Raw food diets for dogs- how's it done?

There is a really good book out on the bones and raw food (BARF) diet that you are sort of describing. Dogs have some very real nutritional needs that you have to account for and the book explains all of that. A number of people on my search team feed the BARF diet with great success, but you can’t make it up on your own, you need to follow the instructions in the book (written by a vet if I’m not mistaken). link

So 80 years ago this dog would just die?

Here is a link to an AnswerBag article written by a very knowledgeable woman called Redhawk. She helped me out a lot when debating a raw diet for my pups.

She had a couple others on there with more detailed information. I will see if I can find them. I also have an article I can email you with instructions to help you get started with raw feeding.

If you google ‘BARF diet’ you will get a lot of info on it.

@faye What dog are you talking about?

The little dog the OP is asking about. Dogs are dogs. They drink out of toilets, eat kitten poo, roll in dead fish, eat out of the compost pile, etc. They don’t need to be pampered with expensive diet plans to make some jerk rich who is probably laughing his way to the bank!!

@faye I’m the OP. :) No one said the dog would be dead, and I expressly said I don’t want to pay a lot of money.
Someone will be making money off me feeding my dog, no matter what. I’d rather be lining the pockets of people who help me keep my loyal, wonderful dog as healthy as possible.
Much of what is in commercial dog food is absolute crap, and I think it’s disgusting that some people (not saying you) aren’t interested in learning how to feed a member of their family as nutritiously and as much in line with their biology as they can for their budget.

Okay, I know you love your dog. My point is that they don’t need too much fuss made. They do need protein so they would be okay on what you are eating to make a complete protein for yourself. I grew up on a farm with farm dogs. They got table scraps and what they killed. If it was cold mom would make them a big pot of porridge. My black lab and bordercollie eaked out a living with us when they had big bowls of porridge because we wer broke. They were shiny, tails wagging, fun dogs.

As far as I know the original advocate of the barf (which stands for bones and raw food) is Ian Billinghurst, an aussie vet. Here is the link to his book. I feed a modified version of his diet. I incorporate some rice and my dogs like their veg cooked.

I do think those who say your dog’s health is in danger unless you feed commercial dog food is a little bit over the top. It is like saying a human’s diet is dangerous unless you eat processed stuff out of a bag so that with each meal you received exactly the right amount of the right vitamin. If you eat a variety of foods over the course of a week you probably gain most of what you need, same is true of dogs. My get a variety of whatever is on sale, beef, roo, chicken, lamb. The oldies are 12, an akita and a little brown dog, the young one is 2, all are healthy, have good teeth from the bones and no skin or ear problems. They are in good weight as well.

@faye By eating what they killed, your dogs were already getting a largely biologically appropriate diet. I live in the city so eating what she kills, like a dog was made to do, isn’t really an option for my dog. I’m trying to find out ways to give my dog the kind of nutrition your dogs got instead of just pre-packaged commercial stuff and select scraps from a vegetarian table.

@rooeytoo You just give the meats raw? Straight from butcher to bowl?

My porridge dogs were city dogs. They may have caught a mouse or two tho.

BARF probably makes a certain amount of sense nutritionally, but no one has done the necessary studies to demonstrate that it is more effective than a high-protein, low-grain, meat-based dry diet with appropriate supplements.

I compromise by feeding a kibble which is meat rather than grain based, and seems to offer complete nutrition. If I could afford BARF I might choose that instead, but it is far too expensive for someone like me. It costs more than what I feed myself.

@rooeytoo Clarification, does BARF mean “Biologically Appropriate Raw Food” or “Bones and Raw Food”, or is this just tomato tahmahto? I’m just curious and you seem to know what you’re takling about :).

@Likeradar – yes they eat raw meat and raw bones (usually beef neck). If chicken is on sale I stock up and freeze it. They love a raw drumstick. Same with beef or whatever. The veg I use are all the peelings or left overs from what we eat, I toss it in the freezer until I need it. That is my major deviation from strict barf, I feed rice mixed with the cooked veg. I have an akita and he loves rice, it is his heritage. He would prefer sushi but you have to draw the line somewhere! That reminds me they love canned mackerel which is very inexpensive here.

@ShiningToast – I think in Ian Billinghurst’s book it is bones and raw food. I think the Biologically appropriate raw food is similar to changing the name of a choke chain to a check collar, it sounds nicer!

I don’t find it to be substantially more expensive than high quality kibble (if there is such a thing). But I do buy large quantities when something is on sale, that definitely helps.

I wish I knew how you manage to keep costs down. We fed my girlfriend’s recently retired Seeing Eye dog guide on a raw food diet because it was necessary due to the dog’s allergies, and it damned near broke us. Plus we found it very, very time consuming. YMMV.

@pdworkin It is pretty time consuming.
As far as studies go, you may already know that the AAFCO trials only last 6 months. This is from the wikipedia entry for pet food:
“The protocol requires that 6 out of 8 animals complete a 26 week feeding trial without showing clinical or pathological signs of nutritional deficiency or excess.”
That’s not really very long, in terms of testing something you’re going to feed your pet all its life. I have been feeding raw for almost 10 years now. I didn’t enter into it lightly; I researched it & read everything I could find for 6–8 months before I took the plunge. I did a cost analysis, & at the time it ended up being a decent amount cheaper than the dry food we were using. (I do need to do the analysis again, though, it’s been awhile since my last one.)
BARF- I prefer Biologically Appropriate because then it can also apply to the way I feed my bird. :-)

My dog loves raw bones but the one time I tried to feed her with raw chicken she looked at me as though I was trying to poison her. I ended up cooking it and giving it back to her.

No cooked bones, ever, just in case someone didn’t know that.

@pdworkin

And NO leg bones of larger animals, i.e. deer, cows, etc. They’re too dense, and can crack the dogs’ teeth.