RAW Diet in Steve’s house

A RAW Diet doesn’t need to be something you worry about or stress over, it can be simply prepared at home and meet your dogs nutritional needs.

RAW Diets aren’t new or have as many restrictions as some would have you believe, in fact many people fed raw before commercial diets were available, as there was no choice. A common concern people have who would like to switch their dog/s to a raw / natural / Barf diet is that they will miss some crucial ingredient which will do their dog harm.

Personally I feel this risk is a lot less than you may think, the fact that these people are concerned about this means that they will likely be more diligent than not and the fact does remain that no matter how badly you screw up, you’re not likely to do irreversible harm.

I feed RAW because I can choose the ingredients my dogs eat, I can assess the freshness of the foods and choose the ratios if I want to increase my dogs muscle, decrease fat or weight. I don’t have to rely on what is pictured or written on a bag and “hope” that the manufacturer is as dedicated to my dogs as I am. Instead I can make sure the food makes my grade.

I can also raise or lower the protein levels or fat levels to gain a result, and eliminate something from my dog’s diet I don’t think works for them, I haven’t got that amount of control with a commercial diet.

These are my choices though and I don’t expect others to share them or I certainly am not political about canine diets. These are my beliefs which have been generated over my life of owning, training, breeding and rehabilitating dogs and a lot of research too. Some people feel their dogs do better on kibble, there are many good kibbles available now and some dogs do quite well on them. Some people also feel that their dogs do better on kibble than raw, I wonder if they didn’t persist with raw feeding long enough or chose the right ingredients. A friend told me recently that she knew someone whose dog didn’t do well on raw, and her friend followed the diet to the letter.

The first and most important thing is that there is no letter, no program or plan. There is a structure which suggests ratios of muscle meat to bones to extras. You have loads of variations that you can add to achieve the correct ratios. Proteins can be gained from beef, lamb, turkey, fish, pork & roo, and I like the meaty bones to be from a part of the body that the dog can break up and digest, such as lamb flaps, brisket, wings  and necks etc. I add offal in the form of hearts, kidneys, liver etc which are all easily obtainable now.

I pretty much feed human grade foods that I buy from supermarkets, but I think you can do fine with good quality fresh pet meats also. You would be surprised how little it can cost to feed your dog raw if you make use of specials etc at the super market.

Below I have listed a rough table of how I put together a meal for my dogs. You can choose to mix and match from any column based on what you have on hand, but I like to vary the meal content with dogs that I know do well on all of these foods.

I don’t of course use all the supplements, but choose the right one for the dog I am feeding.

[ws_table id=”1″]

 

This meal probably runs about $4.00, which means around $28.00 for a week. I believe he would eat more than that in quality kibble in a week so economics is on my side and I would challenge anyone to provide a more nutritious, species appropriate diet that comes in a bag.

Venom does very well on this, his health, coat, eyes and teeth are excellent and he has excellent muscle development. Since putting him on K9 Super Fuel he has more sustained energy and is developing muscle at a greater rate.

I certainly am not trying to convince anyone to swap to raw, but I hope this article does encourage you to do some research and see what is best for your dog.

Steve Courtney