Originally posted by Mikael :

"Hronec whit half a lamb front on 2,8kg, that is "Feeding for Ultimate Health" I think :rock_3 "

Hey Mikael - in my next life i want to become your dog ...is this still possible ??:grins


http://forumbilder.se/images/573201063842P6c60.jpg

Well, Luna got her first taste of raw today (to start, she got two chicken necks) - she loved them. I've only seen one other dog take to raw food faster than she did (Suki- a rescue malinois we fostered for a while, she DOVE into her crate when we had raw for them). I gave her two more necks and she ate them pretty well, too.

I guess she liked them! (The rest of the dogs got backs).

We feed our dog almost exactly like you do, Mikael. Purina Pro Plan (Athletic Breeds lamb and rice) or Salmon for a change + about 20 dkg of raw meat of varions kinds + meaty bones or turkey necks + some of our food: cottage cheese, egg from time to time, some vegetables and fruit.
When we were X-raying her for HD/ED I asked the vet to check her blood and the results were perfect.

We found it funny that our dogs enjoys coffee with milk, but Margo says it's common that wolfdogs tend to like everything their owners do.8)

Mikael, if you lived closer, we could swap meats. I need some deer/venison. :) I can trade you for fur-on whole rabbit, feathered quail, beef, lamb or pork.

There is some balancing involved for 100% raw, but the general rule of thumb is meat/bone/organ in the ratio of 80/10/10, half of the organ being liver, the other half another secreting organ like thymus, kidney or brain (roughly emulates a whole animal).. and roughly half of the meat being red meat for the myoglobin content. It's not a hard rule.. think about how you feed yourself, it's like that.

Certainly not everyone picks raw but just to put this out there in regards to raw not being appropriate, not being proven, etc, there is certainly commercial raw in the states now that has passed AAFCO standards as being complete & balanced, same standards as for dry pet foods.. for all the pet parents who are concerned about it not being balanced. (Nature's Variety, Stella & Chewy, Honest Kitchen, Ziwipeak et al). Course, these companies also jack up the price.. Ziwipeak is about $22 for I believe 3lbs.

Many friends have eased into do-it-yourself raw through the use of the above - we did.

I am also pro-kibble if a person chooses to do kibble. But, at the very least I will never use a kibble that uses ethoxiquin as a chemical preserver, or menadione (synthetic K3).. both substances severely limited in human foods for toxicity but for some reason widely used in pet foods.

And a last bit.. high protein foods like EVO or Orijen have dry-matter meat percentage of ~40%. While this seems high, in reality if this food had the same ratio of water as raw meat, it would be equivalent in protein ratio. This is the same reason why balanced wet dog foods usually have about 7% - 10% protein content, because of the water weight, yet a dry dog food with 7% to 10% protein content would not pass AAFCO standards.

:lol: cool and funny that we feed about 90% the same food :)

Best regards / Mikael

Very interesting, because it seems like at least outside of the US, people use kibble sort of like a supplement & mix.

This is the same in Japan, actually... people do buy the most popular kibbles but almost everyone also home cooks for their dogs and mixes it together. This is how my mother-in-law's dog was fed for all its life, and it lived until it was 17 years old.

:lol: Sorry I live in Sweden and al ready have to much lamb and fur ;-) :lol:

Best regards / Mikael

:shock: Ooooo 17 years I can only hope Hronec will be that old, but my Australian Cattledog got to be 14,7 years old on this kind of feeding :) But I gave him a little bit les meat and more of my own food.

Best regards / Mikael

Too much lamb?! :shock: Is there such a thing????

maybe we're living in the wrong area.......... /jealous/

:lol: Ha ha, I do not know about your next life, but if you can trail and bark you are welcome at any time :p And the raw food is on me ;) :lol:

Best regards / Mikael

:p When you have a full freeze box and have to ask you parents if you can put some food in there’s, than you have to much of all, even lamb :lol:

Best regards / Mikael

If you were in the US I'd take some off your hands! :)

We have an extra freezer for the dogs' stuff alone... but even then, I'm not sure there is such thing as way too much (I just asked my dogs, they agreed). ;-)

I'd love to get an extra freezer for things like buying chicken backs and necks in bulk etc.. but we don't have the room and in south Florida you have a real chance that you may lose your power for a few days duye to hurricanes (although we haven't had any big ones since Wilma in 2005 - knock on wood). Luckily, our fridge is a side-by-side so the freezer is larger than the average one (and the fridge part is smaller).

Interesting tidbits. I have a friend who swears by olive oil in the diet, too. There are some folks who also ascribe to "regional" diets - i.e. feeding Scottish breeds oats and mutton which they would've eaten as they were developed in their country of origin.
Luna has noshed on soup bones and today had her first chicken necks. She tore into them. I have no issue using some raw stuff to supplement from time to time - I am paranoid about "gaps" as I think that there is no way kibble forever totally meets every dog's every need. Whole foods do help assimilate trace vitamins/minerals - things like C break down quickly in prepared foods.
Having studied coyotes in the wild myself, they are very omnivorous whether or not they can digest fruits well or not, they certainly do eat them. Coyotes are the bane of watermelon farmers in NJ! They are known to raid a patch and leave a horrible mess.
The coyotes living in urban areas, like the ones in NYC's Central Park, are fascinating - to me, that's likely how dogs domesticated themselves...

Hey Lunas Mom. I feed a high quality kibble, lamb & rice or venison & rice [Canidae or taste of the wild usually] and mix in at times cooked brown rice, canned pumpkin, teaspoon of olive oil, nutritional yeast, yogurt or a scrambled egg. He'll eat just dry kibble but I think that must get boring day after day so I try to mix it up.
My boyfriend and I are both vegetarians so we never have meat in our fridge but I'll get him a meat treat from time to time since he does love it! [He ate a whole ham once!]
I don't use many supplements for my CsV.. I did more for my GSD [MSN/Glucosemine/Missing Link etc.] I have used Psyllium seed husk, a powder called 'K9 immune dog' and salmon oil from time to time but Flint seems perfectly healthy, great coat, great movement, happy and healthy on his diet alone.
I still give him bones to chew but never rawhides. They gave him very bad diarrhea and he ate them so fast I was worried about intestinal/throat blockage.
His favorite treat though are fruits and veggies! He LOVES tomatos, baby carrots, spinach, olives, apples, watermelon, blackberries, pickles etc.!! :roll:

For those that think dogs can benefit off vegetables & fruits, there is BARF model (contrast to prey model), too. Lots of choices.

Unlike cats which are obligate carnivores, dogs are pretty much opportunistic carnivores. They'll eat most anything they can get their paws on, but their bodies are still built optimally for meat. From time to time the dogs get veggies & fruits here too.. but as a recreational treat, not as a main part of their diet. :D

Originally posted by yukidomari :

"Unlike cats which are obligate carnivores, dogs are pretty much opportunistic carnivores. They'll eat most anything they can get their paws on, but their bodies are still built optimally for meat. From time to time the dogs get veggies & fruits here too.. but as a recreational treat, not as a main part of their diet. :lol:"

Yeah, that´s again exactly the point ... !

You need only have a look at the teeth of cat compared to dogs and you see the difference - cats are much more specialized in being carnivores.

Or for example take bears - and compete the teeth of a brown bear to those of a polar bear. You can notice easily that polar bear is highly specialized meat- eater and in the opposite brown bear are much more omnivorus.

The last molar teeth in the jaws of dogs have also a form to enable them to consume vegetables too.
But the rest of teeth are all those of a typical carnivorus animal.

Nice weekend to everyone here !

I see a lot of you mix dry food and meat :roll: But this can cause a gastritis for your dog. Just for digesting raw meat a stomatch has to be much more "sour" than for the dry food. I feed Brukne only raw bony meat, organs, sea fish since she was 5 months and i am really happy about this kind of feeding (especially when I have to pick her poo when walking :lol:), she also sometimes gets a mixture of curd, kefir, raw egg, some oil (linseed or olive) and honey 8)
At the moment my freezer is full of... boar 8) Brukne is happy 8)

Just curious- how much food should a 5-6month old Vlcak get? I feed the recommended amount, but it seems that my puppy still remains on the skinnier side- although it seems that this breed is more of a skinny/lanky breed in puppyhood (more so than other dog breeds). Currently I'm feeding her a raw food (meat, bones and organs) and de-hydrated raw food diet along with vitamins. How much weight a week should she be gaining during this period? What month in her life will see the greatest weight gain? How much should a female Vlcak weigh when she's 5-6 months old? I'd appreciate everyone's advice!