[SweetSalem]

I am tossing the idea around in my head of feeding my Sweet girl some "raw food" however I can't get past this thought..... If I feed her raw chicken how does she not get sickk from Samonilla?

 

[SchDDR]

The short answer?
Dogs evolved consuming wild meats, and have a digestive tract that is dramatically different from ours.

Unlike our exceptionally long, twisty digestive tract, our dogs have very short, straight ones. In a strictly raw fed dog, things don't remind in the dog long enough for any bacteria present to have much opportunity to colonize to a degree that they can cause any harm. They also have a significantly different pH, that tends to kill off a great deal of the "bad" bacteria.


However, because of how we live with our dogs, things aren't *quite* this simple.

When we feed things *other* than raw meat, we start changing our dog's digestive processes somewhat.

Carbohydrates [grains] require entirely different pHs for digestion than meat proteins. Additionally, when we feed kibble, we feed a dry product that must first rehydrate in the stomach before the body can begin to digest it.

So, we both take away the dog's natural ability to *kill* bacteria in the stomach, and slow things down to that bacteria has time to hang out and colonize.

Is this a permanent state? Nope.
Usually a good 24 hours, in a perfectly healthy dog, and things revert back to naturally being able to consume those raw foods.

If you decide to feed raw, it's a wise idea to either feed strictly raw, or alternate days. I personally have vet bills to show for having mixed raw and kibble together before I learned better.

 

[Elaine]

Yes, your dog can get salmonella from raw meat, but it's not common. As salmonella is also common in the environment, most dogs already have some immunity to it.

 

[SweetSalem]

Thanks for the update! Good to know.

 

[sable123]

I am tossing the idea around in my head of feeding my Sweet girl some "raw food" however I can't get past this thought..... If I feed her raw chicken how does she not get sickk from Samonilla?

Campylobacteriosis is another raw food born illness but a healthy dog should be able to deal with it. Raw green tripe is another nice raw to feed. Muscle meat just imbalances the amount of phosphorous your dog is eating and adds very little fat.

I have heard about the risk of mixing kibble with raw but it is more an urban legend than anything else. No credible nutritionists buy into this theory. In fact, sled dogs and hunting dogs eat kibble and raw mixed everyday. No issues.

Dogs all over the world eat whatever they can find alive, dead, meat, fruit, vegetables, garbage, jelly donuts and they do just fine.

 

[Denali Girl]

Campylobacteriosis is another raw food born illness but a healthy dog should be able to deal with it. Raw green tripe is another nice raw to feed. Muscle meat just imbalances the amount of phosphorous your dog is eating and adds very little fat.

I have heard about the risk of mixing kibble with raw but it is more an urban legend than anything else. No credible nutritionists buy into this theory. In fact, sled dogs and hunting dogs eat kibble and raw mixed everyday. No issues.

Dogs all over the world eat whatever they can find alive, dead, meat, fruit, vegetables, garbage, jelly donuts and they do just fine.

That I will agree on, my fiance is from Alaska and her brother has a sled dog team, I met the dogs when I was there last October.....OMG do they eat. 10,000 callories a day to be exact and it is a mixture of kibble, fresh fish, fresh meat and it's not a pretty site at all, when I say fish I mean he just cuts the fish up and feeds it.....nasty.

 

[Denali Girl]

Kraftwerk K9, Inc. : Breeder and Importer of Competitive Working Dogs since 1986

Here is a link I found from Kraftwerk, scroll down to the video "what we feed and recommend"

 

[DeeMcB]

That I will agree on, my fiance is from Alaska and her brother has a sled dog team, I met the dogs when I was there last October.....OMG do they eat. 10,000 callories a day to be exact and it is a mixture of kibble, fresh fish, fresh meat and it's not a pretty site at all, when I say fish I mean he just cuts the fish up and feeds it.....nasty.

Denali, Don't guess you would like me to send pics of Ezra eating a mackerel in my backyard, huh? I didn't even cut it up!

 

[Denali Girl]

Denali, Don't guess you would like me to send pics of Ezra eating a mackerel in my backyard, huh? I didn't even cut it up!

LOL I just found it different I guess to see dogs just going to town on fish scales and bones.....an animal like a deer I can see but it was a learning experience for sure.

 

[sable123]

That I will agree on, my fiance is from Alaska and her brother has a sled dog team, I met the dogs when I was there last October.....OMG do they eat. 10,000 callories a day to be exact and it is a mixture of kibble, fresh fish, fresh meat and it's not a pretty site at all, when I say fish I mean he just cuts the fish up and feeds it.....nasty.

Yep, and they eat Annamaet Ultra, Red Paw, National, Eagle Power Pack, Dr. Tim's and Caribou Gold. They also eats cooked grains too to keep the carb level at about 25%-30%, corn, oats, etc. They also feed a lot of beaver meat because the government runs a beaver harvest every year.

 

[sable123]

That I will agree on, my fiance is from Alaska and her brother has a sled dog team, I met the dogs when I was there last October.....OMG do they eat. 10,000 callories a day to be exact and it is a mixture of kibble, fresh fish, fresh meat and it's not a pretty site at all, when I say fish I mean he just cuts the fish up and feeds it.....nasty.

Yep, and they eat Annamaet Ultra, Red Paw, National, Eagle Power Pack, Dr. Tim's and Caribou Gold. They also eat cooked grains to keep the carb level at about 25%-30%, corn, oats, etc. They also feed a lot of beaver meat because the government runs a beaver harvest every year.

 

[SchDDR]

I have heard about the risk of mixing kibble with raw but it is more an urban legend than anything else. No credible nutritionists buy into this theory. In fact, sled dogs and hunting dogs eat kibble and raw mixed everyday. No issues.

So then, please, explain to me why *you* believe dogs are *able* to eat these things.
What process of digestion prevents the dog from being sickened by bacteria in raw foods?

Have you now ceased to find your Robert Abady to be a credible nutritionist?

Large amounts of cellulose (crude fiber) can reverse the digestive processes. It speeds up the passage of food through the stomach and small intestine, lowering its nutritional value, and slows the passage of food through the colon, potentially generating enormous quantities of damaging bacteria and creating widespread allergies.

http://therobertabadydogfoodcoltd.com/Fresh Frozen Complete Foods.htm

 

[sable123]

So then, please, explain to me why *you* believe dogs are *able* to eat these things.
What process of digestion prevents the dog from being sickened by bacteria in raw foods?

Have you now ceased to find your Robert Abady to be a credible nutritionist?

http://therobertabadydogfoodcoltd.com/Fresh Frozen Complete Foods.htm

Dogs can pass bacteria for a few reasons including stomach acid twice as strong as humans, a shorter digestive tract and an immune system that is centered in the gut (ie natural probiotics).

I don't what you are talking about with regard to Robert Abady. Most of his trashing of kibble diets was in the 1970's when kibbles were very bad products. The company does in fact make a decent kibble and recommends adding fresh food to all the dry diets.

If you were right about mixing kibble with other foods then every dog that had canned meat, egg yolks or yogurt would roll over and die.

Urban Legend.

 

[SchDDR]

Yes. And cigarettes aren't cancer-causing agents because not everyone who smokes dies of cancer.

Learn some basic biology if you're going to give advice-
that "twice as strong stomach acid" has to become nearly NEUTRAL to digest carbohydrates, aka, kibble.

And no, Abady isn't referring to kibble at all, he's referring specifically to what happens when cellulose matter [carbs] are fed to a dog.

 

[Denali Girl]

Maybe Lisa will weigh in on this as she seems very knowledgeable when it comes to feeding as well.

 

[Lauri & The Gang]

So then, please, explain to me why *you* believe dogs are *able* to eat these things.
What process of digestion prevents the dog from being sickened by bacteria in raw foods?

I am not the person you asked but I'll answer you anyway.

I believe dogs are able to eat raw meats without becoming sick because nature designed them that way.

Their digestive tract is MUCH short than ours. Where our tract is 25 - 28 feet long a dog's digestive tract is only 2.5 times their length + around 16".

So you are looking at 25 - 28 feet of digestive tract for food to traverse versus about 11 feet for my boy Mauser.

So food has less than half the surface space (as well as less time) inside a dog as it does in a human.

From Wikipedia:

Salmonella enters through the digestive tract and must be ingested in large numbers to cause disease in healthy adults. Gastric acidity is responsible for the destruction of the majority of ingested bacteria. The infection usually occurs as a result of massive ingestion of foods in which the bacteria are highly concentrated similarly to a culture medium.
...
After a short incubation period of a few hours to one day, the germ multiplies in the intestinal lumen causing an intestinal inflammation with diarrhea that is often muco-purulent and bloody.

The bacteria needs TIME in the digestive tract in order to multiply and cause problems.

Because dog's systems are short and faster there is less time for the bacteria to take hold.

That's the somewhat scientific answer. Here's the statistical one.

Over the past 10+ years I have fed my dogs - current, past, puppies, old, healthy and sick - a diet made up of 100% raw meat. Many times that meat was 'bad', 'off' or whatever you want to call it.

Not ONCE have any of my dogs been sick from eating this food.

10 years, 13 dogs of my own, many fosters and over ten THOUSAND pounds of raw meat fed.

Statistically speaking, if it was that easy for a dog to get sick from eating raw meat it would have happened to one of mine by now.

 

[DeeMcB]

(Doing the happy dance) Go Lauri, Go Lauri. It's yer birthday.

Same reasons here. And (before Wikipedia as a source gets rebuked) the information found there has 28 references, many to peer reviewed medical journals.

 

[Denali Girl]

I'm not 100% sure but I think schddr was talking about the mixing and digestion rates of kibble and raw? I may have read that wrong so who knows. I will say I think I learn a lot when reading the food threads cause I am so lost when it comes to food.

 

[SchDDR]

To clear up any possible misconception, I was not doubting for a moment the safety of feeding raw to dogs.

My comments were directed at sable123's skepticism over the risk associated with mixing raw and kibble in the same feedings. The very reasons dogs can safely consume raw are effectively "disabled" by kibble, leaving the dog at risk.

 

[Elaine]

Seriously, if you don't want to feed them together, don't, but there are a ton of people that feed them in the same meal all of the time without problem.

There is zero research on digestion time with kibble versus raw, but transit time has been measured for food. Liquid, fat, protein, bone, and carbs all have different times. So, a dog that has eaten bone, will have it sitting in it's stomach much longer than a dog that's eaten anything else. If you are all worried about something sitting in the stomach or digestive tract for too long, then feeding bones would be the worst.

I hope you aren't quoting anything from a dog food manufacturer that doesn't do any nutritional research and is trying to sell product so will say just about anything true or not, as a factual source?