Gearing up to BARF but is this a bad reaction?

[Rhona W]

Sam - I know it is expensive, but you could try the frozen bags of Natures Menu which is ready-made BARF. It comes in chicken or lamb mince (I think!) with ground bones and veg. already mixed in. That way you know they will be getting a balanced diet, whilst getting used to eating raw at the same time.  My pair ate this for a couple of weeks whilst I worked out what to feed them. 

When I switched to home made BARF, I introduced everything in one week.  Mine have: 4 x chicken wings, 4 x lamb ribs, 2 x offal and veg, 3 x mince and veg (either chicken or beef at the minute) and 1 x sardines/pilchards and egg.
Perhaps I have been lucky in that they love everything and have had no problems with upset stomachs. 

Denise - I always give them the bone meal in the mornings as I thought that gave them all day to digest it and it wasn't heavy on their stomachs over night. Do you think it matters? 

[CraftySam]

Sam - I know it is expensive, but you could try the frozen bags of Natures Menu which is ready-made BARF. It comes in chicken or lamb mince (I think!) with ground bones and veg. already mixed in. That way you know they will be getting a balanced diet, whilst getting used to eating raw at the same time.  My pair ate this for a couple of weeks whilst I worked out what to feed them. 

I think that might be a good idea Rhona. I'm concious that their kibble is running down and I've not got my act together.  This adverse reactions has thrown me a bit. Sapphi is still suffering alot today, woke me up at 5am and had terrible diarrhoea and has all morning.  Max seems to be drying up a bit today. Barney is still fine. 
How lucky is my OH to be greeted by a yukky drive two days in a row!  Keeps him on his toes. 

[Claire]

I think the dogs will settle with BARF if you persevere - it's interesting that it's the youngest dog whose system has had least exposure to kibble that had no problems.  But like others suggested, I would go back to chicken wings in a bit.

As a BARF beginner, I'd start with the following foods:
- mince (I usually buy turkey or sometimes beef)
- tinned sardines or tinned tuna (although neither of these are strictly BARF because they're not raw)
- stewing beef or lamb (they often reduce this in the fridge section of the supermarket)
- lamb's hearts

The above doesn't include bone so add some raw egg as the shell will give them calcium.  Try this for a week and you'll be able to see how they adapt to the food without the panic that they are choking on bones.  Also, it's all available at the supermarket and easy to prepare.

After a week you could be a bit more adventurous and introduce oxtail, lamb with bone in (I get these from the butchers) and some sort of chicken - Ruby eats wings, thighs, drumsticks - anything.  With 3 dogs a turkey drumstick might be a good idea - they're usually just over £1 in the supermarket and Ruby loves them - but you will have to chop it yourself...I've got one of those butcher's thingies but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called.

Later on you could be even more adventurous and introduce other things to see of your dogs like them - kidney, liver, raw fish...Ruby ioves kidney, will only eat liver if it's flash fried (which means she doesn't get it because the smell of this makes me feel nauseous) and raw fish she tends to bury in the garden and try and eat a week later when it's well and truly stinky.

The other thing which occurred to me is that dogs tend to eat very quickly when they're on kibble - wolf it down - and with bones they need to take a bit more time with their food.  It may be the upset tummies were eating too fast, but I was also wondering as you have 3 dogs whether they are eating quick because they're worried one of the others will nick it if they don't.  Perhaps feeding them in different rooms might help or if this is not possible at different times and maybe they'll slow down a bit.

Another reason they may be eating so fast is that this food is very new and exciting.  After a week or so this should calm down when they realise it's not a one-off treat, so that's another reason why non-bone meals may be beneficial for the first week.

I would recommend making the leap in one though, and not feeding BARF one meal and kibble the other.  I promise it does get easier and soon you won't be panicking at all as they crunch through chicken bones - unthinkable now, I know!

[clairep4]

I think that's true about the wolfing the food thing - Bella definitely eats her meals more slowly now so I don't need to worry about her swallowing big chunks of bone - her breast of lamb portions take her a good 5-10mins these days. She used to try and eat them in about 30 seconds at the start... 

[LouiseAS]

I don't want to go off the thread but I'm fairly new to this forum and have been reading this with interest.  Meg is not terribly interested in her complete food and never has been.  I have to add fruit and veg to get her interested.

I may try the suggestions within this post and see how she goes as she loves bones but I've always been told by other various dog owners that bones are a no no.  She also suffers with her anal glands which apparently chicken wings are good for.

[DennyK]

Denise - I always give them the bone meal in the mornings as I thought that gave them all day to digest it and it wasn't heavy on their stomachs over night. Do you think it matters? 

Rhona: to be honest, don't know and not experienced enough to hazard a guess!  It was in Kymythy Schultze's book - she actually advocates only feeding once a day, in the evenings after they've had their walk and rationalised it on the basis that bone is so dense, even when chewed, that they need time to digest it without any meaningful exercise intervening.  But I know one of the experienced BARF'ers said on a post in the last few weeks that she does it like you - in the mornings, so they aren't sleeping on a heavy tum.

Views??

Sam - the Nature's Menu suggestion sounds like a good one to get you started.  Other tips, for when you move to home-prepared stuff:

1.  If you don't have good knives/meat cleaver, then ask the butcher to cut the bones to size - e.g. 3 ribs per portion of lamb breast, two rings of oxtail at the fat end, three rings at the skinny end, chopping marrow bones to size.

2.  Clear space in your freezer for all the individual meal/portion bags before you start!  

3.  Get your freezer bags out, torn off the roll and opened out, plus the tag/tie things torn off and in a pile before you start.  I use the bags to pick up the meat if I'm in a hurry, so that I'm not washing my hands every minute when I need to stir a pot or answer the phone.

4.  Get a clean and dry ice cube tray ready for spooning the blended/processed raw veg & fruit into, cover with cling film and freeze.

5.  Lots of handcream afterwards - one way or another, you'll end up washing your hands umpteen times!

Not sure how everyone does it, but when I have a "prep session", I have it all ready to go (minced meat, bones, whizzed fruit and veg, heart) and divvy it up into portion sizes and into the bags, then freeze each one as a complete meal.  I also use the ice cube tray suggestion of Rachel's, to use up the extra processed raw veg.  Then if I need to buy extra mince, I can thaw a mince-only portion plus a couple of ice cube sized bits of veg.

The first time I did it, took me two hours.  Have now (only seven or so weeks later) got it down to 45 mins - to prep two weeks' worth of food.

Are people feeding an "offal only" meal - like heart or liver - on its own?  I've been chopping it up and adding it to the mince each day in small portions.  Does it make any difference??

Denise

[DennyK]

I don't want to go off the thread but I'm fairly new to this forum and have been reading this with interest.  Meg is not terribly interested in her complete food and never has been.  I have to add fruit and veg to get her interested.

I may try the suggestions within this post and see how she goes as she loves bones but I've always been told by other various dog owners that bones are a no no.  She also suffers with her anal glands which apparently chicken wings are good for.

Hi Louise

Which food are you feeding at the moment?

The bones issue is that any cooked bones are prone to splintering because the cooking makes them dry and brittle, so you're more likely to get splintering and thus possible throat or gut damage.  Any meaty bone should be good for anal glands, from what I've read (thankfully that's one thing Paddy hasn't suffered from!! ) - it's the bone content that bulks up their stools and the resulting "firmness" helps to evacuate the anal glands.  Oh yuk.  Sorry to anyone eating their lunch and browsing COL!

Out of interest for the experienced BARF'ers - are there any raw bones which are prone to splintering and which should  be avoided?

Denise

[Mich]

I don't want to go off the thread but I'm fairly new to this forum and have been reading this with interest.  Meg is not terribly interested in her complete food and never has been.  I have to add fruit and veg to get her interested.

I may try the suggestions within this post and see how she goes as she loves bones but I've always been told by other various dog owners that bones are a no no.  She also suffers with her anal glands which apparently chicken wings are good for.

Hi Louise

Which food are you feeding at the moment?

The bones issue is that any cooked bones are prone to splintering because the cooking makes them dry and brittle, so you're more likely to get splintering and thus possible throat or gut damage.  Any meaty bone should be good for anal glands, from what I've read (thankfully that's one thing Paddy hasn't suffered from!! ) - it's the bone content that bulks up their stools and the resulting "firmness" helps to evacuate the anal glands.  Oh yuk.  Sorry to anyone eating their lunch and browsing COL!

Out of interest for the experienced BARF'ers - are there any raw bones which are prone to splintering and which should  be avoided?

Denise

Not suggesting I am experienced at all but .....
I have found that when feeding a bailey a chicken carcuss I have to be careful which way I split it, because chicken ribs can become very, very sharp if they are snapped off at an angle.

[LouiseAS]

Hi Denise,

She's on Wafcal at the moment because of it's high fibre content and lack of additives.  She also has various vegetables added in (whatever I'm having).

Thanks for the suggestion I may go and see what my local butcher has.

[Rhona W]

Denise - I always give them the bone meal in the mornings as I thought that gave them all day to digest it and it wasn't heavy on their stomachs over night. Do you think it matters? 

Rhona: to be honest, don't know and not experienced enough to hazard a guess!  It was in Kymythy Schultze's book - she actually advocates only feeding once a day, in the evenings after they've had their walk and rationalised it on the basis that bone is so dense, even when chewed, that they need time to digest it without any meaningful exercise intervening.  

Ah, that is the one book I am still waiting on!  It's only been a month.  But to be honest, I wouldn't want to only feed once a day anyway. They seem to be doing O.K. on eating bones in the morning though so I'll stick with it for now. 

Not sure how everyone does it, but when I have a "prep session", I have it all ready to go (minced meat, bones, whizzed fruit and veg, heart) and divvy it up into portion sizes and into the bags, then freeze each one as a complete meal.  I also use the ice cube tray suggestion of Rachel's, to use up the extra processed raw veg.  Then if I need to buy extra mince, I can thaw a mince-only portion plus a couple of ice cube sized bits of veg.
The first time I did it, took me two hours.  

That is exactly how I did it!  Except I used bags for the spare veg. as I haven't got any ice cube trays. It also took me a couple of hours, but I did enough mince and veg. to last a month. 

Are people feeding an "offal only" meal - like heart or liver - on its own?  I've been chopping it up and adding it to the mince each day in small portions.  Does it make any difference??

I feed offal (heart, kidney and liver with a dollop of veg.) twice a week. (When I worked out % it should be 1 1/2 meals a week, but that was too complicated.  )
I don't think it makes any difference if you feed it seperately or mixed in with mince. I'm pretty sure 'The BARF Diet' sample menu has it mixed in a couple of times a week. (I will check if you want me to, but I'm too lazy to go upstairs to check at the minute!  )

[Rhona W]

As a BARF beginner, I'd start with the following foods:
- mince (I usually buy turkey or sometimes beef)
- tinned sardines or tinned tuna (although neither of these are strictly BARF because they're not raw)
- stewing beef or lamb (they often reduce this in the fridge section of the supermarket)
- lamb's hearts

The above doesn't include bone so add some raw egg as the shell will give them calcium. 

If you buy the Prize Choice mince from PAH (chicken or beef) it does contain 5% ground bone.

[CraftySam]

Thanks Claire, Denise, Clairep4, Mich and Rhona for all your advice. 

I'm so glad I've got you all, did anyone elses head feel like it was going to explode when you were trying to get your head round BARF?

Claire - Thank you for the menu for the first week, sounds very good to me! Nice and easy to get my head round. Should they have veg every day too?

Sapphi eats her food within a blink of an eye, literally.  The boys tend to take their time. So I think I might feed Sapphi first on her own and shut the boys out of the kitchen and feed the boys after.  When I gave her the chicken wing she licked it for a bit, not sure what to do, but it wasn't long before she was crunching away and it was gone. Ten minutes later the boys hadn't got that far.  The boys really didn't chew the bones up enough, and Barney really worried me as he hardly did at all, but he was the one thats ok.

Denise - thanks for all the tips on getting set up. Technically I'm not supposed to use sharp knives because of my hand spasms.  Who knows what could happen being let loose with a meat cleaver!    OH will have to be drafted in for hacking duties. 

I'm still waiting for my book with diet requirements info in.  All three dogs are different sizes/weights so they'll each need different amounts I guess.

Mich sent me a tip to freeze the chicken wings (and defrost) before giving them to the dogs. She'd read freezing them can kill off any nasties that are in them. Makes sense to me so thought I'd pass the tip on. 

I need to find a butcher and forge a relationship. Hopefully if I'm feeding the same every week, I could ask him to prepare it all for me, as Denise suggests.

So Louise are you going to switch to BARF with me? We could make the leap into the unknown together!! 

Thanks everyone for all your advice, I really do appreciate it, and I'm sure my pooches will when they get stuck into all together more satisfying meals. 

[DennyK]

Sam

Head was exploding, heart was jumping, the lot.  Can't believe how blase about it I am now, (most of the time!).

On weights/amounts - it's 3% of body weight per day (to include treats).  I worked this out for Paddy and the first few times, weighed everything using a set of scales, so each bag was exactly half of his daily total.  Now - I get a packet of lamb mince from Tesco, it says 480g, I divide it by eye into approx 120g portions, chuck in some offal and veg - bingo.  Like earlier posters have said - they look podgy, you fish out a bit of mince or pick a smaller bone, they look skinny you add some more in over the next few days. 

Go for it!

Denise

[redmal]

And they dont have to have every nutrient ar every meal. As long as they balance out over a week or 2 theyll be fine. In other words, if they get only organs today, no bones or muscle meat, its OK as they will have muscle/bone/fish/eggs etc tomorrow. or the next day or the next or -----

[Claire]

And they dont have to have every nutrient ar every meal. As long as they balance out over a week or 2 theyll be fine. In other words, if they get only organs today, no bones or muscle meat, its OK as they will have muscle/bone/fish/eggs etc tomorrow. or the next day or the next or -----

Exactly.  A lot of people panic about this.  One of the raw feeding books pointed out that we feed ourselves and our children without weighing things out and knowing exactly what nutrients are in everything - it's just about eating a variety and it all being a balance overall.  You wouldn't feed your children on a complete food (if someone invented one) on the basis that if you fed them a diet you made up yourself you'd worry they might not be getting a balance.

When you think of it this way, you realise there really isn't anything to worry about.

In answer to your question, I do tend to give Ruby fruit or veg every day, with her meals.  However, when she snaffles something in the park and gets slightly less firmer poos (sorry if this is too much information ) than normal then I leave out the fruit and veg - usually just for a day - until they are back to their usual consistency.

I give Ruby chicken, turkey or fish in the morning with a little fruit, and beef, lamb or offal in the evening, with a little veg.  I portion her meals in to sandwich bags and put these in to two 4L plastic icecream containers in the freezer - a dinner one and a breakfast one.

This makes it easier for me to ensure I give her a balance without thinking about it.  Whether me or OH feed her, we know which is her breakfast tub and which is her dinner tub, and I also layer the food in a mix and just take the top one...so each layer consists of 4 meals in - a piece of turkey thigh, 2 wings, bit of tukey drumstick, turkey mince, and the layer above is the same, so her meals rotate.  Her offal is kept in a smaller 2L tub and she has this every Tuesday so I remember.

It sounds anal (OK, it is slightly ) but once the initial food prep is done, it is so easy, I don't have to worry about trying to remember what I fed her yesterday, last week etc.  And when I buy new stuff I make sure I put it in the bottom of the tubs so there isn't anything that gets accidentally left in the freezer forever.

Ruby's under a year old, so I may review whether I want to feed her only once a day then - mind you, that's not much of a present "happy 1st birthday Ruby you only get fed once a day now" - not sure she'll be chuffed with that, but we'll see!