For Those Who Tried Barf

[becks]

KK, what have you changed from going 'by the book' to now, so that the diet is working for your dogs?

[Joan of Arc]

Like Lab Lady our Labs didnt do well on the total BARF thing. However we have always fed a relatively raw diet anyway. We have one boy who is atopic so he gets very little biscuit but like the others he gets meaty bones, mince, chicken frames, flaps, diced beef, kangaroo, venison, sardines, eggs, cod liver oil, all the good things. They get a combination of any of these or some of these on any given day but a typical meal would be a small amount of biscuit, a piece or two of diced kangaroo or beef or a chunk of mince and topped off with a meaty bone.

Labradors are good 'doers' so you have to be careful how much you feed them.

But the Pharaohs dont take too well to the kangaroo until they are bit older.

We are fortunate that we have a Pet Deli here and he's pretty reasonabley priced, plus we buy in bulk so I think he looks after us.

[hopenfox]

Hopenfox- Between all three dietary types, have you noticed a change in costs?

Hi tashnchief,

I used to get much of my dry food free as winnings at Agility trials, so I didn't actually pay much for that.

I think BARF was similar in price to dry/processed though. But lets not forget all that intensive hard labour!

Prey Model seems the cheapest to me. It works out at about $1 per day per (17kg & 20kg) dog on average - sometimes it's only 50 cents a day or less, sometimes free, sometimes $3 when I buy something special. As time goes buy you discover which places in your neighbourhood have the best deals. I also have access to whole wild rabbits for free from a hunter.

hopenfox

[KitKat]

KK, what have you changed from going 'by the book' to now, so that the diet is working for your dogs?

Now they get no suppliments, no vegies, no offal, no fruit - just meaty bones...lol and one night it might be more meat then bone, the next more bone then meat, the next balance of bone/meat - just depends on what i haul out of the freezer. They semi regularly get kibble (uncle albers) and occasionally get a tinned meal. They also get a cup or two of el cheapo kibble tossed out into the yard to find for breakfast between them most days. And that's it...lol - seemed the less effort I put into it the better they looked

[Just Midol]

I just don't find it a feasible option here as sourcing a variety of meats at reasonable prices is really quite difficult.

How do others in the Brisbane/ SEQ area do it?

I only have two dogs to feed on BARF so I don't have to buy a lot.

Yesterday for eg I bought four chicken frames and 1kg of chicken wings, it was less than $5 for the lot.

I make up several kgs of BARF mix and the meat costs me no more than $6/kg, vegies and fruit is cheap and I get a tin of sardines for 55 cents to add in too. The offal is cheaper than the mince. That lasts for three weeks as I feed it with lots of other RMBs.

If I had more dogs to feed I would probably buy a standing freezer and buy everything in bulk. You can buy in bulk through Canine Country.

Yep, I do. I buy from Big Dog in bulk!!! I go through a 2kg log of mince per day sometimes more!!!!

I don't have time to make my own ...between working full time, caring for 5+ dogs and showing ...who has time to cook for themselves let alone the dogs! LOL

It is all the other stuff that is the 'new trend' eg: Prey model raw etc.

As I have mentioned above I think you would break the bank trying to feed some of this stuff to more than 1-2 dogs. Either that or your catching it, killing it and growing it yourself

In all seriousness, I don't use or recommend to my puppy buyers to do solely barf or raw feeding until there dog has finished growing. Too many probs growing large breed dogs carefully as it is.

I would be terrified that the pups are not getting the right nutritional balance for growth.

I would be interested to hear if anyone has raised their pup on pure raw/barf diet?

I raised a large breed dog (A GSD) on barf, he is active as well. Probably more excersize than most do.

He is fine, everyone who has met him says he is fine. My main vet says he is fine. My backup vet is just weird.

He does need huge amounts though. Almost 10 times what my huskies eat.

ETA: That's home made barf. Mince + Bones + Fish heads.

Edited February 28, 2009 by Just Midol

[blacklabrador]

I've always used it with lots of success. Both on my dogs and on rescue dogs.

The only time I've ever put a dog on full kibble was when I had a very fast growing labrador pup. I put him on Advance large breed puppy with nothing else. His growth continued at a very fast rate and he developed severe ED. I am not blaming the food by ANY means but I wonder if slowing his growth by feeding bones would have lessened the severity of the problem somehow. I wish I'd trusted myself and raised him on raw.

My dogs are lean and healthy with great muscle tone. Shiny coats and lots of energy.

Here's a picture of my girl I took today. It's not a great picture by any means (and her face is dirty ) but you can see how lean she is, yet nicely muscled and sturdy. She's going through a coat change so her tail is thin. She's been running with me and she's really well conditioned. Fed BARF which is changed around a lot, chicken mince/wings/pieces, lamb flaps and brisket and whatever else comes in the bag. They get veges 1 - 2 times a week with an egg. Fish oil, green barley powder and that's about it!

Edited February 28, 2009 by Pointeeblab

[Tilly]

We tried BARF but unfortunately it was costing us far too much to keep weight on the dogs (we had a rottie and GSD at the time). They were just not doing really well on it.

We went back to feeding 3 to 4 cups of premium dry food and about a kg of meat/chicken etc. Our GSD still gets a barf type mix which is portioned up and frozen and then feed as required (basically 12kg of lean beef mince, 6kg minced chicken frames (some of the fattier skin is added during the winter only), 3 tins of mackeral & veges ... and some extras) but it isn't his whole diet.

[JENCOL]

I fed BArf for a about 2 years to my GSD, she thrived on it. My Collies well they didn't, I couldn't keep condition on them and even though they where given more food, they wouldn't eat the extra as it was too much for them. 2 years ago I was completely fed up with trying to keep weight on the Collies so I started giving some dry food to see if that would help, which it did. I have fed raw and Eagle PAck Power for the last 2 years and am not about to change as I am happy with how my dogs do on it.

[Kirra_Bomber_Zeus]

I would be interested to hear if anyone has raised their pup on pure raw/barf diet?

Hi tashnchief

I am doing this at the moment. I have 3 dogs and we started feeding raw when our middle dog developed lots of allergies at 6 months old. This is the first time I have raised a pup from 8 weeks on pure raw diet (not barf, we cant use barf because all of the flavours have some sort of beef or beef organ in it which one of our dogs is highly allergic to).

My pup (Zeus) seems to be looking really good so far (he is almost 14 weeks). He gets RMB's, lamb, goat or roo as muscle meat (mostly lamb so he gets enough fat), lamb livers or kidneys, mashed cooked veg, sardines or salmon and cottage cheese. I have noticed that he seems to be growing very much 'in proportion' if this makes sense - as in he doesnt look all gangly legs like most pups do at this age I understand that this is because his energy is coming from the protein, not carbohydrates...

So, anyway, seems to be working for me so far

[New Age Outlaw]

I just don't find it a feasible option here as sourcing a variety of meats at reasonable prices is really quite difficult.

How do others in the Brisbane/ SEQ area do it?

The son of a friend of OH works at a meat works; they can get meat cheap. He gets me ox hearts for about $1.60 kg and kidneys about $1.40 kg...the only catch is I have to buy a whole box at a time and they aren't cut up (the hearts are sliced open and fanned out). So, OH and I cut and bag them into 1kg lots and freeze them. Last time we got a box of each I think we ended up with about 40 kgs of meat all up. It only took just over an hour to cut and bag it. It's good stuff too - human grade export quality (a lot of it goes to Japan & Europe apparently).