Does anyone here feed raw? Or has anyone switched from feed to Raw? Apollo ~the Wonder Dog gets about 60 -70 lbs a month of high nutrition feed (Canadae). I've been thinking that if I were forced to convert to Raw, he'd have to get at least one chicken, squirrel, or rabbit a day, maybe more but I'm not sure. Anyone have any idea of a feed ratio?
My wife prepares our dogs a stew made from grains, meats, vegetables, and meal. Nothing goes into it that I wouldn't eat for dinner myself. My puppies eat a lot better than I do most days (bad about skipping meals and grabbing a snack). She started this with the poison feed scare a while back but you have to really watch it or the pups will get too fat. Maggie seems to do well on two to three pounds of this mix per day (she weighs around 80 lbs.) My golden retriever has to eat less because of a lower metabolic rate (read lazy). The wiener dog gets around a pound.
A friend of mine fed his dogs raw meat for a while, but decided that it was too much work after about a year. He only fed them a 1/4 of a chicken a day, but he supplimented thier diet with vegitables. I'm sorry I don't know the ratio, but he has the spectrum of dogs- a St Bernard and a small Hound. He told me that they have no problem digesting the bones in the chicken because it wasn't cooked, and that they in fact needed the nutrients in the bones. I took this with a little bit of supprise, but then after thinking about it, what do dogs do in the wild? I don't own any dogs, so I must apologize if I don't have a ton of information available, but I do remember that they NEED the vegetables just as much as the meat.
I belong to a group of Doberman owners and many of them swear by Raw diets. They include all the bones. Some of them add water to the bowls of raw meat to slow down eating. I sometimes feed raw ground beef but as a treat rather than a meal. Unless you're getting the meat "home grown" or hunted, it's a little pricy for my budget. I was thinking in terms of not having an alternative to raw available. With the high nutritian diet he gets now, his daily "offerings" are small and compact, a real benefit when you have a large dog.
