Shall I start? I'll start.
There's a few ways you can go with raw. There are a few completely mindless ways of doing it. Pre-prepared, in a number of different formats.
http://www.tryhealthypaws.com/ is a good one, and comes with lots of different meat sources. Your typical beef and chicken and turkey, but also salmon, venison, etc. But man, it gets expensive.
http://www.mountaindogfood.com/ is a cheaper version but only comes in chicken and turkey formats. You are asked to add a kelp supplement which is pretty easy and not expensive.
What I'm seeing more and more of are pre-packaged supplement meals, usually freeze dried. You add your own meat and water and voila! food for a week.
http://www.urbanwolf.cc/ is one I learned about recently. Again, you add the meat. I think this is a very neat idea and want to learn more about it. I don't know what the price point is like. There are others like this out there, one is available by the Volhard people, mentioned below.
Then there are diets you can follow, formulated by others. I follow a slightly modified version of the Volhard Diet for Tungsten, as it is what my breeders use and recommend. When he was younger he got a breakfast that was natural oatmeal and some supplements, and his dinner was meat based.
Now he is on his single meat meal at night. To make things easier on me when I bring home his ground meat I package it into 12 ounce amounts and freeze them individually for easy thawing in the morning. His dinner consists of:
- 12 ounces ground meat
- safflower oil
- vitamin C/scorbate
- blackstrap molasses
- vitamin e
- vitamin b complex
- yogurt
- cod liver oil
- apple cider vinegar
- sea meal (in place of kelp)
- brewer's yeast
- garlic oil capsule
- calcium citrate (in place of bone meal)
- wheat germ
- wheat bran
- alfalfa
Every other day he gets an egg, and a couple times a week ground up fruit or veg. One night a week he gets cottage cheese instead of meat. And a few nights a week he gets a raw bone. Sometimes soup/marrow bones, sometimes chicken backs or turkey necks. Lucky duck got a lamb loin chop last night. He also gets organ meat (usually liver) at least once a week.
It SOUNDS like a lot of work, but a little bit of prep once a week makes the actual feeding very easy. It only takes a couple minutes, if that, to actually assemble it into his bowl. To make things easier I pre-measure out the meat, and if I'm in a pinch for ground fruit or veg I use baby food.
I don't know that I agree that a dog's diet has to be COMPLETELY grain free, as there would be very small amounts in whatever they would be hunting for themselves. So the wheat bran, germ and alfalfa are very small amounts. I also think that fruit and veg should be a part of the diet, again, from what they would ingest naturally. I'm not a fan of RMB only diets. They don't feel right to me. I have discussed this diet with vets and they have liked it.
I don't know that I want to use it forever even though everyone is happy with his condition.
Hopefully Gina comes along and tells us about her diet which I want to know more about also.
