Embarking on the raw feeding journey can be a transformative experience, whether you're just starting or have been feeding your dogs this way for years. With the ever-evolving science of canine nutrition, it's only natural to feel a bit overwhelmed by the changing landscape. To ensure your dog's diet is in top shape, we've created a straightforward blog to help you determine if any enhancements can be made.
Do I need to add anything else?
The basics for feeding a good raw diet are:
Meat, bone & offal/organs (for a wide variety of brand and protein choice we recommend using an 801010 mince as a base as that has meat, bone and offal in)
Up to 10% of the diet as fruits & vegetables (keep root vegetable at no more than 4% IF you feed these as they are high in starch & sugars) OR a good General Health supplement
Feeding a bone broth designed for dogs or home made
Are there optional extras I can give?
Below are some of the FAQ’s that our most experienced raw feeders in the Facebook group Raw Feeding for Dogs Made Simple (UK) have.
I make my dogs food / DIY for my dogs is that ok?
Yes, as long as you can source a good variety of foods to do this, as per the below, and follow health & safety guidance around freezing
I feed only wholeprey, is this ok?
It can be, as long as you are able to source a wide variety of wholeprey. The recommendation is to feed 4-5 proteins a week from across the 3 groups of Red meat, white meat & game meats. We also recommend feeding from across all 3 protein fat groups, low, moderate & high. As long as you can achieve this, and balance out the stools fine, that's absolutely fine to do.
I feed 1 brand or 1 protein every day, and always have. Is this ok?
Some say this is ok, however looking at the science, dogs in the wild would not eat 1 food source day in, day out, so through raw feeding we have a duty of care to strongly recommend not feeding just 1 food source to your dog/s. Another risk of this is that over time, an intolerance can build up in a dog's body, it can take months or even years to reach “boiling point”. It is most commonly seen in dogs who are fed 1 protein day in day out, or who have been fed kibble regularly during their life. Therefore, if you feed a variety of proteins in their natural state of raw, it is reducing the risks of building up an intolerance to 1 protein as you alternate the foods fed so nothing reaches significant enough levels to cause a reaction.
When it comes to feeding just one brand of food every day of your dog's life, we recommend reading our blog on Brand & Protein blindness where we explain why we do not recommend doing this.
In order to take advantage of offers / deals, you can of course choose a brand a month or week to use though and balance it out by rotating each week/month, or you can choose a variety from a raw pet food supplier and rotate as regularly as possible
My dog can’t eat any birds, is that ok?
This is the biggest misconception in the canine nutrition world. Yes, some dogs will truly have an allergy to a protein, however it is actually incredibly rare. The majority of dogs who cannot eat chicken in its cooked food, can eat it in its natural form of raw (from our Facebook groups posts this is approximately 90%). This is because cooking meat changes the structure of the protein, so the body of the dog can often see it as being an invader and trigger an immune system response as a result.
Of the tiny proportion who do have a reaction to chicken when fed it raw, we find on average 8 out of 10 will be ok when fed a High Welfare / Organic / Free Range chicken options such as Cotswold Butchers Block. This is because the reaction is actually often to what the bird has eaten (farmed birds are fed corn to fatten them up for market) or how stressed a life it had (caged, overly vaccinated birds are more stressed so the protein is a poor quality), rather than to the bird itself.
This therefore, in theory leaves about 2 out of 100 dogs, who are truly reacting to chicken in its raw form. But the plot thickens even more so as we find that 50% of these are actually ok once a huge focus has been carried out on gut health. This is because of a condition called Leaky Gut Syndrome that can mimic intolerances and allergies, causing excessive itching, vomiting, diarrhoea and more. This is where the gut has been in a state of stress, causing inflammation. This inflammation causes the gut lining to stretch and create tiny holes allowing food particles to pass through into the bloodstream, where they shouldn’t be, so the body launches an immune response against these invaders.
So if you fall into this very rare 2 out of 100 category and have found a reaction occurs even with feeding a small meatball size of Cotswold butchers block chicken, that’s ok, following our Gut Reset process can help.
My dog eats tripe every day with no issues, yet this group seems to be against tripe, why?
After 2 out of the 3 group owners found their dogs had reactions to tripe, we endeavoured to research it as everywhere we turned we were told it was an incredible food to feed.
What we learnt can be found in our blog Tripe - The Good & The Bad
Therefore, you will see that we are NOT against feeding green tripe (unbleached, raw), but if your dog is overly itchy we do recommend removing tripe for 12 weeks from the diet as it is a food high in histamine, and itching is a sign of too much histamine in the body.
I give furry treats to defend against worms, they’ve never had them so I assume that’s enough protection?
We recommend reading the blog The Truth about Rabbit Ears to learn about the full facts around another large misconception in the raw feeding & natural health community.
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