A few Questions for RAW feeders please.

[Miss_Critterized]

Hi everyone

How are you all? I have been feeding Alvar on raw diet for a little while now, and I thought I had a good handle on it but after talking to some people, I'm now confused again. I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong, they are don't know what they are on about or both?

I have been feeding Alvar 3% of 40kg but will probably be increasing this as I believe he will be around 40kg when I weight him this week. I found if I feed him a tad bit more then 3% of his body weight, he is a lot happier.

Anyway at the moment he is getting

Breakfast= 70g liver, 35g kidney, 100g heart, 300 beef

Lunch= 400g beef or 400g bass fillet or 400g wild salmon (usually canned)

Dinner= 35g tripe, 140g bone (usually from chicken), 325g chicken.

He also gets 1 egg 3 nights a week (one of those nights he gets the shell also), he also gets pig hocks from the butcher and the odd apple or banana here and there.


Does this sound about right? Liver, kidney and tripe are the only organs I can get easy where I am, and hearts, but then I was told that heart was more muslie then organ and I can give him as much as I like of it. Then I got told that that is not the case and I'm giving him to much.

Also what type of meat do you all feed? As its getting really expensive for me to feed raw, I'm paying around $130+ a fortnight on food and he isn't even full grown yet. Someone said to give him mince meat to help with the cost factor. But is mince meat any good? The last thing I want to do is go back to kibble but at the rate I'm going I'm not going to be able to afford to feed raw once he gets bigger.


Is there anything I should add/take away or I can swap for something cheaper?

Thank you for any help or suggestions you can give.
Nic

 

[angelbears]

Heart is a muscle and a very good meat to feed your dog. Feed as much of it as you like. Not knowing what your minced meat is comprised of I can't be of much help there. Some people don't like to feed ground meat because it can have extra bacteria but I feed it every once in a while.

 

[Sadies Mom]

How old is Alvar? I do not feed raw, but I think I have read here to feed 3-3.5% of their expected adult weight. Please, correct me if I am wrong (I am sure y'all will)

 

[musicdeb]

Generally, you should feed the dog 2-3% of the expected weight. Generally, we follow the 80/10/10 rule for daily/weekly feeding 80% meat, 10% raw meaty bone, and 10% organs. If the dog weighs 150 lbs (sorry I do not kg or g) then you would feed the dog 2.5 to 3.5 lbs of food per day. You then do 80% of 2.5 lbs of food is meat, 10% is raw meaty bone, and 10% is organs. You do not have to be exact but approximately those figures.

Titan weighs 115lbs and I feed him 2-2.5 lbs of food per day. He eats chicken leg quarters, chicken legs, chicken feet, chicken hearts, chicken gizzards, chicken livers, turkey drumsticks, turkey necks, ground turkey, pig tails, beef livers, beef kidneys and whatever I can find cheap in the beef department. Beef tends to be expensive in the U.S.

I spend about $100 a month on raw food for Titan sometimes I may approach $110 but it is a lot less than kibble which was costing me about $130+ per month.

Hope that helps!

 

[ruthcatrin]

Sadies mom, the "usual" is 2-3% but it varies from dog to dog, I know of some who eat 6% cause they're so active!

MissCritterized: heart is muscle (ok, its an organ, but for raw feeding purposes its muscle), feed as much of it as you want to make up your meat portion. Mince/ground is often frowned on because the grinding processes addes potential exposure to bacteria, BUT I don't personally see any other reason not to feed it. Without knowing more about what makes up your mince I can't say more than that, is "mince" our equvilient of "ground beef" or the like?

Watch the canned fish, here in the states that often has a high salt content, otherwise nothing else is jumping out at me for changes, if I think of something else I'll say so!

Cost wise. I've never been to Australia, but here in the states: some slaughter houses and processers will sell to consumers, they require you to buy in bulk, but its often WAY cheaper per pound. Sometimes you can get stuff from small farms directly. SOMETIMES stores will sell their "out of date" or ALMOST out of date meats really cheap if you ask. Check for meat/food wholesale companies, often they'll sell to consumers too though again you have to buy in bulk. Also I've had great luck with craigslist (I have no idea if there's an equivilent in Aus) getting meats that people bought and stashed in the freezer and then forgot about and now don't want to eat cause they're freezerburnt. Don't be afraid to let it be known that you'll take those meats, most people here will give them away for free, or almost, just becuase they're so thrilled its going to be used.

 

[Miss_Critterized]

Thank you for all your replies

At the moment I feed Alvar 3% of 40kg which works out to be about 3.1 pounds, each day. Because he has the BA in him it's hard to guess just how big he will get, by taking his weight now, deviding it by his age and times by 52, he should be around 72kg, but as we all know they don't grow on a 12 month cycle so that could be very far off his end weight. So I usually weight him at least once a month and add 5kg to his weight and feed him 3% based on that. So for it is working well, he isn't all that active, he plays fetch in the morning, goes for walk/plat time with pup friends in the afternoon and sleeps the rest of the day/follows me where ever I go lol. He will be 7 months next week so I will be getting him weighed sometime this week but I'm guessing he is around the 40kg (88.1 pounds) mark now so time to up his food a bit.


If I can use as much heart meat as I like, that will help with price a lot, It's only $5.00 per kg. Where chicken Breast is between $9-12.00 per kg, thigh is $8-10.00 per kg, legs and wings are $4-6.00 per kg. Beef is anywhere from $9.00- $25.00+ per kg. Pork and lamb are around these prices also. So if heart can take up a nice chunk of his meat in take, the price I'm spending per fortnight sound hopefully go down, fingers crossed

We don't have Craig's list here but we do have gumtree and freecycle, so I might put something up on them. My only problem is I have enough room in my freezer to hold two weeks worth of his food plus our food and that's it. So I can't really buy in bulk, and there isn't anywhere right near me that sells in bulk either.

Alvar loves heart meat so he will be happy to get some more of it. I think it was actually you Ruthcatrin that told me I could use as much heart meat as I like when I first started feeding raw, but then I got told by 2 other people that it wasnt good in big quantities same as liver, then I got worried that I was doing it wrong and should make sure. The other 2 people feed mostly beef mince and eggs to their dogs. Which actually brings me to my next question, how many eggs are ok? At the moment I feed Alvar 3 eggs a week, once with shell and twice without. Is this ok? Should I give more/less or stay with what I'm doing?

I heard that egg shells more then once a week for a growing dog isn't good for them. But they feed there dogs 3eggs a day with shells, and told me that it would be better for him if I gave him more. So far nothing they do is anything like the stuff I have read up on or had answered by anyone on here, so I'm very hesitant to follow anything they say. But I prefer to check and make sure that I'm doing the right thing by Alvar.

Thank you again for all your help

 

[musicdeb]

Those who told you too much heart would cause cannon butt are assuming heart is an organ meat. Too much of the organ meats will cause cannon butt. I'm not sure about eggs because I do not feed Titan raw eggs.

BTW, your meat prices are outrageous!

 

[ruthcatrin]

Egg shells are calcium, so you do want to watch his intake of them. Raw eggs are a very good source of a HUGE list of things, however you may not want to feed them with each meal as there is a protein in the white that binds with a specific B vitamin so you don't want to screw up his absorbtion of that. What you're doing sounds good to me.

If you have room to put a 2nd freezer those places are often good places to find one cheap. We put ours in the garage.

If he loves heart go for it, Apollo doesn't care for it unfortunetly.

And thats ok, it gets confusing some days lol, but if you asked your doctor they'd tell you heart is a muscle too.