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May issue
May issue
Monday, 2 September 2013
Food for thought
After reading your dog food feature in the September issue I’m keen to try my dogs on raw.
Any advice on how I start? Both are male Labs and currently eat a high-quality tinned food.
Would you like to feed a Commercial raw diet or a DIY raw diet? If Commercial, all you need to do is source a good quality raw food brand and ween your dog onto it from it's current food. If DIY, ween your dogs onto some raw that you have prepared yourself. Speak to your local butcher about getting some raw to prepare.
Hi I changed my Labrador over to RAW about 9 months ago, after feeding her on Naturediet since we had brought her home from a rescue centre. I did a gradual change over, introducing small chicken wings to start with, to see how she coped with these. After some hesitation she tucked in, and soon got the hang of eating them. I then gradually tried her on different meats, raw eggs and their shells, plus small amounts of pulped up raw veg. until she had completely changed over. I understand that raw food is digested at a different rate to cooked or complete foods, and it is not a good idea to feed both raw and a commercial food together. However as this was only over a short period and she coped very well, I encountered no problems doing this. I have seen sometimes recommendations to just change over immediately, but think that some dog's can take time to adjust to eating raw food, and also to allow their stomachs to cope with this different way of feeding - though dog's are designed to eat raw food. I used the 'Honey's book on Raw feeding to learn about the different meats needed, such as offal and muscle meat, oily fish and bones etc. Although I don't purchase from them. buying in bulk is definitely more cost effective though a large amount of freezer space would be needed for two dog's, so maybe a freezer just for the dogs' food. Berriewood Wholesale is a great place to start, with competitive prices, and they deliver quickly and give you a timeslot by email to within an hour for delivery. There I loads of info on the internet, and some will be negative, but for my dog, she looks great, is fitter, shiny white teeth, and less poo. Good luck with it.
There are a couple of good Facebook pages where raw feeders will be happy to share the benefit of experience. Search on the site for Raw Feeding UK, and BARF Diet Chat.
Would you like to feed a Commercial raw diet or a DIY raw diet? If Commercial, all you need to do is source a good quality raw food brand and ween your dog onto it from it's current food. If DIY, ween your dogs onto some raw that you have prepared yourself. Speak to your local butcher about getting some raw to prepare.
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteI changed my Labrador over to RAW about 9 months ago, after feeding her on Naturediet since we had brought her home from a rescue centre.
I did a gradual change over, introducing small chicken wings to start with, to see how she coped with these. After some hesitation she tucked in, and soon got the hang of eating them. I then gradually tried her on different meats, raw eggs and their shells, plus small amounts of pulped up raw veg. until she had completely changed over.
I understand that raw food is digested at a different rate to cooked or complete foods, and it is not a good idea to feed both raw and a commercial food together. However as this was only over a short period and she coped very well, I encountered no problems doing this. I have seen sometimes recommendations to just change over immediately, but think that some dog's can take time to adjust to eating raw food, and also to allow their stomachs to cope with this different way of feeding - though dog's are designed to eat raw food.
I used the 'Honey's book on Raw feeding to learn about the different meats needed, such as offal and muscle meat, oily fish and bones etc. Although I don't purchase from them.
buying in bulk is definitely more cost effective though a large amount of freezer space would be needed for two dog's, so maybe a freezer just for the dogs' food. Berriewood Wholesale is a great place to start, with competitive prices, and they deliver quickly and give you a timeslot by email to within an hour for delivery.
There I loads of info on the internet, and some will be negative, but for my dog, she looks great, is fitter, shiny white teeth, and less poo.
Good luck with it.
RubyRoo
There are a couple of good Facebook pages where raw feeders will be happy to share the benefit of experience. Search on the site for Raw Feeding UK, and BARF Diet Chat.
ReplyDelete