Hi, when I was a teenager....a long long time ago I worked for 2 whole days in a factory that made SNAPS dog biscuits (don't think they are around anymore). Even then I remember thinking "so this is what goes goes into dog biscuits it's not even real food! " The one ingredient I remembered most was meat meal which is a powdered blood and bone type product. There was definately nothing resembling meat or food. So I always fed my dogs a cooked stew. With rice and pasta etc.
Then about 5 years ago I went to a talk by Ian Billinghurst and the rest is history, I've since read another book sorry I can't remember who wrote it and have done heaps of reading on the internet. But like most things the proof is in the pudding and my dogs have never looked back, all my fosters have done really well on it this includes a 14 year old poodle who came to me in poor health with rotten teeth, of course he needed vet work on his teeth but still managed chicken necks and then improved out of site and lived until 17. When my own darling dog was hit on the road, the vet treating her guessed her age at 2 or 3, she was 10! I also feed puppies (foster) a barf diet from day one of solids and they thrive on it. With puppies and toothless etc I mix in chicken mince as this has the bones ground up in it so they are still getting the minerals. It makes sense, in nature puppies would eat the food regurgitated by the parents which would contain crushed up bone.
Like others I've done a lot of experimenting and at times thought it was too inconvient, but now I have a system (freezing the food is not recommended but that is one exception I make to add the convenience of commercial food) I have a mincer and make a batch of food about once a week freeze it and thaw one pack a day and add the raw meaty bones, it's very convenient and the dogs love it!
Sorry I got off the subject of why I started on RAW but I'm a real advocate of the BARF diet now!
In case anyone is interested or would like to comment this is what I make up:
My butcher makes up a beef mince that already contains offal so I usually use two parts of that then depending on what type of dog I am fostering add 1 part of either roo or chicken mince.
Then at home I mince: carrotts, greens maybe spinach or boc choy or similar, plus apples or any other fruit.
Then I mix in a small amount of rolled oats, bran, kelp and brewers yeast. A tub of natural yoghurt, honey and sunflower or vegie oil. I mix all this with the meats from the butcher and freeze into meal size serves.
When I feed it's one part this to two parts raw meaty bones, occasionally I add a tin of sardines or an egg.
LD
