Feeding Raw

Does anyone feed a raw diet and if so what do you give to ensure sufficient nutrients and vitamins ?

Mine are fed raw lamb, chopped chicken necks, cooked pasta & veg.

They are fed twice a day. I add a few drops of flaxseed oil to one meal.

I add a teaspoon of vitamin & mineral powder supplement (contains vit.E, vit.C, brewers yeast, dolomite) and a teasoon of kelp to each meal.

They also get raw egg yolk 2-3 times a week; sardines or tuna twice a week; yoghurt or cottage cheese twice a week.

They have cheese and cooked liver or kidneys as training treats.

I do not feed bones as I had one dog choke & bloat on a bone, also they can damage teeth. I give hard biscuits for chewing.

Mine have lots and lots of bones! Mainly chicken carcasses which we get cheaply from the wholesalers, but also big meaty pork bones which clean their teeth up beautifully, sometimes lamb (luckily mine are fine on lamb bones, but many dogs find them too fatty and get bad diarrhoea) which we get from the local butcher. Also rabbits when they catch them.

Also have veggies most days, these are also raw but have to be put through a juicer (then mix juice and pulp back together afterwards), or whizzed up in a blender. Dogs can't digest the cellulose cell wall of plant cells, so everything has to be broken down for them (you could so this by steaming, but you still loose a fair amount of vitamins and minerals that way). Best veggies are zucchini, bok choy, celery, brocholli, cabbage, a few beans, carrots, pumpkin.. can put most things in, whatever you have to hand, but those listed are some of the ones with the greatest nutritional benefit. I add garlic to the veg pulp, along with kelp powder, brewers yeast, vit c, oil, flaxseed powder, a glucosamine tablet, apple cider vinegar. Once a week they have kidney and liver mixed into the veg, a couple of times a week mackeral or sardines. They also get live yoghurt, eggs, cottage cheese, occasionally porridge (with whichever supplements they need and honey, sun dried fruit, sunflower seeds and olive oil), and very occasionally cooked rice with cooked beans (this will be whenever there is rice left over from a family meal, the beans can be a tin of baked beans). They also get table scraps.

It doesn't actually take that long to prepare their food, obviously more time than tipping a mug of dried food into a bowl, but they do so much better on the raw diet. I wouldn't change them back onto commercial food for anything.