Raw/natural Chitchat

[Tru Borders]

This may have been answered somewhere before but I can't find it.

Then again, it's a pretty daft question so maybe no one has been silly enough yet....

I know that you shouldn't feed cooked bones to dogs because of splintering but what about frozen bones? Are they likely to splinter? I have been feeding frozen bones to the boys and they don't seem to mind one bit but a friend said that it was dangerous.

Now I'll just

Hey MrMac

I dont feed frozen bones .... no reason though, but im sure I have read many people post about feeding frozen as it takes the dog longer to eat. example is a dog that doesnt chew its food. If its frozen, they have to work to eat it as its so cold.

I dont believe they splinter when frozen, but hopefully someone in here who has fed frozen bones will be able to give you a definite answer.

[huski]

Doesn't heart fall into the muscle group rather than the offal group?

Yes, that's what I've always been told - but its still great to feed At least my dogs actually quite like heart, unlike liver/kidney etc

[oonga]

Huski have you tried the mincing up yet?? and mixing it in with the heart??

what about the spleen and brains and stuff have you tried that yet??

[yellowgirl]

Hi all! Nice to see some new people here ;)

Neats, are you feeding the VAN 'complete mix'? If so, I'd say take that out of the diet, the high amount of grain might be contributing to Lucy's problems. I couldn't find Vitalife kibble, do you have a link to it? I can just imagine their faces when you gave them the yoghurt . Glad they liked it in the end.

Lindadiosa, all the best with Esmeralda! The generally accepted amounts for raw feeding are 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% organs (5% of which is liver). I follow this fairly loosley and also include my other ingredients. The recommended feeding amount is 2-3% of the dog's ideal adult weight per day, for pups this would be per meal. Your pup should be on 3-4 meals until 6 months when you can reduce it to 2 meals per day. At 12 months you can reduce it to 1 meal or divide the amount into 2 meals. I prefer to give 2 meals per day.

You are so right about all the conflicting information out there! In the end, all you can do is listen to the many and varied opinions, put it all together, shake it around a bit, and then just do what works best for you and your dog

Avindie, yep mix it up a bit. Sounds like you've got a good plan going there

Oonga, I saw beef lung and lambs fry at woolies yesterday. Butchers should have a bit of variety too. I've had no luck sourcing green tripe here. I've found an American company that does a tinned version but they don't sell here. They're looking for a distributor and I'm thinking about importing the product to Australia. I guess it really depends on how much demand there is for it. Apart from a few of us on DOL, I'm not sure what the demand is. Ziwipeak seems to be the closest thing available, although it's mixed with other meats as well.

Mrmac, I'd maybe feed larger bones if they were frozen, not smaller bones like chicken or turkey though. Not sure why, I just think they'd be more likely to splinter. BTW, there are no silly questions in this thread, we're all here to learn

WildatHeart, just use what you have access to. There's no need to feed every single organ especially if it's a pain trying to find them . I can't see myself ever dishing out a lump of brains for dinner :D

With the amounts, based loosely on the 10% theory, if you're making up about a kilo of food, you'd be looking at around 50g liver and 50g of another organ. Heart can be used as an additional nutrient rich meat.

:D It's getting hard to keep track of everyone here these days! Hope I haven't missed any questions. Hi to everyone! Great to see so much interest in our little thread

[Staranais]

Lindadiosa, all the best with Esmeralda! The generally accepted amounts for raw feeding are 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% organs (5% of which is liver). I follow this fairly loosley and also include my other ingredients.

Be aware though that when people say to feed 10% of the diet as bone, they don't mean to feed RMBs as 10% of the diet, as RMBs are generally only 1/3 to 1/2 actual bone. So for example, if you were wanting to feed 10% of your diet as bone, using chicken carcasses, you'd make 20 - 30% of the diet chicken carcass.

Most prey animals contain around 10% actual bone, which is why this figure is recommended. I think a little higher is better for puppies - like I said, I aim for 40% RMB - and wouldn't really want to see anyone feeding under 25% of the diet as RMB to a puppy. JMO, as always (but one I will bully my clients with when I get into practice!)

I should also say that I'm sure Yellowgirl knows the difference between bone and RMB, just wanted to clarify for others who may not.

[oonga]

OK so Staranais would a more accurate break down be if feeding meatier RMB such as wings, lamb necks, marylands etc...

to feed say 60% muscle meat and 40% RMB??

[huski]

Huski have you tried the mincing up yet?? and mixing it in with the heart??

what about the spleen and brains and stuff have you tried that yet??

So far, I haven't needed to mince it up, chopping it finely and mixing it with sardines or minced meat seems to work

I haven't tried spleen or brain yet, I wouldn't have a clue where to get them - I am always on the look out though!

The dogs had raw pig trotters this last week and they LOVED them - they were great as it took the dogs ages to get through them. I will definitely be feeding them again. I got a bag of six for $3 from a local butcher.

Staranais, or anyone who feeds raw based on the prey model diet, when you aren't feeding RMBs, what meat do you feed? Most of the meat I feed the dogs comes from RMBs, but then again I do tend to follow more of a BARF based diet (which is also what my holistic vet advises). My dogs don't like roo meat so I sometimes just feed them beef mince mixed with vegies or yoghurt or sardines or whatever, to give them a change from the RMBs.

Edited August 8, 2009 by huski

[yellowgirl]

Staranais, looks like you're our 'go to' girl (cheers hun ), so I have a quick question :D . Do you know what the calcium content is for bones? How many mg of calcium would 100g of just bone contain? If you have a link that would be great, the USDA Nutrient Database obviously doesn't contain bone analysis and I'm not sure where to find the info.

[Staranais]

Staranais, or anyone who feeds raw based on the prey model diet, when you aren't feeding RMBs, what meat do you feed? Most of the meat I feed the dogs comes from RMBs, but then again I do tend to follow more of a BARF based diet (which is also what my holistic vet advises). My dogs don't like roo meat so I sometimes just feed them beef mince mixed with vegies or yoghurt or sardines or whatever, to give them a change from the RMBs.

Hi Huski, I feed mostly lamb heart as my meat source, though will sometimes feed lean lamb or beef muscle instead if I can get it on special. As for amount, by weight, I'm feeding just over 35% chicken RMB, nearly 50% red meat, 4% liver, 4% kidney. And the remaining 5 - 10% is a mix of yoghurt, canned fish, porridge, veges, any other organs I can occasionally get my hands on, etc. Can't get roo over here. Not sure if that's what other more orthodox prey model feeders would do, I feed a kind of weird hybrid between a prey model/NRC values diet.

Yellowgirl, I think that depends on the bone (density, degree of mineralisation, etc). The only data I have is for chicken necks and backs.

Chicken necks, they are about 30% bone by weight, and contain about 1400mg/100g, putting the amount of Ca in 100g of actual bone at 4600mg. For chicken backs, these are about 40% bone, and have about 1200 mg/100g, putting the amount of Ca in 100g of actual bone at 3000mg.

For other bones, I don't know sorry. Terrestrial mammals might be quite different to birds?

[Staranais]

Oh just found a link for you through the uni library database. A study analysed the amount of Ca in lamb bones, found it to be 100g Ca per kg of bone (10,000mg per 100g of bone). Ca:P ratio of lamb bone was around 2.1:1. They say other studies have found cattle to have a similar amount of calcium in their bones to this, and have found sheep to have up to double this amount of Ca sometimes (20,000mg per 100g of bone).

It's "Concentration of Ca, P, Mg, Na and K in muscle, fat and bone tissue of lambs of the breed German Merino Landsheep in the course of the growing period" by G. Bellof, E. Most and J. Pallauf, Journal of Animal Physiology and Animal Nutrition, 2006.

So that puts the amount of Ca in chicken bone at probably about 3000 - 4500 mg/100g, and the amount of Ca in lamb or beef bone at probably 10,000 - 20,000 mg/100g.

Hope that helps.

[Got Spots]

Hi all

Vitalife:

Kangaroo meat and Kangaroo meal. Whole grain sorgham,white rice flour, barley, oats, kangaroo liver and ,eat gravey, soa protien, canola meal, canola oil,garlic,rosemary extract,mixed tocopherols,(natural antioxidents) amino acids, sea salt, fructo-ohligosaccharide, vitamen C, E, Ferrous sulfate, Zinc oxide,Niacin(vitamin B3), calcium pantothenate, copper sulphate,vitamin A acetate, Thiamine (vitamin B1), pyrixine,Hydrochloride, (vitmain B60, vitmin D,supplement,, Polate and folic acid, vitamin K,selenium supplement, vitamin B1 supplement,, manganese oxide, Biotin,Potassium lodide, and cobalt carbonate.

The website I found - http://www.masterkarn.net/enduro_hypo_and_snax.html

Price:

1.5kg - $11 - lasts me 3 weeks with 2 whippies

### Australian made and owned ### Added bonus

Yellowgirl you are so right about the VAN -- I stopped it the other night b/c too lazy to make it up (night shift + flu) and just used the vitalife kibble - huge improvement in skin in just 2 days

Looks like the pup will be getting the VAN - no problems with her apart from naughtiness

I

[yellowgirl]

Yes, it did help Staranais! Not with solving my problem, but helpful for comparison purposes . My problem is that Sarge still won't eat bones properly, so I was looking up the calcium content of other foods to see what I could supplement with for the time being. The short story is that nothing has anywhere near as much calcium as a proper bone! :D . The annoying thing is that I knew that, but not by how much, so I couldn't help myself and had to do the comparisons! :D

The highest raters were cheese (728mg), cereals (373mg), sardines (382mg), salmon (212mg), yoghurt (189mg), parsley (150mg), and spinach (100mg)... BUT, that's per 100g!!! So you'd need 400g of cheese or 36 tubs of yoghurt or 200 sprigs of parsley to equal the minimal 100g of chicken bone!

Quite a waste of an evening I think!

Definitely going to have to get some ground carcasses. I went to the shopping centre that Lenards was in yesterday and there was an Optus shop there instead! So, will have to hunt down some other pet mince with bone ;)

[yellowgirl]

Hey Neats, glad to hear that Lucy is doing better without the VAN . Just wondering about the dry food... it does have a lot of cereals/grains listed after the initial meat. There could be just too many undigestable carbs in there for her system.

Excerpt from http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=betterproducts

"Carbohydrates may originate from grains (rice, wheat, barley, oats, corn etc.) or alternative sources like potatoes, sweet potatoes, tapioca or peas. The claim that all carbohydrates in commercial dog food are nothing but fillers and can not be digested by dogs is incorrect - properly cooked (as in extruded and baked dry foods as well as canned foods) they are highly digestible and valuable sources of energy.

The tolerance of amounts and types varies, some dogs do better with more carbs in their diet than others, and some do better on grain-free foods with alternative sources.

For certain health conditions it is beneficial to avoid high-gluten grains like barley, wheat, rye or oats and favor low gluten ones like rice, millet, amaranth, quinoa and sorghum.

Quality is also important, since grains deemed unfit for human consumption (often contaminated with mold) can legally still be used for animal feed.

Whole, unprocessed grains (also listed as "ground" or in "meal" form) retain all the nutrients in the bran layer, the original fat content and the endosperm. Grain fragments and flours are incomplete and may have already lost much of their nutritional value during processing and storage. Some manufacturers include one fragment (most commonly brewer�s rice) to lower product cost, which is acceptable if whole grains or starchy vegetables are also present. Be wary of products that consist mainly of fragments and flours. Flours are highly refined and while not harmful, contain less valuable nutrients and more refined carbohydrates than whole ground grains.

Be careful of "splitting" of ingredients, such as for example rice, rice flour and rice bran all appearing in an ingredient list. Added together they would appear much higher on the ingredient list."

Not sure what eat gravey or soa protien are :D . The closest thing I could find to 'SOA' is Sucrose octa acetate, and I sure hope it's not that!

If she keeps improving now that she's off the VAN, it may be that the extra grains in that product were tipping her system over the edge. If she still continues with the allergies, it might be worth thinking about a totally grain free kibble (or even a kibble free diet ). Fingers crossed that she keeps improving ;)

[Staranais]

Yeah, there's really nothing like bone for calcium.

You could always get ground bone powder for Ca, or I've heard of people drying then grinding up egg shells and sprinkling them over their dog's food for the Ca? Of course, the further you get from feeding actual prey, the more careful you've got to be that you're giving the right amount of nutrients (instead of just eyeballing everything and going "yup, looks like prey").

I suspect soa protein is a just misspelling of soya protein? It's what they put in casserole style dog foods to give it the appearance of having meaty chunks in it, similar to tofu I think.

[laffi]

Hey Neats, glad to hear that Lucy is doing better without the VAN . Just wondering about the dry food... it does have a lot of cereals/grains listed after the initial meat. There could be just too many undigestable carbs in there for her system.

I agree. Way too many grains in Vetalife for my liking.

[First Time Puppy Owner]

Ok well I went on an expedition yesterday to Jack Purcell's (Virgina - Brisbane) to see what they had on offer. I found they had minced chicken frames for $1.30 a kg, beef, lamb and ox hearts, lambs fry (which I gather are livers), chicken giblets (? ) chicken livers, pork tounges, cheap chicken wings and drumsticks in bulk, turkey wings, lamb shanks, and 5 kg vacuum sealed bags of roo.

This is going to be my shop for the boys I think!!!

[yellowgirl]

Virgina - Brisbane

That Cannot be the name of the town!! . Did you miss out a vowel there somewhere?

Back on topic... Sounds like a great find, congrats!

[miniluv]

That sounds great, I will have to get down that way myself. I got half pig heads today with eyes, brains and tongues and they wouldn't have anything to do with them

[Tru Borders]

Virgina - Brisbane

That Cannot be the name of the town!! . Did you miss out a vowel there somewhere?

Back on topic... Sounds like a great find, congrats!

BAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAHHAHAHA

Omg im so juvenile!!!

[laffi]

Ok well I went on an expedition yesterday to Jack Purcell's (Virgina - Brisbane) to see what they had on offer. I found they had minced chicken frames for $1.30 a kg, beef, lamb and ox hearts, lambs fry (which I gather are livers), chicken giblets (? ) chicken livers, pork tounges, cheap chicken wings and drumsticks in bulk, turkey wings, lamb shanks, and 5 kg vacuum sealed bags of roo.

This is going to be my shop for the boys I think!!!

FTPO that sounds like a FANTASTIC selection!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am jealous