Bella's been on raw food for about 2 months now - I'd recommend the Britbarf email group as you can get alot of helpful info from that. I'm still settling down with her diet - at the moment she gets a meat meal in the mornings (I either give Nature's Menu, or mince from the butcher that I add a spoonful of blended veg to - I make up 100g portions in advance and freeze them), then in the evenings a meaty bone - have just got brave enough to try chicken wings again, she's also getting fresh rabbit and had her first lamb breast last week.
I supplement with Dorwest's Keeper's Mix (which has kelp and alfalfa amongst other things), and alternate with salmon oil and cod liver oil (which has added Vit E). Bella did have a bit of dry skin after her spaying etc so that's why I upped the fish oil and it's much improved now (only 5 days since I upped it).
I'm a real worrier with bones so I'm bashing up the chicken wings and rabbit, and hanging onto the lamb breast ribs to make sure she chews them - she is a major gulper! I give non-weight bearing, meaty beef bones to clean her teeth but am hoping to try some pork ribs or something this week - alot of people advise against beef bone because it's too hard - so far no problems with Bella as she doesn't actually eat much of the bone (what she does is teeny weeny chips) and doesn't try to bite on the bone itself, it's more scraping at it to get every last bit of meat off.
I also add an egg to Bella's meals once or twice a week, and garlic 4 or 5 times. She seems really well on it - she'd had recurrent ear and eye infections before and since switching to raw has had none of these at all, ears as clean as a whistle (even the vet's impressed!) and no sore eyes at all. Her anal glands seem to be improving - alot less scooting and rather than them just getting more and more full and painful, they will express themselves (not with words or music, obviously
) when full if she licks at them, which I'm taking to mean that they are starting to work a bit more like they should, they're definitely not causing her pain any more, she used to kind of whimper and scoot, now she just does the occasional scoot and occasionally empties them herself - I'm hoping if we up the bone quantity a little bit more that it will sort them out for good.
Bella's 9kg and I've been working on the 3% bodyweight per day for her food but she's put on 200g so I'm putting it down to 2% and probably going to put her onto one meal a day, as otherwise she only gets a mouthful of food at each meal.
Good luck with the new diet!
