# Raw experts????



## Johnny Cone (Aug 4, 2008)

I had been feeding Canidae for a good number of years. With this latest mess of them changing the formula and outsourcing production I initially switched to Innova but have decided to give Raw a try. 

The protein basis of the diet I have begun is raw fresh bone in chicken, turkey, beef and lamb. Feeding chicken backs, necks, wings, leg quarters.turkey parts, lamb parts, and some beef. oxtails, etc. (I am a bit wary of beef bones so I haven't really tried anything but baby oxtails)
I also commonly have ready access to fresh deer meat. So I can feed some of that as well. And.... I have ready access to fish. (I hunt and fish quite a bit) Fish bones make me nervous as well. But I am thinking skin on fillets of oily fish like mackeral, jack crevalle, etc would be good. 

I am feeding organ meat as well. Chicken hearts, gizzards, beef liver (been looking for some kidneys) and I will be able to get some really nice deer organ meat in the coming months. I can get my buddies to save it for me. 

For the "green/organ" meat part of the diet I am doing the following:
I made two batches.... Each a little different.

Batch one...
For the vegetable portion I made the following:
A Big bunch of collards
4 carrots
1 big sweet potato
1 half an apple
1 zuchini 
some safflower oil about a tablespoon
some fish oil less than a teaspoon 
some flax seed ground up a heaping table spoon.
one pound of beef liver 

I pureed this mixture well. Until it was about the consistency of refried beans. 

Batch two....
This one is a little different.

Big bunch of collards
one yellow squash
two sweet potatoes 
small head of brocolli
a pound of beef liver
a tad of saflower oil
a tad of cod liver oil
a tad of vitamin c in crystalized form

I pureed this mixture as well.
I plan on rotating the greens around with whatever is seasonally fresh. There are lots and lots of really nice Collard greens around right now. They seem to all be out of Farms in South Carolina.

I have been rotating the green portion feeding batch one then batch two the following day.

My dogs are a 7 year old Lab Mix and a 15 month old Australian Cattle Dog. Both are in good shape and weight. The lab is a professional pet. The ACD is doing conformation, is training for both herding trials and I just started him on agility as well. Lab weighs 67 pounds, ACD weighs 52 pounds. 

I have been feeding about 2 percent of body weight daily on the raw bone in meat and six ounces of the green organ puree. 
I have also been giving a spoon of cottage cheese and a spoon of plain yogart every other day. And a raw egg with shell every three or four days. I am giving a little bit of chicken organ meat every other day. Like a couple of gizzards or hearts. 


Am I on the right track or do I need to tweak things a bit?


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## Johnny Cone (Aug 4, 2008)

BTW Both of the dogs are already looking really good. So I am curious what improvements I might see.


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## Pascale Breton (Aug 22, 2008)

We feed only raw here and have been for years (22 dogs right now). Be really careful with the fish. Ther are many parisites in fresh water fish that can kill your dog. None I know of in Salt water fish. We'll give them Salmon as long as its never seen fresh water. Also, not too much muscle meat, not enough fat in it. Chicken backs usually still have some organ meat on them and plety of fat. Dogs need fat, not carbs or so the experts tell me.

We use chicken backs, turkey necks, mackerel or tuna, green veggies, yogurt, organ meat, salmon oil, raw eggs (shell and all) and a vitamin.

We try to change up on the organ meat so right now they are getting buffalo till its gone.

Turkey necks make the poops hard, so not too much or they pop out small rocks.

We also use the turkey necks frozen to cool the dogs off after working them in hot weather. Like a turkey popcicle. Sucks the heat right out of them.

Raw takes a little mote time, but not much and I feel safer doing it. Cost is about the same as a quality kibble. Teeth are pearly white with no tatar build up. The dogs are in such good condition my vet has stopped "warning" me about the dangers of raw. If you use human grade ingredients and keep things clean I thing the whole bacteria thing is way over-blown.


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## Maren Bell Jones (Jun 7, 2006)

Johnny Cone said:


> I had been feeding Canidae for a good number of years. With this latest mess of them changing the formula and outsourcing production I initially switched to Innova but have decided to give Raw a try.
> 
> The protein basis of the diet I have begun is raw fresh bone in chicken, turkey, beef and lamb. Feeding chicken backs, necks, wings, leg quarters.turkey parts, lamb parts, and some beef. oxtails, etc. (I am a bit wary of beef bones so I haven't really tried anything but baby oxtails)
> I also commonly have ready access to fresh deer meat. So I can feed some of that as well. And.... I have ready access to fish. (I hunt and fish quite a bit) Fish bones make me nervous as well. But I am thinking skin on fillets of oily fish like mackeral, jack crevalle, etc would be good.
> ...


It's honestly so much stuff that unless you made it up into an enormous batch and sent it off to a lab for analysis, you won't be able to tell what's going on nutritionally. But some general thoughts...

-the cod liver oil is not likely needed since you should be getting plenty of vitamin D from the liver in your organ meat. And vitamin D toxicity is not a good thing. I would up the fish oil (1 gram of fish oil per every 15 lbs of body weight is fine for a maintenance dose). The safflower (or sunflower, etc) is fine for your 18:2 omega 6s.
-I would cook the sweet potato and possibly the carrot before feeding it. Some starchy foods like regular potatoes and sweet potatoes are not particularly digestible and their nutrients aren't as bioavailable until cooked (and yes, dogs have been eating man's cooked foods for thousands of years, so I :roll: the raw only food purists)
-if you feed wild game, freeze the meat at least 3 weeks to kill most of the parasites. Freezing doesn't kill bacteria though.
-you can feed the ruminant stomach of the deer if you like as well (called green tripe). Smells awful but the dogs usually love it. Good source of veggies too if the deer have been eating well. You can dump the majority of the contents out if you like, but don't feel like you have to clean it up other than cutting into manageable pieces.
-for fish, be wary of the salmon from the Pacific Northwest, as has been mentioned. Sardines are probably a better way to go for fish because they are not as high on the food chain as mackerel and are less likely to bioaccumulate mercury, dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, etc. Fish bones are usually pretty soft, there's just a lot of them.


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## David Scholes (Jul 12, 2008)

Maren Bell Jones said:


> -if you feed wild game, freeze the meat at least 3 weeks to kill most of the parasites. Freezing doesn't kill bacteria though.


I've fed fresh water fish on occasion and so far okay but sounds like there is risk. Would freezing the fresh water fish for a few weeks kill any parasites and make it safe?


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## Maren Bell Jones (Jun 7, 2006)

Well, feeding raw anything isn't "safe" per se, and will come with risks, but I make a habit to freeze all my dog food meat for that length of time just as a habit. This is especially true of pork for trichinellosis, which the CDC recommends freezing for 3 weeks:



> [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Freeze pork less than 6 inches thick for 20 days at 5 o F to kill any worms. [/SIZE][/FONT]
> [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Cook wild game meat thoroughly. Freezing wild game meats, unlike freezing pork products, even for long periods of time, may not effectively kill all worms. [/SIZE][/FONT]


From http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites/trichinosis/factsht_trichinosis.htm

Other raw feeding sites suggesting going ahead and cooking the fish first since the bones are still safe cooked (which is basically what you're doing if you're feeding canned fish like sardines or mackerel). This one, I honestly don't know about, so take that with a grain of salt as some of the raw feeding sites are not at all correct.


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## Pascale Breton (Aug 22, 2008)

I wouldn't feed any fresh water fish. Here if salmon are in fresh water there is a parisite which has a parisite, that can kill the dog. The only way to kill it is to cook it well. I don't give the dogs cooked fish unless the fish is pressure cooked. That is like tuna, sardines and mackerel in the can. The bones are soft and safe. Or I just buy canned fish (the easy way). We have a friend that own Charlie Bear Salmon oil and he gives us frozen fish heads which have never seen fresh water and the dogs love them.

Freezing to me is still not safe except for most bacteria as it breaks the cell walls, not so cysts and many worms. I wouldn't take the chance. Hey, I'm paranoid and worm every month just to be safe, but that is just me.


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## Johnny Cone (Aug 4, 2008)

Thanks for the input. I don't freshwater fish. So anything I fed them would be saltwater species. 

I am not sure about the dangers of parasites in wild game. Growing up our hunting dogs regular ate from the gut pile. I would be more concerned about pork. But do not plan on feeding the dogs pork. Much less wild hog.


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## Maren Bell Jones (Jun 7, 2006)

Pascale Breton said:


> Freezing to me is still not safe except for most bacteria as it breaks the cell walls, not so cysts and many worms. I wouldn't take the chance. Hey, I'm paranoid and worm every month just to be safe, but that is just me.


The food spoiling bacteria is not killed by the cold, its growth is just inhibited. In fact, if scientists studying bacteria want to save their samples, they typically freeze them. Some kinds of bacteria called psychrophiles actually prefer the cold and live around the bottom of the ocean near Antarctica and in the sea ice of ice bergs. I am not a microbiologist (thank God), but I'd suspect your Gram positives like Cloistridium perfringens would be harder to lyse.


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## Marta Wajngarten (Jul 30, 2006)

Pascale Breton said:


> I wouldn't take the chance. Hey, I'm paranoid and worm every month just to be safe, but that is just me.


How do you worm your dogs?


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