Oh Heck, Raw Not Working Out!

I've been feeding my gang raw minces (from DAF) along with meaty bones for a while now, but recently its seeming to not agree with the boys!

Frodo is pretty toxic smelling after anything but poultry or fish, and gets the poos after anything with liver (cooked or raw)
I've read that liver is pretty important, more so than other offal - please correct me if I'm wrong!

It's harder to keep weight on Rory too. He is totally worm free and healthy, but still pretty ribby even after 2 - 3 times the recommended amount


Because I have three of them, thinking cost wise I might switch to mostly kibble with some wet food as a topper; it'd just be easier to feed all three the same thing haha!
They'd still get their bones and fish regularly too

I'm terrified of bloat with my lurcher though. Is kibble any more risky than wet or raw there??

Well because of that, I've been looking at cold-pressed foods - Markus Muhle and Lukullus, as well as fish4dogs even though that's not cold pressed

waffle waffle waffle...

If anyone has any experience with these or any other suggestions for dry or wet, I'd love to hear

Have you thought about trying a different raw supplier?

Mine do ok on Raw2go minces but I have to feed a lot of it. At the moment they are nutriment (which is more expensive) but I am getting away with feeding less. I am still having to give Malc and Layla a bone meal at lunch though as those two are impossible to keep weight on but when I had Malc on kibble he used to need 3 times the daily allowance

Being loose after liver is normal (you are right in that they need more liver than other offal) so I feed offal on a day whe they have had a bone meal in the morning to bung them up.

For instance this morning they had lambs ribs so tonight they will have offal. The offal counters the constipating affects of the bone and the bone counters the loosening affects of the offal

I'm not sure about the risk of bloat? Hopefully someone else will be able to expand on that.

In this house every meal contains bone of some description. I feed liver over the course of a few days and tbh they only seem to eat lambs liver with enthusiasm. We never get loose poo either. I think you just have to adjust what you feed to suit your dogs, mine get way more than 10% bone and are only fed around 2% of bodyweight. I vary it depending on how they look. Over feeding can cause loose poo too so maybe cut back on the amount and the variety until their tummies are more settled and then try increasing the variety and see how it goes from there. I feed very little mince, mainly carcasses, lamb ribs, pigs trotters etc and the balance is made up with chunks with a bit of mince to make up the weight.

I found the same, not that that's a surprise with my dog!
Penelope had a lot more energy, borderline hyper and her doggy smell (from her coat) disappeared.
BUT
She stank soooooooooooooooo bad from her butt end lol, apart from literally a handful of times she had constant diarrhoea, bit of vomiting too, and a slight cough. She has always had that but it had gone then came back...

She's on the same food as us now plus helpings of lilys kitchen and imam going to buy some nature diet and natures menu cans aswell for variety.
No more diarrhoea or sickness so fingers crossed!

I think eating slowly helps reduce bloat?
You can get special bowls or put a tin in the middle of the bowl I think to help?

I feed Burgess Sensitive and soak it before feeding it, I also feed 3 times a day because I used to have dogs that needed it, Joe was a JRT/Whippet who had low blood sugar problems and a lot of food allergies, also Merlin, a Greyhound had a very sensitive tummy, I found this very easy to do and kept it up when they went to the Rainbow Bridge.

I still feed the same food but add about a teaspoon of Butchers tinned meat to each feed apart from the middle feed when I give them a raw chicken wing or lamb/pork rib.

Not sure where you are in Cheshire, but have you had a look at http://www.manifoldvalleymeats.co.uk/natural-petfoods/
Also Nixons farm shop in Heald Green are good as well.
I don't feed anything like that amount of offal.
I am lucky that my butcher makes up 100% chicken mince for me, I also feed tinned fish, chicken carcass, wings, large meaty bones and raw eggs in their shell. My 2 older girls can put on weight just looking at food so I grate and steam veg and use that to bulk the food out. We have lovely little firm poos here and no smell ever.

When Nigredo was on raw, I had to keep adjusting it because of the loose poo. He got quite a bit of bone, chicken backs did him very well, as well as turkey necks.

He was fed a LOTTT of food, because he was a growing puppy and it started to get ridiculous, and then his teeth went bad. Sadly, he's back on free feed kibble. Grain free, which is worthless in itself but tends to have less corn, soy, wheat etc. Teeth are much better, but poops quite a bit more.

He is a large breed puppy and I don't worry a lot about bloat with raw feeding as they tend to slow down because of the bones, and slow eating makes the chance of bloat go wayyyyy down.

If this also makes you feel ANY better, I've only owned large dogs, more than I can count and not a single one of them has ever gotten bloat. I don't think lurchers are extremely high bloat suspects, anyway... butttt could be wrong.

You can use gizzard instead of liver, from what I understand, it can be given more than liver and is less mushy/moist and will cause less diarrhea. Worked for my boy. I don't think I'll be going back to raw for Nigredo.

Also, if the food is all ground up in a meat grinder, it makes it all go down in one big mush. Seems to fail most dogs I've seen, causing more mushy poop.

Nigredo had whole chicken backs, legs, or whatever along with an egg twice a week, with half the shell mixed in. He also got a nice hunk of ground beef/turkey/etc as well. In each bowl was also a spoonful (or more) of plain yogurt, which is supposed to help with digestion. Each dish also had a few chicken gizzards and a tiny piece of liver.

I'd always opt for prey model (whole pieces of bone-in meat) over BARF chopped up raw with all kinds of weird ingredients. I also refuse to feed my dogs vegetables (they simply don't need them), and prey model is much better with that.

I don't know a LOT about raw feeding, so please don't automatically take all or any of my advice, just telling you how I was doing it. Nigredo HATES fish, so he never got it... which is why the egg had to be added. His poops were small and firm, his coat thick and shiny, and he was doing great.

He's still doing great, but his poops are more and his coat doesn't look QUITE as glossy.

Thanks for the links and input, all!
Stinky bums don't bother me all too much haha - I'll try different bits and bobs and see if I can find something that suits everyone
Nothing better than happy dogs

Laura, that Lilys Kitchen looks right nice! I don't think I'd mind sharing that with them lol

I thought gizzards were on the more muscle-ish end of offal?
I don't know whether its because he's growing up a bit or just because he's got no teeth right now(!), but Frodo is slowing down with his food and not trying to swallow bones whole which is a good thing!

They are, I gave small amounts of liver to Nigredo and more gizzard because the liver was too mushy and seemed to give him the runs. He didn't really like it, either... which was another factor. Good luck!!

A friend's dog was fed quite a lot of raw liver at a show she was expected to win 'best in show' she was too ill to go into the ring and refused to show again.