Raw Feeding-Options at your finger tips

The Healthy Bark

Ready to start feeding raw but have no idea where to start? Today's topic will be about your options and each explained in detail. There are 3 types of raw feeding and many ways of doing it. What works best for one dog may not for the other one. But that is fine, you learn as you go, and they enjoy a healthier diet and the benefits.

The three types of raw feeding:

1. Prey Model (Muscle Meat, Organ, Bone)
2. Barf Diet (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food or Bones and Raw Food)
3. Prepared Raw (Bought at small local pet stores)

 Prey Model Diet

 Prey Model feeding is taking parts and pieces and making up the whole animal. The amount to feed depends on the pet, their age, and activity level, the starting point is between 2.5%-3% of their body weight and adjust as needed once the pet gets used to the new diet. The following suggestions are what makes up the diet, and the % of each that you would include.

• Muscle Meat-75-80% of the diet should be meat
• Organs-5% liver 5% other organ meat
• Bones-10% of the diet from bones.

Meat contains phosphorus and bone contains calcium, so when you feed meat with 10% bone you have a nice balance of phosphorus to calcium.  Eggs, tripe and whole fish have a 1:1 ratio of the two.

Organ meat this should be sourced as clean as possible. Beef liver has the highest amount of nutrients. The following is a list of organs that can be used. Yes some sound icky. Liver, lung, heart, kidney, pancreas, spleen and brains. Remember to keep 5% liver and the other 5% a mixture.
Some dogs do not like the taste of organs at first so mincing them up can help and start slow as your dog adjust.

Bones are any non-weight baring bone. It needs to be edible and digestible. A whole chicken is around 33% bone, with the wing being around 46% compared to the meat, where a breast bone is around 20% bone compared to the meat. When feeding higher percentage pieces of bone add more muscle meat. Turkey necks, lamb necks, pork necks, pork hocks, pork ribs, ox tails, turkey tails, chicken heads, and turkey heads.

Eggs can be fed 2-3 times a week.

Green tripe can be fed as well. Not the bleached stuff. Also make sure it is from grass fed cows not grain fed cows. It can be fed in place of a meal.

Fish can be fed once a week. Small fish caught rather than farm raised. Oily fish is best, think mackerel, and sardines.

Barf Diet 

The diet developed by Dr. Billinghurst was one of the earlier diets that people read about. His book "Give your dog a bone" started the movement of more people wanting to feed raw. The difference in his diet and the Prey Model diet is that he adds vegetables in his meals daily. For some dogs they do better with a little bit of vegetables daily.

If adding veggies to the diet you need to help break down the cellulose walls of the plant. To do this you can put the veggies in a food processor and pulse a couple of times, lightly steam them and mash, or chop fine.

Common veggies used are spinach, kale, green beans, carrots, squash, and broccoli. However broccoli should not be fed to a dog with low thyroid or more then once a week. Use around 10% veggies if you decide you want to feed them. I did give spinach and kale to my dogs a couple times a week.

Prepared Diets

These are bought at your local small pet store. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and meats. There are some diets that are better and put together better than others. I personally would never suggest feeding a raw diet that uses HPP (High pressure pasteurization), as there are better ways to keep the bacteria in check. HPP is said to destroy bad bacteria, however it also kills the good bacteria, which means if bad bacteria were to develop there would be no good bacteria to keep it in check. Also it destroys a lot of the nutrients which is the reason you want to feed raw to begin with.

I included a list of raw prepared diets on the Approved Products page








There are other ingredients that you can add into your diets that I will cover later in this series.



Next in the series: How to Source and Switch to raw food.