Thinking about raw.....

Hi, I'm new here and this is my first post.

I have a 2 and a half year old Black Labrador mix. He eats Blue Buffalo wet and dry food, he loves it and he is doing great on it. His coat is soft and shiny and I've always felt good about feeding Blue to him.

But lately I've been reading/researching about the BARF diet and I've been very interested. It seems more natural.

I want to get him started but I'm very nervous about supplying him with the vitamins and minerals that he needs daily. How do I make sure he's getting enough? I've read about oils and supplements being added to the food -I'm overwhelmed by this part of it. I'm very nervous about the possibility of making a mistake.

Is this method very expensive? Now, he costs about $4-5 a day to feed. Is raw more or less expensive than high quality food?

I want to see a simple day to day meal plan to ease my mind. It just seems like a lot to me right now. But I am still very interested.

Sorry. Can't help you with the BARF advice though.

Beautiful dogs!!

Welcome this might help.
http://www.squidoo.com/rawmeatdietfordogs
Also look for information on BARF this usually includes veg, fruit etc., My Bernese loves fruit and veg.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm no expert on diets at all but you should know that quite a few studies have linked raw meat diets to pancreatic disease due to the high fat content of raw meat. Pancreatic disease takes a long time to show so dogs appear healthy sometimes for years before they show symptoms.

Also worth noting that raw meat can be infected and E. coli especially is very dangerous causing heavy bleeding from both ends and all sorts.

Lots of raw food supporters will claim dogs won't choke on bones so long as they are raw, but studies on wild captured wolves has shown that they sometimes choke and sustain serious injuries from eating bone.

When we got Penelope, we fed her a dry, premium, 76% meat food, grain free with no fillers. She appeared allergic to something in it and after seeing no change in symptoms after switching to cheap supermarket dog food and plain lamb and rice we looked into prey model diet, BARF etc etc.

the more you read into it the more serious risks you will start to uncover and read about.

We switched Penelope to a vegan diet, lots of lentils, beans, some rice and other carbs, lots of fruit and veg and also a commercial supplemented vegan dog food called ami and her symptoms disappeared.
She eats a mostly vegan diet now but gets a little cooked meat now and then as she doesn't seem to react to it anymore.

That's all very interesting.

I'm sure someone who does feed RAW will give you their reasons for it....I've never found a need for it yet though.

Also, There is a supplement you can get, it's called veggie dog but I'm sure there must be versions out there for meat eaters!
It's just a powder that you add to people food and it adjusts the vitamin and mineral content for dogs.

Add in some oil, extra virgin olive oil, salmon oil and hemp seed oil are meant to be good ones.
Penelope gets a tablespoon or so a day.

Thank you for your insight, I will consider it because I am still researching it. I just want the best for my dog and I would do anything to make sure he's the healthiest dog possible.

I will research more about the risks because that just raised a concern for me.

Thank you.

I've not heard of Blue Buffalo....have you heard of Fromm?