Raw feeding (again sorry!)

[~Jilly~]

I have been considering for some time the option of changing Bella over to raw feeding and after reading some of the threads on here I've decided to take the plunge.

She never liked dry food (I think we tried them all) and after eventually settling on Naturediet (which she seemed to love) we thought we'd cracked it but recently (I believe they've changed the recipe?) she has been refusing to eat. We stuck it out and refused to feed her anything else until she ate her dinner's but over almost a whole week she'd barely eaten anything so it's given me the push to make the change.

Anyway, I thought I'd start off (a bit less scary!) on the frozen packs from the pet shop. She has tried the Prize Choice one's and seem's to like them (apart from the fish one which she refused to even go near). She has also tried the Nature's Menu one's, the blocks and loose mince, and loooooooves them.

My concern is whether she's getting the balance of food's that she need's just eating these. The Prize Choice one's are just meat so I understand that they're no good on their own but the Nature's Menu one's are meat/veg/rice - is that enough?

I've tried her twice with a chicken wing but she's not remotely interested. To be honest, I find this a bit bizarre because if I'm preparing raw chicken (breast) for us to eat her nose is normally going ten to the dozen and when I've given her a little bit in the past, she's always seemed to love it but she will not go near the chicken wings, I even took a piece of the chicken off the bone for her in case she was just daunted by one big thing/crunching the bone but she wouldn't even eat that - do wings smell different to breast? Or is she just wary of the bone do you think?

Does she need to eat bone? How to I encourage her to do so?

Is there anything else she needs to have to balance her diet?

Any advice greatly appreciated 

[Penel]

Hello 
Mine don't like the blocks of fish either !  tins of pilchards in tomato sauce are their fish treat once a week.
The blocks of Natures Menu that have veg and grain in as well are fine although dogs don't reallllllly need grain in their diet.
The blocks do have ground bone in them, so theoretically you could just feed those, add some veg, and you'd have a complete diet there.
If you want to feed bones though - like chicken wings - try flash frying them - like 30 seconds on each side in a really hot pan just to release the juices - or warm it up in hot water - or slice the skin so that the flesh is revealed.  Most dogs succumb to one of those three tips. 

[Petra]

Hi Jilly

Keep going with the chicken wings...
When I changed Dill over to raw, I gave him 1 chicken wing every night.   He would lick it, carry it round the garden and for the most part just ignore it...
After a week though, he would eat them, even though 1 chicken wing would take him over 30 minutes...

Now, 3 months on, he will have 3 small chicken wings for his dinner, and all 3 of them are gone in under a minute...that is 30 seconds per wing!!
Crunch crunch crunch and they are gone....

I feed the blocks, as they contain bone, and just add some whizzed veggies myself, aswell as the occasional raw egg!!

Enjoy the raw feeding - Dill had been on raw for 3 months and we have not looked back!!

[Claire]

If you want to feed bones though - like chicken wings - try flash frying them - like 30 seconds on each side in a really hot pan just to release the juices

I do this with liver when I feed it to Ruby - she only has it maybe once a week or once a fortnight but she won't touch liver unless it's been cooked ever so slightly.

First time I gave Ruby a chicken wing I handed it to her, she dropped it on the floor, and looked at her empty bowl, looked at me, looked at her empty bowl again, looked at me...and scowled.  It was a definite scowl .  She eventually gave it another go, and it took her about half an hour, but she ate it and now when I get her chicken wings out she jumps up and down like a kangaroo - she loves them!

What she has adored from the start, is raw egg - shell and all.  I crack it for her and put it in her bowl outside...only because if I give it whole indoors she wants to run and eat it in her 'treasure corner' (behind the sofa on the lounge carpet).

Oxtail she took to quicker than chicken wings, but that may have been because I introduced it later down the line.

I would try lean mince - turkey or beef is what I use - if she's still reluctant with the bones.  Sometimes I have leftover gravy which I put on Ruby's mince - she loves that.

Good luck.

[Petra]

Claire, where do you get your oxtail from?  And in what form (whole, chopped, fresh, frozen...)

Would love to try Dill with that...

Dill won't touch liver either, but have not tried it flash fried yet..

[Claire]

I live in London with no decent butcher's shop - or pet shops for that matter - anywhere nearby (I think rents are too high so most places are big chains, I'm sad to say) so most of Ruby's food comes from the supermarket.

However, there is a butcher's stall at a small local market on Saturdays.  He doesn't have oxtail on display, but does stock it.  They will chop it up to whatever size you want.  I use the bigger bits (usually from the higher up bit of the tail with more meat on) as a part of a meal, along with veg/fruit.

The small bits of oxtail (that can be only thumb length and maybe an inch and a half in diameter) I use say instead of a Kong - she'll chew on a bit like that for an hour quite happily, and it keeps her occupied without overfeeding her.  Initially I was worried about the bone being small, but she doesn't swallow it - when she's had every last morsel of meat of it, she tosses it around the room for a while !

[clairep4]

I've tried my Bella on oxtail but it always upsets her tummy (I get mine from the butcher - I'm in London but very lucky to have a fab old fashioned butcher in the next street).

Bella never really got on with chicken wings and chicken bones in general have taken a long while to make it into her diet as whole pieces. I used to bash them up and put them through the mincer - gradually did this less and less and finally this month she's on whole pieces of chicken with the bones intact and doing fine, but she's been on the raw diet for about 9 months now.

I use the nature's menu blocks of tripe or beef and tripe - she's not very keen on offal so I have to sneak liver and kidney in with some cottage cheese or she turns her nose up, but she loves the tripe blocks. She has tinned fish - usually sardines - once a week, that's her Sunday breakfast and she looooooves it.

Glad to hear you've taken the plunge, Petra! 

[bluegirl]

The meat I use is raw chicken, turkey, rabbit, and lamb usually and occasionally beef and belly pork. I use offal ie heart, liver, kidneys etc and raw eggs about 3 times per week. I use tuna or salmon about 1-2 fortnightly. The bones I generally use on an almost daily basis are chicken wings, drumsticks, thighs, legs, lamb ribs and l use duck legs, rabbit, poussin on a less regular basis but that is mainly due to lack of source. I give large meaty recreational bones containing marrowbone weekly.
All the meat, offal and  bones I get are from local supermarkets and markets. I also do not use any sort of mince I just cut up meat into large pieces for the dogs to chew themselves.

[Densil]

Try this ploy with Bella.   Give her a chicken wing and tell her its a dead bird that you found on the beach.  She might want to roll in it first, then bury her snout in it, then lick your face.  With Lamb, you could tell her its fox poo and hey preston, same result!   

On a serious note, breast of lamb is ideal, it has the right ratio of fat to meat, and if you get the thin side of breast, the bones are more like cartilage and are very soft and easy to chew.  The type of fat in the lamb will give her a lovely glossy coat.  Try to avoid pork unless its cooked.  (for some reason raw pork doesnt agree with a dogs digestion)  My last dog was fed a varied diet.  Sometimes raw meat, sometimes biscuits, sometimes tinned food.  Whatever was available.  After all, dogs are scavengers by nature.  I have to say though that he really loved raw meat and would make all kinds of pleasure noises when eating.  My dad is a butcher and when the dog went there to stay he would get nothing other than slightly gone off lamb, and marrow bones to chew.  No biscuits or treats.  He would come back full of energy, looking really bright eyed, lovely white teeth with a really glossy, silky coat .  The downside was that he did tend to have "bone breath" but it soon went away.  He lived until he was 14 so it obviously did him some good.

Persevere and I'm sure you will be pleased with the results