I thought I would share my raw feeding experience with the board to encourage those just starting out, and maybe help someone along that is experiencing troubles.
I started raw feeding years ago because I was concerned with the crap my dogs were eating, and I had a dog with some severe skin / coat / ear issues. I think most people come to raw feeding as a solution to a problem, and rightly so. gut health is where the health of the animal is centered. A healthy gut, populated with all the right bacteria and having a proper ph goes a long way towards the overall health of your dog.At the same time, the gut not having to deal with large particles of indigestible food means it can do it's thing without interruption or inflammation.
I started by reading all I could find on the subject. The internet offers a multitude of raw feeding sources of information. I was pretty overwhelmed by the abundance of conflicting information. Everyone has a theory about what is "right" or "balanced." I came to the conclusion that dogs survive very well on their own in the wild, and no one weighs out the ingredients for every one of their meals. This can't be too hard to get right. I mean, people eat wildly varying diets over the course of a month, and thrive. As long a good basic nutritional needs are met, the small details are trivial IMO.
I used Raw Feeding as a guide, and it was very helpful. Lauri breaks down raw feeding into very simple terms and offers a system that is easy to follow.
I was pretty nervous about the transition period. I started with chicken backs, no skin, watched the poop, did everything "right." It was interesting to me that at first, the dogs struggled with eating. They were all so used to little bits of food that it took them a while to figure out how to eat real meat. They would get confused and try and lick it to death, or shake their heads about when they got a piece of something that felt weird in their mouths. They caught on pretty quick and it was time to graduate to skin on backs.
This posed the first real problem for one of my dogs. He's a big fella (115 lb Cane Corso) and he got used to just crunching up a back a few times and swallowing it. Well, a big ole piece of whole chicken skin with fat attached didn't agree with his tummy, and up it came after about half an hour. Of course, he was right in the middle of the carpeted living room, and my wife was sitting right there. He proceeded to chew it into a couple of pieces and swallow it again.
At least he cleaned up after himself.
Through the early days, when switching to chicken quarters and then adding other proteins, there were definitely some stumbling blocks. The dogs had to adjust to things that their bodies had never had to deal with before. A small bout of loose stool when adding liver, super hard poop when bone levels got too high for too long, explosive squirts when I used a bad of dehydrated beef liver for a long training session after feeding liver that day. All normal in the transition period. Every dog was different.
There was also a detox period, where some things that I was trying to alleviate with the raw diet actually got worse. Fama blew her coat, got an ear infection, was scratching like crazy, it was driving me nuts! She was also overweight when I got her (back) and was in the process of losing burning up those fat stores that (IMO) contained those histamine producing agents. She went on ozone blood treatments, a round of pred, and about 3 months of diphenhydramine to keep her from going insane.
Then, about 5 months in, things started to really click. I got a system down for processing large amounts of food. I got all the right equipment for weighing, grinding, stuffing bags, cleanup and associated processes squared away. The supplements started really kicking in too. I feed FEEDSentials and Sunday Sundae regularly. I also use several of the Carmspack oil supplements occasionally. Anytime I was feeding anything besides wild game, I would (and still do) add FEEDSentials. The dogs were eating anything I threw at them vigorously and not having any digestive issues. Poops were solid and crumbled into powder after a week. I was adding proteins regularly without any side effects.
However, I was working really hard at feeding my dogs. I weighed everything they ate. Tracked everything in excel. It took me as long to prepare dog food as people food, and I didn't have to cook it! Something just didn't seem right, so I took a step back, mentally, and thought about what my dogs needed, and how to deliver it to them in a way that worked for everyone involved.
Some people, and they very well may be smarter than me, would argue that perfect calcium / phosphorous balance is important for every meal, that certain bones should be avoided, that only organic fresh killed kosher meat is good enough for their dog. Whatever. I know that dogs don't pick and choose specific amounts of each type of organ when they consume an animal in the wild. They don't have spreadsheets and calculators and white papers. They eat stuff and thrive. So, I started taking a much simpler approach to feeding. Balance over time.
I started raw feeding years ago because I was concerned with the crap my dogs were eating, and I had a dog with some severe skin / coat / ear issues. I think most people come to raw feeding as a solution to a problem, and rightly so. gut health is where the health of the animal is centered. A healthy gut, populated with all the right bacteria and having a proper ph goes a long way towards the overall health of your dog.At the same time, the gut not having to deal with large particles of indigestible food means it can do it's thing without interruption or inflammation.
I started by reading all I could find on the subject. The internet offers a multitude of raw feeding sources of information. I was pretty overwhelmed by the abundance of conflicting information. Everyone has a theory about what is "right" or "balanced." I came to the conclusion that dogs survive very well on their own in the wild, and no one weighs out the ingredients for every one of their meals. This can't be too hard to get right. I mean, people eat wildly varying diets over the course of a month, and thrive. As long a good basic nutritional needs are met, the small details are trivial IMO.
I used Raw Feeding as a guide, and it was very helpful. Lauri breaks down raw feeding into very simple terms and offers a system that is easy to follow.
I was pretty nervous about the transition period. I started with chicken backs, no skin, watched the poop, did everything "right." It was interesting to me that at first, the dogs struggled with eating. They were all so used to little bits of food that it took them a while to figure out how to eat real meat. They would get confused and try and lick it to death, or shake their heads about when they got a piece of something that felt weird in their mouths. They caught on pretty quick and it was time to graduate to skin on backs.
This posed the first real problem for one of my dogs. He's a big fella (115 lb Cane Corso) and he got used to just crunching up a back a few times and swallowing it. Well, a big ole piece of whole chicken skin with fat attached didn't agree with his tummy, and up it came after about half an hour. Of course, he was right in the middle of the carpeted living room, and my wife was sitting right there. He proceeded to chew it into a couple of pieces and swallow it again.
At least he cleaned up after himself.
Through the early days, when switching to chicken quarters and then adding other proteins, there were definitely some stumbling blocks. The dogs had to adjust to things that their bodies had never had to deal with before. A small bout of loose stool when adding liver, super hard poop when bone levels got too high for too long, explosive squirts when I used a bad of dehydrated beef liver for a long training session after feeding liver that day. All normal in the transition period. Every dog was different.
There was also a detox period, where some things that I was trying to alleviate with the raw diet actually got worse. Fama blew her coat, got an ear infection, was scratching like crazy, it was driving me nuts! She was also overweight when I got her (back) and was in the process of losing burning up those fat stores that (IMO) contained those histamine producing agents. She went on ozone blood treatments, a round of pred, and about 3 months of diphenhydramine to keep her from going insane.
Then, about 5 months in, things started to really click. I got a system down for processing large amounts of food. I got all the right equipment for weighing, grinding, stuffing bags, cleanup and associated processes squared away. The supplements started really kicking in too. I feed FEEDSentials and Sunday Sundae regularly. I also use several of the Carmspack oil supplements occasionally. Anytime I was feeding anything besides wild game, I would (and still do) add FEEDSentials. The dogs were eating anything I threw at them vigorously and not having any digestive issues. Poops were solid and crumbled into powder after a week. I was adding proteins regularly without any side effects.
However, I was working really hard at feeding my dogs. I weighed everything they ate. Tracked everything in excel. It took me as long to prepare dog food as people food, and I didn't have to cook it! Something just didn't seem right, so I took a step back, mentally, and thought about what my dogs needed, and how to deliver it to them in a way that worked for everyone involved.
Some people, and they very well may be smarter than me, would argue that perfect calcium / phosphorous balance is important for every meal, that certain bones should be avoided, that only organic fresh killed kosher meat is good enough for their dog. Whatever. I know that dogs don't pick and choose specific amounts of each type of organ when they consume an animal in the wild. They don't have spreadsheets and calculators and white papers. They eat stuff and thrive. So, I started taking a much simpler approach to feeding. Balance over time.