got no other chance
but rather I resist of meat, which I also have no problems with

but as well, I never would condemn someone who just cannot spend that extra money for to get meat at a local butcher, if there at all is one?
rather difficult to find in cities

to your other point

I think we humans are civilized, so our dogs
kinda natural for dogs hunting, of course
but they got pets, they are no wildlife anymore

I don't mind foxes hunting squirrels for food, as that is wildlife

but pets hunting for wildlife to me is no go!

well, we also have hunters for shooting deers or boars
as we already took them their natural enemies
but they just can't hunt around like they want
and not at all everyone is allowed to!

just wildlife is for wildlife
not for pets!