B.A.R.F. Diet......Pros & Cons? - Page 1

Hi, I am considering puting my 4 month old on a Raw diet..When I bought him the breeder told me that that is what he was on when she had him. I decided that because of my schedule it would be too difficult to feed raw. I am in the ATM Business & my pup is being groomed to ride Shotgun with me...so most days he rides with me for about 4 or 5 hours a day....Now I know I could bring a cooler but it seemed like it was a lot of work...now I have been faced with the problem of dealing with a picky eater...I tried all the best kibble and he rejects it...I mixed it with wet, still rejected....finally he tried the food my wife feeds her Lab( One natural blends)which I think is junk, I mix it with a 5 oz. can of Merrick wet food, mix in a scoop of puppy gold & he eats, but still not that great...so I am thinking of trying the raw diet & I would like to hear some experiences. Thanks, Rocket

Buy the book Natural Nutrition for Dog and Cats by Kymythy Schultze. It is an easy read and cheap. It will teach you alot about feeding Raw.

My experience with RAW is it is fantastic! The only drawback is it does take more time, but I have 3 dogs. I had one female with alergies to any dog food wet or dry I fed. On RAW she is just fine and the weird part is I do give some grains/beef that is in dog food! I assume you might be feeding 3 times a day? I don't think for the short amount of time you will be doing that it would hurt to give him whatever "you" are eating for mid day... share a sandwich, burger etc. I do give my dogs some cooked food. I just think about anything human grade is better than what is in dog food. You could think about canned salmon or mackeral too. Remember they don't need as much food when fresh.Alot of people feed just once a day for an adult too. The above book is also good, you can find it at Leerburg Videos.

I've just started something new. I have a big crockpot out on the workbench outside and I'm loading it every day with old freezer items and leftovers. I put in a little bit of vinegar to soften bones, etc. and I set the thing and start my day. It will cook and hold all day long, and around midnight, before I go to bed, I turn it off, so it is cooling overnight. In the morning we go through it with our fingers, looking for undisolved bones (which are discarded or put back in for the next lot), and then we portion it out and feed. The dogs absolutely LOVE it, and we are cleaning out our freezer, which was overfull with stale food... Perfectly useable food, but just didn't taste good to us anymore, and we would never have gotten around to it, so I'm just clearing it all out. This morning the dogs had a mixture of old beef stew, leftover chicken, part of a stale frozen turkey, extra turkey gravy from Thanksgiving dinner, freezer burned mixed vegetables, cheese-filled pasta, frozen chicken giblets, and leftover fried potatoes. Today I am going to put in more turkey, some chile rellenos that I did not particularly like, more vegetables, and more frozen pasta. I also have a few stale bagels to go in there. We've decided that we are going to take one chest freezer and use it only for dog food and leftovers. We can make weekly selections from it to go into the dog's crockpot. Trailrider mentioned canned mackerel and salmon. The salmon they can is usually the very cheapest form of salmon, the "Chum" or "Keta" variety, but the dogs go berserk over it. Mackerel, too. We feed that sometimes to dress up their dry food, and all you can hear from them is a chorus of slurping sounds as they suck it up! :-)

After reading the initial post again, I would have to say that if you give your growing pup just one good meal a day (preferably in the evening, I think) and a couple of smaller, really nutritious dry food meals during the day, you should be fine. Think of dry food as a convenience food. You would not be able to give anything else during the day. And your pup is at the age where he / she will probably start to take only two meals a day, anyway. They seem to do this on their own, when they are ready. Certainly by the time they are six months old they will want only two meals a day, on average. Be sure to take a bowl and a container of drinking water with you on your rounds. Dogs need and like a lot of hydration.

Do NOT feed cooked bones!

Do not cook bones! It makes them brittle and they splinter, which could cause internal dammage. Raw bones are more plyable and are not as much of a danger. Raw is the best and if you want to email me, I have a receipe that you could use if you like. ebinezer052899@yahoo.com I had a male GSD who when he was a pup on up to about 1yr would not eat ANY kibble. He would go for 4 days without eating and then only eat a mouth or 2 full. I tried ALL of the premium brands! THat is why I started raw. He immediately ate like a starving beast and has kept it up his whole life now. (7.5 yrs) He will now eat kibble and most anything else. After studing raw diets, I think he had an enzyme problem that caused him not to be able to process kibble. Raw diets have all the necessary enzymes, fatty acids, etc. and with a good herbal vitamin and mineral suppliment it has worked VERY well for me. As I explained in a post some months ago... the reason raw works well for dogs is that their digestive system works totally opposite of our's. A dog's food stays in his stomach somewhere around 8 - 12 hours and then spends a small amount of time in the intestinal tract. This makes for a long acid bath to kill most of the bad stuff and then what it doesn't get there, does not have time to ferment in the intestines, because of the short amount of time it is there. Our systems, the food spends a very short amount of time in our stomach and a long time in the intestinal tract. This allows a perfect environment for the bad stuff to grow and multiply, causing much harm if we were to eat raw. Just think about the wild animals eating week old road kill that's been out in the sun and heat. They do just fine. Although I certainly do not suggest that you pick up week old road kill for your dogs! lol The cons would include... being about 3x as expensive as kibble and very time consuming to prepare, especially if you are feeding alot of dogs. Debby

This popped into my head and it may help you out. It is called Satin Balls. Suppose to be 100% nutritionally complete.. you can do a google search or copy/paste this URL. http://www.njboxers.com/satin-balls-recipe.htm

The diet that I recommend commercially is "Common Sence". It is manufactured and developed by well known GSD breeder Tracy Bullinger. http://www.commonsensedogfood.com/

Dear Buddyspal and Dic, YOU CAN COOK BONES, if you use vinegar! Not beef bones, but pork ribs will soften, and so will poultry bones. I normally use the whole chicken carcass, bones and all, and throw them in a crock pot to slow cook with maybe only 2 Tablespoons to 1/4 cup vinegar, and the acid in the vinegar is a wonderful, miracle tonic for the dog's digestion, and it helps extract mineral content locked in foods, because also it completely softens the mineral.. especially in bones so that they crumble in your hands (if they don't, then throw them out or repeat the process in the next batch). The bones contain all sorts of minerals and proteins, so it is good not to waste them. The Amish supposedly used apple cider vinegar as a tonic for their livestock, and it brought all sorts of good health effects, but I think that the real secret is that vinegar acid unlocks trace minerals in foods. Any vinegar would do.. white vinegar, wine vinegar, rice vinegar. It all works! Try it, and you will see!