norfolk shooter
Well-Known Member
Just wondered if any of you give your dogs a raw food diet? If so is it a case of you have to add veg etc if feeding surplus venison??
Raw diet
- Thread starter norfolk shooter
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John Gryphon
Well-Known Member
Each and every one of the dogs I have owned have been fed raw,just as nature deemed it to be,its how they do it in the wild...enuff said!
The roo dogs ate roo
the pig dogs ate pig
the deer dogs eat deer
The roo dogs ate roo
the pig dogs ate pig
the deer dogs eat deer
the_greenman
Well-Known Member
Done properly it's a good way to feed. Done wrong and you can lose your dog. Veg isn't necessary.
My dogs eat a complete raw so it has veg, offal, bone, muscle etc and they do well on it
From what I've been told if you are making the food yourself you want to use wilted veg if your adding it as, when a wolf/ wild dog kills something they eat the stomach/ stomach contents which would usually have partly digested veg. How true this is I'm not sure but maybe worth exploring
From what I've been told if you are making the food yourself you want to use wilted veg if your adding it as, when a wolf/ wild dog kills something they eat the stomach/ stomach contents which would usually have partly digested veg. How true this is I'm not sure but maybe worth exploring
sportingspaniels
Well-Known Member
When a wolf /wild dog/lion etc etc kill they eat the insides first. They will eat very small bits of vegetable matter from the stomachs as they shake them clean. Look at pictures from above a kill and the ground is littered with stomach contents. I have worked in hunt kennnels and visited dozens and dozens and never seen a veg preparation area.
When we fed raw we added Berriewood Veg/Fruit/Herb dried mix - it was a very easy/convenient way to make it balanced. We feed complete diets now wet and dry and haven't really noticed any difference in the dogs apart from they poo more on dried complete.
Scandially
Well-Known Member
I feed minced beef unfrozen from Grayshill. Was on its feet no more than 24h ago or it will be frozen solid. Some kibble to add variety. Only drawback can be bad breath caused by trapped meat inbetween the teeth. Result is my young dog has at least 25% more body muscle than his siblings.
wildfowler.250
Well-Known Member
So every time this comes up you will get replies from just about every person that feeds raw and most people who feed dog food scroll past,(silent majority?).
Basically raw is fine if you get a balance right. But it has been shown that several people even following the same recipe will come out with a nutritionally different end product.
It’s even more important with a growing pup to get the balance right. Generally if you’re going to feed raw to a pup, you’re far safer from a balance point of view feeding a mix of raw and puppy kibble and then you’re at least getting the best of both worlds.
As much as people like to think so, dogs diet wise are not wolves.
Plus you’ve got to be squeaky clean from a hygiene point of view.
Ultimately it’s comparable to meat eaters and vegans talking about diet. Generally both sides of the party never see eye to eye. Personally I leave it up to a nutritionist from a food company to work out the requirements and do the hard work for me.
Basically raw is fine if you get a balance right. But it has been shown that several people even following the same recipe will come out with a nutritionally different end product.
It’s even more important with a growing pup to get the balance right. Generally if you’re going to feed raw to a pup, you’re far safer from a balance point of view feeding a mix of raw and puppy kibble and then you’re at least getting the best of both worlds.
As much as people like to think so, dogs diet wise are not wolves.
Plus you’ve got to be squeaky clean from a hygiene point of view.
Ultimately it’s comparable to meat eaters and vegans talking about diet. Generally both sides of the party never see eye to eye. Personally I leave it up to a nutritionist from a food company to work out the requirements and do the hard work for me.
Do you really think it is fair to fart in the car while your dog is in there?
You can get ready done raw food as has been called out natural instinct is good and they so a puppy one, if you don't want actual raw meat around for whatever reason I.e. babies crawling around then there are raw kibbles also but I think they may work out more expensive
Plenty of people get on well with normal kibble and plenty get on well with raw. Give your dog a try on something for a few weeks and see how they take to it and if no good change and seek advice
Plenty of people get on well with normal kibble and plenty get on well with raw. Give your dog a try on something for a few weeks and see how they take to it and if no good change and seek advice
Dunwaters
Well-Known Member
Sometimes it just happens and when it does I’m very grateful that it was just the dog present and not the wife or daughters
I use middleton dog foods ,great value and the mutt loves it. Comes in 500gram blocks.
She gets chicken mince which is 80/10/10 daily but I occasionally order her tripe/beef mince with lamb offal or a mixed box just to break it up a bit but she has never refused to eat it like she did the kibble ..in fact, I have to tell her to stop half way through as she just Inhales the lot haha
I will give her veg if leftovers from dinner but not purposely, the raw or dried tripe sees to that !
The only thing she needs after that Is some dried sprats to keep her oily fish content up
For breakfast she gets all the leftovers from carcasses which I simmer off then make a massive pot of pasta n mix it all up so lasts for months but she is a greedy bastard (lab) so you might not have that problem haha
She gets chicken mince which is 80/10/10 daily but I occasionally order her tripe/beef mince with lamb offal or a mixed box just to break it up a bit but she has never refused to eat it like she did the kibble ..in fact, I have to tell her to stop half way through as she just Inhales the lot haha
I will give her veg if leftovers from dinner but not purposely, the raw or dried tripe sees to that !
The only thing she needs after that Is some dried sprats to keep her oily fish content up
For breakfast she gets all the leftovers from carcasses which I simmer off then make a massive pot of pasta n mix it all up so lasts for months but she is a greedy bastard (lab) so you might not have that problem haha
Just to add to the mix, regarding domestication, I know a lot of Saluki and Saluki lurcher owners who found that this type works better on a high carb, low meat, diet as this is what the Bedouins fed them on for hundreds of years so we do have to take into account mans impact on certain breeds. I believe some shepherds used similar diets for their sheepdogs?
We've tried a few with ours, stuff from a place called Brown's Pet Range (which was OK but they were unreliable and kept getting orders wrong etc), Nature's Menu, which was awful pap, stuff from the butchers (ox heart and tripe and / or minced chicken carasse) which was OK, but expensive. We're on one called "Able" at the moment which seems very good and is in convenient blocks, seems to have some veg content. I found the farts on chicken or turkey were absolutely, indescribably, eye-wateringly appalling, but with beef/lamb practically nothing. When we were feeding pure meat we'd give him veg too, but in general he'll eat veg scraps - carrot tops, cabbage stalks etc - from the kitchen.
norfolk shooter
Well-Known Member
Im starting to wonder if its the dog version of organic??
We fed our dog (Great Dane) raw from the start, she came from a breeder that had and it made sense to us. She is fussy, but loved it still enjoys nothing better than a rabbit carcass (frozen for three weeks or more, I can't recall the parasite but three weeks in the freezer is meant to kill them). However she used to get relatively frequent ear infections, which seems to have significantly reduced in frequency since we stopped feeding her chicken, she's mainly on kibble with a little beef mince now. No idea why, but something to be aware of.
Sister in law's dog (terrier cross) is now on raw diet, since they moved in with us, and I wouldn't hesitate to feed it to another dog in the future.
Biggest downside for us was the effort to transport enough frozen food to go away for more than 2 nights! Should be a bit easier with a sensibly sized dog!
Edit to say:
Our dog seems to do better on raw than kibble, she's pure muscle and bone and her coat was a lot shinier on a raw diet.
Sister in law's dog (terrier cross) is now on raw diet, since they moved in with us, and I wouldn't hesitate to feed it to another dog in the future.
Biggest downside for us was the effort to transport enough frozen food to go away for more than 2 nights! Should be a bit easier with a sensibly sized dog!
Edit to say:
Our dog seems to do better on raw than kibble, she's pure muscle and bone and her coat was a lot shinier on a raw diet.
Sikadave84
Well-Known Member
I fed our lab a raw diet with a supplementary kibble (no vegetables) for about 4 years and he was always in superb condition (he still is) however there are drawbacks, one the hygiene has to be spot on as someone else already mentioned plus the cost and the smell!.
Good quality raw food is expensive and depending on how big your dog is and how many you have the cost can be eye watering. the biggest issue though and this is probably purely down to my dog but he became incredibly fussy about what he would eat. I would bulk buy whatever he was eating at the time and by the time we had got through a 1/4 of 20kg of frozen raw meat he would suddenly go off it and refuse to eat any of it. I’ve got 2 small kids so I didn’t want raw meat sitting there as he wouldnt touch it. in the end I switched him over to dry food (wainwright’s working dog) he absolutely loves this and we haven’t had any issues since touch wood. Strangely for a lab he prefers grazing on his food rather than wolfing it down.
the only thing he would consistently eat every time was raw venison but I don’t shoot enough to feed him, us and all the friends and family that want venison as well. So we’re sticking with kibble and he still gets some venison every week as well. Works for us but I think every dog is different.
I do feel bad just feeding him kibble (I like to imagine how I would feel eating the same stuff day in day out
) but he’s just a fussy little sh*t and seems happy enough on the dry food.
Good quality raw food is expensive and depending on how big your dog is and how many you have the cost can be eye watering. the biggest issue though and this is probably purely down to my dog but he became incredibly fussy about what he would eat. I would bulk buy whatever he was eating at the time and by the time we had got through a 1/4 of 20kg of frozen raw meat he would suddenly go off it and refuse to eat any of it. I’ve got 2 small kids so I didn’t want raw meat sitting there as he wouldnt touch it. in the end I switched him over to dry food (wainwright’s working dog) he absolutely loves this and we haven’t had any issues since touch wood. Strangely for a lab he prefers grazing on his food rather than wolfing it down.
the only thing he would consistently eat every time was raw venison but I don’t shoot enough to feed him, us and all the friends and family that want venison as well. So we’re sticking with kibble and he still gets some venison every week as well. Works for us but I think every dog is different.
I do feel bad just feeding him kibble (I like to imagine how I would feel eating the same stuff day in day out
) but he’s just a fussy little sh*t and seems happy enough on the dry food.Similar threads
