Retrievers
Posted : 12/7/2007 11:33:30 AM
Stanton: Wow, you've gotten a lot of replies here, but I wanted to throw my two cents in here because you sound similar to me about a year ago. I too had researched raw for many years but never converted. I fed high quality holistic kibble with my own supplements (yogurt, wheat germ, vitamin E etc). But, when we got our most recent puppy, Gauge, a Flat-Coated Retriever, I made the jump because his breed is really prone to cancer and feeding a non-commercial diet is one of the best known ways so far to prevent that.
We started Gauge on raw when he was about 3 months and my Golden was 6 1/2. It's been about 9 months now and I haven't looked back. FWIW, I wouldn't do half raw / half kibble. They are digested completely differently and you're likely to throw their digestive system out of whack. Also, it gives a weird nutritional balance with the two combined. So I would go into it whole hog (pardon the pun) or not at all, personally.
When we started, we started with chicken wings. Just chicken wings, nothing else. At first, I had to hold the wing to get them to learn to chew it, rather than just licking it, or trying to gulp it down whole. After 2 weeks on chicken wings, I figured their systems were used to raw, so then I started adding a different protein, one week at a time to make sure there were no allergies or intolerances. Now that they're fully converted, the way I do it is go out and buy a bunch of bulk meat and set myself up at the kitchen counter with ziploc sandwich bags. I make up portions and put them in the bags and put the bags in the freezer. I have one container in the freezer for each dog since they get different portion sizes. I don't use a scale or anything, I just eyeball it. As another poster said, they don't have to have completely balanced nutrition every single meal, you should think of it instead on a weekly basis. For you, for example, are all of your meals 100% balanced with all of your essential vitamins and nutrients included? I think not. But on a weekly basis, you hopefully get everything in.
Portioning the meals out takes me about 30 minutes about once every 2-3 weeks. I remove the ziploc bags from the freezer a day ahead of time and at meal time (twice daily), I dump a bag in each bowl, add whatever (yogurt, vitamins A, C, D, E, Omega 3-6-9 capsules, wheat germ, sunflower oil, whole raw eggs - all these on a rotatonal basis, except yogurt and vitamin E which they get every morning) and give it to the dogs. It works well and it's good if I'm not the one feeding them, my husband or whoever is feeding them for me doesn't have to handle the food or figure out portion sizes or anything. I don't give vegetables in general, unless we have some extras lying around that won't get used, in which case I run them through the food processor and throw them in. Dogs are carnivores and can't break down veggies, so if you're going to feed them, you need to break them down for them by either processing them or cooking and mashing them. I do add canned pumpkin fairly often when it's on sale, largely because my dogs love it and it's full of antioxidants. It's also really easy to just throw a blob into their bowls.
I can say that, since going to raw, I have seen a huge difference. Jasmine, my 7 1/2 year-old Golden has no more tartar AT ALL on her teeth and her gums are healthy and pink. Her previous "doggy smell" is greatly reduced, her eyes are brighter and she seems to have more energy. Keep in mind, this is a dog that was seemingly healthy before, she's just "enhanced" now. Gauge, now 12 1/2 months old, has been developing at a nice, slow, healthy rate. He has a glossy coat and strong, white teeth. Both of them have small, firm poops, only once or twice a day that are easy to pick up and, if left, turn to a white ash-like powder. These are 2 retrievers and their poops are about the size of a small terrier's.
Anyway, that's my experience, take from it what you want.
Melissa