Mixing Raw & Kibble

If you're going to be feeding raw, you're going to want to cut back on their kibble. If not, you'll end up over-feeding them and they may end up putting on too much weight (I believe). How I do it is, Ella is supposed to have 2 1/2 cups of kibble alone for the day. That is if I'm ONLY feeding her kibble. Since I feed her one raw meal (as of now) I split that in half to 1 1/4 cups. What I did yesterday was, I gave her a cup of the kibble by itself. She didn't eat that until about 430 pm last night. Then around 8 pm, I took a 1/4 cup of kibble, a 1/4 tsp of powdered eggshells, and a spoonful (a little more than that) of steamed pureed carrots, and added them to a half a pound of ground burger meat. She INHALED it and wanted more. Tonight I'm going to do all of that again, but I'm going to add a multivitamin to the mixture.

I buy a kibble that has all the supplements because I still feed one kibble meal and want her to have all the proper vitamins and minerals for that meal. I'm trying (and I'm still EXTREMELY new to the raw thing, too) to do supplements with her raw meal.

It all depends on how you want to feed your dogs.[]

Duke is 15 lbs (1 1/2 years old) Daisy is 5 lbs (4 mnths old).  I went to a site that had a conversion calculator to see how much I should feed. 
 
I fed them the stuff from ..... [linkhttp://www.mountaindogfood.com/thefood.htm]http://www.mountaindogfood.com/thefood.htm[/link]
 - Its chicken, bone in, and a bunch of vegies.  The food that I have doesn't have any other supplements in it.
 
jessies_mom ~ how do you introduce it slowly?  Do you have to mix it with the kibble then???
 

I agree, sounds like too much, too soon. I would back off of the raw just a tad, for a few days, to give them time to get used to it. You could mix some of this stuff (is it ground??) in with a little kibble for a few days too.

ORIGINAL: caprice

Duke is 15 lbs (1 1/2 years old) Daisy is 5 lbs (4 mnths old).  I went to a site that had a conversion calculator to see how much I should feed. 

I fed them the stuff from ..... [linkhttp://www.mountaindogfood.com/thefood.htm]http://www.mountaindogfood.com/thefood.htm[/link]
- Its chicken, bone in, and a bunch of vegies.  The food that I have doesn't have any other supplements in it.

jessies_mom ~ how do you introduce it slowly?  Do you have to mix it with the kibble then???

Where'd you find a conversion calculator?

oh, yes, I should also clarify and say that I use a half pound of meat with my dog because of her weight. Half a pound is what she would get if I were feeding her raw for every meal.

chewbecca - I used this conversion calculator - [linkhttp://raw4dogs.com/calculate.htm]http://raw4dogs.com/calculate.htm[/link].  Its nice because it tells you how much to feed for the total in the day or how much to feed for 1 meal.  I am using 3 % of Dukes weight and 5 - 10% of Daisy's weight.  Last night I fed Daisy only 5%.
 
For the next few days I will mix with kibble and slow down on the raw.  The raw food is all ground up.  It comes in a big frozen block, I thaw it out and its just a bunch of Mooshy mixture.
 

jessies_mom ~ how do you introduce it slowly? Do you have to mix it with the kibble then???

 
 That's how I did it.

I've been shocked, at times, at the small amounts of things that cause pancreatitis. My coworker and I were discussing it, yesterday. I choose the fattiest cuts of meat, for my dogs. I douse them in oil, and feed (Emma eats a tablespoon, and Teenie gets a teaspoon, every day). My dogs have never had a problem with this. They're small dogs, but they're used to getting plenty of fat. They're lean (a little too lean, in Emma's case), have beautiful coats, and do great, for the most part.

I also eat as much fat as I can possibly get, and stay thin and healthy.

I'm really not a believer in low fat diets, for any reason. Our brains function on fat! We *need* fat.

That said, I hope Daisy and Duke continue to enjoy their new food, and adjust to it well. If I were buying it, I'd probably get the kind with the supplements added, so I didn't have to worry about it[]

So I just fed Duke & Daisy the raw meat again this evening. I mixed it with kibble so that Duke won't get an upset stomache & the runs. But Duke would spit out every kibble that went into his mouth. He picked through the whole thing, now I have a pile of kibble on the floor beside his bowl! Do you think that he will be okay? Is it just the runs that I have to worry about or could it effect him in a different way if he just eats the raw???

Is the kibble you're feeding him new to him? Has he had it before tonight?

The kibble is his regular kibble. He didn't have the runs tonight, so that must be a good sign???

If he didn't get the runs, then that's good!