The BARF diet - questions

hi all,

ive been thinking about the barf diet for a while now, but dont really know much about it.

i wondered if people that do feed it could help me along, what do you feed, how much how often.

what are the benefits of the barf diet, pros and cons?

is it cheaper to feed barf, or biscuits?

at the minute daphni is on royal canin adult biscuits, mixed in with some butchers meat. she likes it but is beginning to get bored. and one time when she did have a raw chicken wing she loved it!

just want a little help and advice, what do people think about the barf diet?

I posted this on another forum for someone else, i'm not saying this is the definative raw feeding guide but it works for my lot, i have however cut the 3 smaller ones down to a 3rd of a 1lb pack of mince a day as they were getting a bit porky, and i don't do porky dogs hope it helps.

ok i feed my own dogs Raw, like many i was not keen when i first started looking at it, but once you get in to it its easy, they have approx 1/2lb of chicken and veg mince in a morning, (i buy it mxed) which i will mix either a spoon of low fat natural yoghurt, cottage cheese or a raw egg shell and all. For their evening meal they get a variety of a whole chicken carcass,chicken wings, lamb ribs, pigs trotters, pheasant carcass in the season, rabbit from a pest control friend. Once a week they get fish such as pilchards and a bit of offal mixed in either heart or liver,, i buy the mince and carcasses from a local supplier who is based in barnsley the mince is 49p lb less than a tin of dog food and the carcasses are 2.50 a bag and there tends to be around 12 in a bag so three meals, the ribs, wings and trotters come from my local butcher and he charges me £4.50 for a dozen ribs (3 meals) 4 trotters (1 meal) and 4 trotters (1meal),the pheasants and rabbit are free and the last time nigel came he fetched me 13 rabbits, 1 rabbit feeds 2 dogs, i think i worked it out that it costs me around 2.50 a day for 4 dogs cheap really. We switched because we nearly lost Millie to AIHA and wanted to be as natural as possible because nobody knows what triggers it and processing in food could be one of the triggers. We have far less to pick up now and what there is, is always hard. We noticed a distinct change in behaviour after about a week in that they were a lot calmer. I do have a large chest freezer in the garage that i manged to pick up second hand for £30, for me its well worth the effort which once in a routine is minimal, i have to say they now have lovely clean teeth, nice coats and Molly who was always a fussy eater with kibble is the first in the kitchen, and i now wished i had done it years since.

thanks that has helped my dog is smaller than yours aswell so im presuming wouldnt eat as much... i decided maybe to change because ive been told the coat condition and teeth are just so much better. i like the idea of being natural.

well i think so, my lot have never looked as well

There are quite a few definitions of BARF - I am a Bones and Raw food
I more base my feeding on prey model - the give a dog a bone method

Basically my dogs are just over 10Kg, they get about 2 -3 % of their beodweight every day
adjusted for the specific dogs
Ben gets about 250 - 300 g food a day Mia 200 - 250g
I am not overly accurate - a bit more if we have done lots or they look a bit skinny, a bit less if they are looking a bit podgy

They get pretty much no veggies
The basics are 80% raw meat - for mine is any cheep mince or cuts of meat, lamb and ox heart and anything on special. They also get some of the frozen packs from PAH

Offal is about 10% with at least 5% of that liver - so mainly livers and kidneys - when I can I get whole fish and whizz them up with mince and eggs (they dont like eating them whole)

and bones - usualy chicken, lamb and some pork. Ox tail now and again

Now and again they get frozen tripe and sometimes leftovers if I have left anything healthy

I started the diet because Ben really wasnt eating kibble

Very quickly I notcied an increase in stamina and settled focus
Both dogs have fab coats - they dont even smell very doggy- and perfect teeth. Bowls are pretty much always licked clean
Poo is small and easy to pick up

and it is so easy, I get most of mines food at the supermarket - I have got a butcher who give me free lamb hearts and bones and a PAH has just opened round the corner from me

Because they eat so little I only need small freezer space as most packs are about the right size for them I dont need to chop and sort
I find it easy - even on holidays

The only thing I did choose to do is feed them once a day so they can get big chunks of meat - as a chicken leg often is about 200g

thanks daphni weighs 4.5 kg so shes only small but its really helpful to know about what to give them. we have tried them with bits and bobs added in with biscuits to see and they have had ox heart before, and liver.

when on this diet to they get no dog biscuits at all? and what about treats do they still get the usual doggie treats, or does this have to be switched to raw too. daph loves her pigs ears and cows feet to gnaw on but she loves her pedigree rodeo things too

Everyone has their ideas on what to give as treats

More often than not I use cooked meat to reward, but I also use small bits of kibble (its cheep and clean to handle) and some dog treats
No treat should make a significant portion of a dgs diet so I am not a total purist
although when I started I keep them totaly carb free while their body adjusts

But you can feed your dog a totaly balanced diet with all the vits and minerals they need with a good mixture of many types of meat, bone and offal (I actually sat down and made spreadsheets based on the neutritional content of all the meats and compared to kibble the raw diet meets or exceeds the levels in kibble every time

Hi Chloe if you don't want to go the whole way with the BARF diet straight away or is too fiddly, maybe consider one of the new raw diets..

Raw...
http://www.darlingsrealdogfood.com/

http://www.naturalinstinct.com/

PS I have recently changed from a mainly homecooked diet to mainly raw and am delighted with the results .

For me personally, the raw diet is very cheap. I get a few kg's of chicken necks free each week, along with pigs trotters and various bones for nothing. In the freezer at the moment there is also wood pigeon and pheasant (picked from the side of the road, i'm never one to miss an opportunity like that! It's excellent food and totally free plus their death isnt in vain.)

I do buy organ meat, tripe and fish along with anything else cheap I see in the supermarket e.g cheap cuts of lamb (if there is such a thing!), beef and turkey legs.

I need to get on the phone and order whole rabbits from The Dog Food Company because I prefer to feed the prey model diet if I can plus my lot are getting a bit bored of chicken. Day old chicks are also an item I order sometimes from Berriewoods.

I feed mine twice a day and although I used to weight it all out, I dont bother now. I just go by how the dog looks and adjust accordingly. If they get more than they should in one meal, they get a bone with minimal meat on it for the next meal.

Sometimes mine do get the occassional meal of kibble, mainly mixed in with tinned fish and for treats I either use their kibble or cheese. I used to give mine things like Jumbones and roast knuckles etc but they dont get anything like that any more. IMO, it's defeating the object of giving them raw in the first place.

When I give them raw, I know exactly what they are getting (apart from the steroids etc used in farming practices, lol, hence why I like to give them 'wild' food when I can get it) and although it may sound odd, I like to see them getting stuck into some proper meat and using their teeth as they should be used.

I feed mostly raw with some kibble. I feed the kibble as a mixer because my dogs have very high consumption and I don't have the freezer space for the amount of meat they would consume. I get them value mince from Sainsbury's at £1.99 a bag, and loads of free bones, carcasses and trimmings from my butcher. Morrisons do lamb hearts and ox heart very cheap. They also get tinned mackerel (they don't like fresh raw fish except for salmon).

So for breakfast they have kibble and mince in equal amounts, then for tea they have carcasses and bones. Sometimes we go on the kibble and mince for a few days if their poos are too hard, and sometimes I fast them for half a day if they have had a lot of bone. They won't eat raw egg sadly, but they do like yogurt for a treat. I don't feed veggies, as I don't personally think it's necessary.