Basil's Dog Food and other 'ready prepared' Barf style foods

[jmanagh]

Hi All,

I had a leaflet for this food arrive with my Basil's Tuffie today and wondered if anyone knew anything about it or had used it. Here is a weblink to their website:-

www.basilsdogfood.co.uk

It has got me somewhat intrigued as I have become all too aware that many people support raw feeding and advocate it's benefits.

Personally, I do not have the time or fridge space to prepare foods from scratch and have thought of perhaps using 'prepared' raw meat feeds. I know this probably isn't as ideal as preparing from basics.

My main reason for investigating this further is we have a Papillon (18 months) who we are struggling with to maintain his weight. He simply doesn't want to eat what I put in front of him. I have tried all the premium brand foods you can name dried and wet from Nature Diet, Barking Heads, Fish for Dogs, JWB, Orijen and at the moment Royal Canin. The vet cannot identify a reason or health problem. I rang his breeder as a last resort and she said she had changed from Fish 4 Dogs and gone along the Barf root and would never go back although she did rave about F4D as a commercial food.She feels that her dogs are at their best ever and she has bred for 30 years or more.

Sorry for all the waffle but I am really interested to hear from anyone that uses prepared raw feed and if you changed from processed commercial pet feed, have you seen the benefits. I'd be grateful if you could let me know which company you use too.

Gosh, I feel like a right pain at the moment, posting so many questions!  You have all been wonderful 

[jaybee]

Bingley has been on raw for about 4 months now.

We use NaturalInstinct, which i suppose is classed as a 'prepared' raw food. We used to do  it ourselves, which worked out cheaper, but switched mainly because it is less complicated for the people who look after him when we work. They were always worrying about giving him other raw foods, but with NI they find it really easy and convenient. TBH I didn't really find 'preparing' my own food that much of a hassle, just a matter of taking a freezer bag out the freezer. NaturalInstinct is great though, I would really recommend it. It is more costly than doing it yourself, but Bingley loves it.

Before we moved to raw, Bingley had been on a couple of different kibbles. We had lots of issues in the toilet area, he had extremely soft stools almost continually, anal gland issues and bad wind. He suffered from itchy skin and terribly runny, teary eyes. All completely cleared up now. We switched hoping this might improve, and it has just been the best decision we ever made. I read up on BARF and raw feeding quite a bit before we switched, and just all round I am much happier with him being on raw. Now i've switched I wouldn't go back to kibble. The benefits have just been above and beyond what we expected.

[Pudding]

my friend used this company
http://honeysrealdogfood.com/

[elaine.e]

William and Louis have been raw fed for about two and a half years. William was 5 and Louis was about 7 months when I made the switch to raw. The main reason was that William had always been prone to itchy skin, ear infections, lip fold infections, anal gland problems and occasional vomiting and sloppy poops (sorry) for no obvious reason. I'd tried him on various kibbles and the only one that improved the problems was Burns.

The difference in William was immediate and amazing. The only remaining problem of the ones I've listed is that his anal glands still need emptying every few months, but that's because his are in the wrong place (variously described as floating or too high by different vets) and simply can't empty naturally.

My first 2 Cockers, born in the late 1980s, were fed a mix of raw meat and biscuit mixer all their lives and thrived on it. Kibble was fairly new to the pet food market then and only a few varieties were available and generally not very popular. By the time I got puppy William in 2004 it seemed that all vets were promoting kibble and denigrating raw food. William was my first kibble fed dog and I can't see myself going back to feeding exclusively kibble ever again.

I've never heard of Basil's before but I've looked at their website and it looks good. I use Natural Instinct http://www.naturalinstinct.com/ and it's the same quality ingredients but looks to be a bit cheaper than Basil's (although I haven't done a full comparison of all the varieties or delivery costs).

I also buy from other sources and make my own mixes for them but Natural Instinct is easy, convenient and good quality.