FEEDING
Choosing a diet is a personal matter and any decision made regarding what to feed should be based upon your own research, do not make choices based upon flashy websites or advertising.
OUR DIET
It often appears that owners seem to think that this is a `new diet` IT IS NOT!!!!!!! It is taking our animals (who are carnivores) back to nature -- back to feeding what their species existed on for thousands of years. It is not a diet per se - it is what nature intended dogs to eat............
This bit is really quite easy – you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to feed a dog! Our diet is based really on what canines eat as a natural wild diet. A rabbit contains a ‘complete meal’. Bones, marrow, skin, fur, flesh, offal and one very important ingredient that modern dogs are seriously lacking – ground down, partially digested vegetation. Depending on where canines live around the world, largely dictates their food supply. They don’t eat ‘complete and balanced’ meals every single day – no more than we do.This concept is a dog food-marketing ploy. How else can pet food be manufactured without making it complete and balanced? Can’t buy different ones for different days, containing different vitamins and minerals? Packs of dogs will share kills and scraps, taking what they want and require over a period of time.The basis of the diet is lots of RAW meat and raw chicken wings, carcasses, boned-out lamb necks or ribs, pigs trotters, and so on. Rabbits (wild from a game butcher) are a favourite! RAW bones are a completely natural food for canines, containing nature's own calcium supply, and plus a multitude of nutrients in the marrow. Salmonella and similar are not a problem to the dog – they have a gut able to cope easily with such things. COOKED BONES CAN BE LETHAL – AND DO NOT DEFROST RAW BONES IN THE MICROWAVE! Whilst this diet provides dogs with much more ‘natural’ moisture than dried foods, (preventing all the water-drinking modern day dogs seem to need to do), it is still essential to provide fresh, clean drinking water at all times. Wash your hands after handling raw meat – just as you would when handling your own food. Some days I also give my dogs a selection of offal, lambs/pigs/beef hearts, liver and kidneys. The idea is to balance the diet out over a period of 10 to 14 days. I give about 6 days of raw, a couple of days of offal and then an occasional veggie day. I feed twice a day, I feed the raw or offal in the morning and chicken carcasses at night.Also they get table scraps depending on the type of meal we have left over beef gravy they love mixed into their dinner. As with any food, the question of how much to give has no answer. Rule of thumb – if they are getting too fat reduce the amount, too skinny increase the amount.
Vegetables contain essential fatty acids, micro-nutrients and vitamins and minerals in a most natural and healthy way. Dogs cannot digest cellulose – fruit and vegetables are made up of individual cells, but unless broken down they pass through the dog in very much the same state as they went in. So, we have to do this for them – in the wild they digest the stomach contents of their herbivorous prey. This consists of ground down, partially digested vegetation just oozing lots of yummy nutrients.To make the vegetables available to your dog it is best to put it into a food processor and blend down to a breadcrumb consistancy, I give a mixture of the following. I give my dogs an assortment of veggies (different colours) but not onions, all fruit the riper the better except grapes. Dark, green leafy vegetables are essential, but as they are bitter don’t use too much. Don’t overdo the dark green varieties with dogs with thyroid problems – a little is alright though. Veggies must be fed immediately before the pulp starts to oxidise. You can make a large amount and freeze it in individual bags. Defrost in the fridge and use as soon as possible! The veggies can be done in a processor, play around with your mixture until you find the ones your dogs love. Feed RAW offal any kind, but lambs or ox hearts, kidneys and lambs liver are great, but do use a mixture, live plain yoghurt, raw eggs, some oils, seaweed, I find Keepers Mix the best for extra vitamins and natural minerals. Mix it all up and feed immediately as raw veggies oxidise quickly losing their vital properties. Dogs love their veggies. You can make batches (I grease 12 small cake tins and freeze them in that and then transfer them into freezer bags) then use as soon as they are defrosted. I often add a tin of pilchards or sardines to the mixture. Don’t think it is a lot of fuss and work – it isn’t! I only have 5 dogs to feed on the diet – but there are people feeding kennels full! The veggies take me 10 minutes to make. We obtain our raw meaty bones from our local farm shop for free they are only too glad to dispose of them. We bag our bones into daily amounts, put them into used supermarket carrier bags and freeze.
I feed all my Dobes on this raw diet, I know what is going into my dog and it has a higher moisture content, they find it more interesting and palatable and it is highly digestable which means smaller stools and hardly any flatulence. Our dogs thrive on the raw, they have good body and muscle tone, good immune systems, small stools, great skin and coats, excellent teeth and gums. The marrow bones from my local farm shop are great they will keep our dogs happy for hours knawing away and while at the same time they are cleaning their teeth .My dogs get a varied mix of meat throughout the week as mentioned above and those meats would include:
Tripe ......................... low protein /high fat
Lamb ......................... high protein /high fat
Beef/kidney .............high protein/ medium fats
Lamb/tripe.................high protein /high fat
Rabbit ........................ high protein /high fat
Chicken........................high protein/low fat
Offal ...........................high protein
The diet is varied due to the differing protein and fat levels. Do your own research into the different meats and their protein and fat levels and what this will do for your dog ie young dogs need the protein to grow while adults although they need protein dont need as much. Also all my dogs get fed raw vegetables from the preparation of our human food. When I need to put on weight over the ribs I feed breasts of lamb once or twice a week. Blitz was put onto this diet at 7 weeks old and she loves it.
Luther gets in the morning
handful of terrier mix(biscuit)
1lb tripe
1lb lamb
pilchards/sardines high in omega essential oils
keepers mix, seaweed and garlic the keepers mix contains vitamins and minerals excellent for the coats, he also has Yumega oils.
His morning meals varies daily from the list above, he only has chicken once a week as he gets very hyper on more. His evening meal he gets 2/3 chicken carcasses depending on the size or a whole lambs ribcase including backbone.
Kastra/Tikka
handful of terrier biscuits
1/2lb meat
pilchards/sardines twice a week)
Keepers mix
Seaweed
Garlic
Evening meal they get 1 carcass each or a breast of lamb.
Blitz
handful of terrier biscuits
1 lb meat
pilchards/sardines twice a week
Yumega Oil
Keepers Mix
Evening meal a chicken carcass or a breast of lamb or small ribcage.
Once a month they have a vegetarian day with no meat not even the carcasses.Twice a week they will all have an Offal meal which will include Liver/Hearts/Kidneys.
