So Fern is still alive and kicking then?
Oh yes very much so Joules. It was all quite an anticlimax really (sorry Penel -couldn't resist the choice of word
). It's the run up to feeding BARF that is the scary part. Once you've begun it isn't nearly as stressful as you thought it would be.
Hurrah, isn't BARF fun? 
Yup
Fern had about 150g of chicken mince & whizzed veg that evening. She sniffed and ate slowly, seeming to savour every mouthful, licked the bowl clean and went back for another lick after a few minutes just to make sure. Afterwards I gave her a piece of turkey(or a giant chicken's
)neck. I wasn't too sure about these as they appear to be cut crossways quite thinly and as a consequence are swallowable whole. I did however hear a couple of quick crunches before it disappeared and it didn't make a reappearance so I guess it was OK...
BARF Day 2 & an encounter with Real chicken Wings.Fern had the first of the A.M.P.chicken wings an hour or two before her usual dinner time as we had been out for a long run and I felt she was hungry. I was a bit taken aback to discover that frozen chicken wings for working dogs come with some feathers still attached
and, compared to the tiny little supermarket variety, it was huge
and had extra bones sticking out of it. Having weighed it and found it to be about 175g I was a little confused as to how much meat I should feed her that night. Rachel (IWLass) feeds Molo according to the barf club guide
http://www.ukbarfclub.co.uk/nm/anmviewer.asp?a=19which is 100-150g of meat per 10kg of dog with bones and veg on top of that. I was going to follow that as a guide too. Fern is 11.25Kg and that meant that she should be having 120-175g of meat per day.I had no idea what proportion of the wing was bone and what was meat
. I eventually decided that it really wasn't that important, that in the wild, dogs don't eat for days sometimes and they certainly don't weigh their prey before they tuck in
.
It took Fern a little longer to pluck up courage with this one. Although she sniffed it interestedly, I had to encourage her to 'take it' several times before she became brave enough to take up this weighty feathery thing -that seemed very much like a part of the young fluttery feathery things she is always being told to 'leave' when out on walks on the shoot. After much 'go on, good girl, take it- goood girl!' s she crunched it all down feathers an' all.
Dinner that night consisted of approx 120g of heart chunks, and a small piece of turkey neck for pud which was devoured in exactly the same manner as the night before - perhaps a little quicker or am I imagining it? The heart chunks seem quite fatty, which would not be welcome in many a human diet, but having read my barf books I now know that fat is good for dogs, in proportion of course.
She also had a raw carrot later, only I have to feed the first few inches to her in slices one at a time, or she will just wander around with it in her mouth and then drop it usually just where you are going to trip over it
. Once she's been fed the thick end she will take the rest off to her basket and crunch away.
I noticed tonight that as soon as I removed the whizzed vegetables from the fridge and took the top off the container she was up and sniffing....
Her whole body was trembling with anticipation as she excitedly ran her nose from side to side
To be continued....
taken out of context this could be rather saucy
That all depends on what your normal reading material is
. 'Seek and ye shall find' Penel
