We often get asked if DIY raw feeding is cheaper than buying pre-made raw meals. The answer depends on how you source your ingredients and how much you value your time. Preparing DIY raw meals requires planning to ensure a balanced diet of red meat, white meat, and game meat. With some smart sourcing, you can feed your dog a varied diet affordably..
What is DIY feeding?
DIY feeding involves preparing meals with boneless chunks or minces, and adding your own offal and bone. Variations include Whole-Prey (feeding a whole animal) and Franken-Prey (using parts from different species to mimic a whole animal). Making your own meals can be time-consuming and initially costly, but with the right approach, it can be rewarding.
Steps to Start DIY Feeding
Making up your own meals can be very time consuming, costly at first, and ultimately tricky to balance through variety. We therefore recommend a few steps are taken before you decide to venture into feeding DIY to your dogs:
Start with Pre-Made Raw Diet: Feed your dog a pre-made raw diet for a few weeks or months to build your confidence and understand your dog's needs.
Introduce Raw Meaty Bones: Occasionally feed raw meaty bones and give a bone free meal instead to rebalance the bone content. By monitoring your dogs poop you can keep an eye on whether they need more or less bone content. Don't forget to add some organ meats like kidney (5% of the feeding allowance) and Liver (another 5% of the feeding allowance). Though the odd meal here and there without organ meats will not cause illness, it is advisable to feed organ meats still ideally when they are not included in the food already.
Transition Slowly: Start with DIY one or two days a week to see how your dog handles it. Some dogs might be fussy with offal or need it prepared differently at first.
Once confident, look at using DIY for a day or 2 a week to monitor how your dog handles DIY. Some are fussy with offal unless it's minced into meat for example, others will need it to be lightly flash fried, with the time reducing more and more until they eventually eat it raw.
Now you need to get prepared. We recommend that if you are keen to do part or full DIY you invest in the following items ready (we have linked some items as we get asked for recommendations, we are not affiliated with products, these are just products we use):
Digital kitchen scales including spare batteries
Reusable freezer bags or good Tupperware
A vacuum packer & sealing bags if space is hard to come by in your freezer
A good quality meat cleaver
Strong kitchen scissors
A method for labelling that is freezer proof
A defrosting board to help safely speed up defrosting, especially useful for those who get a little forgetful at times so may forget to get the food out ready
A freezer big enough to fulfil your DIY dreams but ensuring its energy efficiency. A full freezer is apparently more energy efficient than a partially filled one so plan in advance and rotate what you have bought. (Some freezers we have personally used are: Beko Chest Freezer, Hotpoint Chest Freezer, Hotpoint Freestanding Freezer. Please note these are only examples, RFFDMSUK do not take any responsibility for appliances or equipment purchased. Any faulty goods must be reported to the manufacturer or retailer.
Some members ask about a grinder that can handle sinew and some level of bones. The following has been recommended by a game keeper who minces bones for his dogs raw food. Meat Grinder Commercial Electric Mincer 170KG/Hr Stainless Steel Butchers Sausage Maker Cutter Burger Mince Heavy Duty Blades
You are now ready to plan your meals. Your local supermarkets may have some options on yellow labels to help you save, but please follow our fresh food freezing guidelines too and cross check the price per kg with raw pet food suppliers to ensure you really are getting a bargain buy.
There are many raw pet food suppliers who offer a wide variety of choices including for DIY feeding. These can be found here and you may even find some local suppliers using our Suppliers Map which will help you save on delivery fees.
Now you are ready to attempt a DIY day. We recommend sitting and taking the time to plan this as without a clear plan it is easy to go wrong - and it honestly happens to most of us so there is no shame in it, if ever unsure we are here to help.
Remember every dog is different, some handle higher bone, some lower. 10% is just the average amount.
Overall you will be looking to feed:
At least 70% as Meat, including up to a fifth (20% of the meal) as muscle meat like heart, trachea and lung. If you are not feeding plant matter the total meat content will be 80%.
10% bone, using our bone calculator, bear in mind not the full weight will be bone, some will be meat. It's often the case that raw meaty bones will not be as close to 10% of your dog's food allowance as you would like, so we recommend following our blog out the rear end and adjusting food with boneless where indicated by white or harder to pass stools.
5% Liver (this is absolutely essential) unless your dog needs a low purine diet, in which case we recommend working 1 on 1 with a nutritional expert:
Caroline from Canine Holistic Science Academy: canineholisticscienceacademy.com
Louise from Barnaby’s Happy Healthy Pets: barnabyspets.co.uk
Katie from The Pet Diet: thepetdiet.co.uk
Olivia from Batch Cook With Bailey (raw and cooked diet consults): olivia@batchcookwithbailey.co.uk
5% other secreting organs such as kidney, spleen, testicle, brain, sweetbreads or pancreas.
Fruit, veg, seeds, herbs (up to 10% of the meal depending on your dogs tolerance level). If you are not feeding plant matter you should look to add a general all round supplement such as one of the following:
Dorwest Herbs Easy Greens, Dorwest Herbs Keepers Mix, Proflax Flax Range oil (puppy if under 1, or Immunity & Vitality for anyone else.), or River & Wren Botanical Everyday blend
2-3 times a week add raw eggs
2-3 times a week add raw oily fish
Daily we also recommend bone broth be added as this provides additional nutrients which can help aid gut health and joint health
If feeding a high bone choice, be sure to have boneless minces or chunks available to counteract the effects accordingly, some choose to feed boneless either side of a bigger bone day, or feed it as and when stools tell them to - this is one of the reasons you need to spend time learning your dogs tolerance level
A note about Liver: 5% of the canine diet should always be liver, the other 5% of the organ allowance should ideally be another secreting organ. If you feed more than 5% liver, you may find darker coloured stools or looser stools occur.
AAFCO recommends maximum vitamin A is 62,500 IU per 1000 calories.
100g of beef liver is 135 calories, with 16989 IU of vitamin A
100g of Chicken liver has 119 calories, with 11078 IU of vitamin A
So vitamin A Toxicity from too much liver is very rare as overfeeding would have to be excessive.
If you have a Bedlington Terrier, don't over do the liver
There are a few dogs who have problems with copper metabolism and liver is high in copper. Bedlington Terriers are genetically less able to excrete copper. Other breeds susceptible to copper toxicity include Dobermans, West Highland White Terriers, Skye Terriers, Dalmatians and Labrador Retrievers
Organs that are muscle meat, not offal
Generally we think of organs as anything within the body cavity of an animal: Liver, spleen, lungs, gizzards, trachea, green tripe, tongue, brain, kidneys, heart, pancreas, and so on. But when it comes to raw feeding, only secreting organs are counted as offal - though some pre-made minces use heart as an offal it is officially classed as muscle meat.
In fact, heart, lungs, tongue, green tripe, gizzards and trachea are all muscle meat in a raw diet, not organ meat.
NOTE: Some dogs find too much heart causes them to have loose stools or digestive upset. Heart should be fed at no more than 20% of the diet, however many dogs will tolerate less so it is worth starting low and building up slowly to judge your dogs tolerance level.
When it comes to tripe, again some dogs will struggle with histamine responses when fed tripe, please see our Blog about Tripe for more information.
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