Anyone feed/fed Monica Segal's raw diet?

Chelsea,
 
lol, you and I should just pic up the phone ... this is the third thread we've both been talking on in the last hour.  lol.  You're gonna get sick of me!!
 
Not much I can help here, but just some odd thoughts.  If she keeps refusing the raw, then cook it up a bit.  Or alot. and see how she reacts.  She might not like the smell of raw meat.
 
I remember reading in her book that she thinks Vit C shouldn't be fed to dogs b/c in some dogs who get a particular type of kidney stone that it can make that worse, and dogs are "supposed" to be able to make it in their stomach (I suppose that is assuming everything is working fine in the gut).
 
Without doing any calculations, I agree it does sound like it's not enough calcium.
 
Maybe you are supposed to alternate and change around receipes so that you can get other things like the manganese, and Vit.K.   Of course, the b's should be in every meal, IMO.
 
It's not cheap, but you could supplement with Thorne Research Canine BASIC.  It has a variety of stuff, including the b's.  Not calcium b/c of the bulk of it, but the other stuff.
 
Of course, you could use and adapt the other weights, but for the 60 lb cooked diet that is in her booklet,  the diet is a high fat one at 40% fat.  Eggs, port, beef, beef heart, liver, mackerel, oysters, a variety of veggies.  And in this one, she has you add magnesium citrate.
 
I think that's a bit high in fat for your average dog, tho.
 
Now, the 70 lb. one is 26% fat. Cod, beef, salmon, beef organs, oyster again (2 ounces), pasta, supplement with magnesium, and some other stuff.
 
So, why is she telling us in the cooked booklet to add magnesium when it needed it, but not on your raw reciepe?  It must have been overlooked or something is wrong b/c that's not something that would be "lost" in cooking.
 
The 30 lb weight is for the less active, but healthy dog and has lean beef, beef organs, eggs, turkey, squash, rice, bone meal, and several multi-vitamins.
 
 

You're gonna get sick of me!!

 
LOL, nah, we're trying to figure out the same things pretty much, so hopefully we can help each other understand.
 

Maybe you are supposed to alternate and change around receipes so that you can get other things like the manganese, and Vit.K.   Of course, the b's should be in every meal, IMO.

 
She actually specifically says don't stray very often from the recipes as given, which I don't really like, but I suppose makes sense, though not if the recipes aren't actually complete!
 
Based on what you said, I think I might grab the cooked recipes booklet and try that if I can't get this raw stuff figured out. Thanks for checking that out for me!

Well,
 
I think you should switch.  Based on what I've learned, if you stick with one protein, then there's more likelihood of a sensitivity forming to that one protein.  So, I don't agree with just one reciepe.  I thought variety was supposed to be good.
 
In looking thru her big book just now, I saw where she mentioned Thorne Research vit/mins. I was glad to see another positive opinion about them.
 
I've got a few books that I've read about home preparing raw, and cooked.  There's not "one" that fits me and what I would be comfortable with.
 
With where I'm at now,  I'm thinking it would be enough to figure out the protein amounts, fat amounts, calcium needed, and then just buy the Thorne supplements and be done with it.
 
I don't advocate over dosing on vit/min supplements.  That can be harmful.  So, I know balance is important.  But, gee, I just don't have enough faith in any one reciepe to think it's going to cover everything long term.  That's why variety is good.  But, I readily admit I just at the beginning of learning all this.

I just thought I'd mention to you guys you could e-mail Lillian (Mordonna) from the Dog Food Project.  She has an incredible wealth of knowledge on this type of stuff.  She used to post here and helped me out tremendously with supplementation when I was homecooking for Willow.  She doesn't post here anymore but I know she would help if you e-mailed her and asked her.  She's very nice. 

But, gee, I just don't have enough faith in any one reciepe to think it's going to cover everything long term. That's why variety is good. But, I readily admit I just at the beginning of learning all this.

 
I can add that my dogs really have come to expect variety. I think Monica Segal really knows her stuff, but her recipes can be too complicated for us mortal folks. I'm also just not able to afford much in the way of exotic meats when feeding a 60 lb dog, a 70 lb dog with a very fast metabolism, and an 80 lb dog. Nor, am I able to prepare three different recipes. I do keep the ingreedients seperated and give different proportions of the protien mix, carb mix and veggies at feeding.
 
I highly recommend that anyone doing a significant diet change do blood work, preferably both before and after, but at the very least, after a couple of months on the new diet.

So glad that someone else thinks her reciepes are complicated.  They might not be too much work once you got into it and used to it, but it has more ingriendents in it than I would use for a reciepe for myself.  And the weight catagories are hard when you have multiple dogs at different weights.
 
On the other hand, I have books that I think the recipes are too lax on ingridents - and have some books that are simple reciepes, but call for you to add a portion of a premixed nutrient supplement that they specify - and I don't like the ingredients that they use for "their" premixed nutrients.   So, if you don't want to use their formula that calls for brewers yeast, for example, then you're going to have to figure something else out, cause you can't just leave out one ingredient called for all the time.
 
I still think even switching between authors of reciepes might be a good idea.  I agree Monica Segal is at the top when it comes to knowing stuff, and do think her receipes are probably among the best.  But, whoo, the more I get into this stuff, the more corners I turn to be facing another aspect of learning about nutrition.  I guess if you keep going, and keep turning those corners, you eventually end up at the top of the mountain where it all makes sense. [8|] 

I used both Monica's book and her booklets.First for homecooking, then when I first started raw feeding.I got comfortable pretty quickly and started doing my own spreadsheets though.
When I couldn't find the rabbit for the 65lb recipe, she said to just remove that item from the spreadsheet, and find whatever it took to match those nutrients.Say turkey neck plus some kind of boneless meat.
 

How do you make a spreadsheet to formulate your own diet?

Also, I'm wondering about the cooked diet recipes. I know at least one person here has that booklet (Jessie's Mom I think, but I'm not positive), so I was wondering if someone could tell me if the recipes for around 60 pounds uses grains or exotic meats (a lot of the raw recipes use goat, rabbit w/organs, venison, or lamb organs, which I can't find) . If they all do, then it'd be totally pointless for me to buy the booklet, but if they don't, then I might try that if she won't eat the raw stuff. 

   For the protein, the 60 lb. cooked diet recipe calls for egg, ground pork, ground beef, beef heart, beef liver, canned mackeral and canned oysters. You can go down to the 55 lb. recipe (just feed 10% more), and it uses ground beef, beef heart, beef liver, ground lamb, and canned oysters. Your analysis of her raw diet recipes is worrisome; I really thought she was supposed to know what she's doing. I haven't tried using her recipes for Jessie yet because she's been on a prescription potato and rabbit diet supplemented with canned EVO rabbit and cooked bison meat since November to see if her allergy flare ups in late summer were caused by a new food allergy; she's doing very well but that could be because of the record breaking cold weather we had in November instead of the diet change.

How do you make a spreadsheet to formulate your own diet?

 
She has info on how to do that in her "home feeding primer" booklet.
Unfortunately, the nutrient values listed in it are outdated.  I actually spent the $260 on the updated NRC nutrient requirements book and I'm going to formulate my own recipes- I'm using the method in her booklet but with updated nurtrient values.
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You use it as a worksheet to figure up the nutrients in your diet, or recipe.It contains the needed nutrients, the foods used, quantities, and the requirements.You can use a computer to do the work for you, or do it by hand with graph paper.
Monica asked the NRC if she could list the new requirements on her yahoo list, they said no. But she did get the new numbers out, when we asked specific questions. She just couldn't post the list in its entirety without copyright violations.So, they are on her list, you just have to look for them.They are allowing her to put them in her new book,which should be out soon.
As for the outdated numbers, they were used for many years without problems, so even if one couldn't get the new numbers right away I think they're better than nothing. Not that much changed with the new, many of them stayed the same as the old.The only major difference I can think of were the calcium and phoshorus requirements dropped.

Specifically what's missing is vitamin C (which I can easily add, but I needed to mention it anyway), a few B vitamins, magnesium, iron, manganese, and vitamin K (that's what I remember..I don't have my NRC guidelines spreadsheet on this computer, but will double check later). That's worrisome to me.

 
are you sure you are reading her recipes properly? first of all, dogs don't need dietary sources of vitamin C-- they manufacture their own. Second, most of the recipes call for the addition of certain multimineral tabs and so on that probably provide your missing ingredients. I don't have the raw recipe booklet here and don't remember the details of the 60 pound diet (I usually follow the 90 to 100 pound diets). The cooked diets rely more on sweet and white otatoes than on grains.

first of all, dogs don't need dietary sources of vitamin C-- they manufacture their own.

 
You're right, that's not in the NRC guidelines. I apparently made that up. []
 

  Second, most of the recipes call for the addition of certain multimineral tabs and so on that probably provide your missing ingredients.

 
There aren't multi vitamins or minerals in the 60 pounds recipe, though you're right about most including them. In this on though, there are only a few supplements providing iodine, potassium, vitamins A, E and D, and Omega 3s.
 
The diet is several protein sources, several veggies, a couple fruits, pumpkin seeds, and the supplements that provide the above.
 
I'm going to analyze it and check it against the NRC guidelines again, and if I get the same result, I think I'll get on the K9 Kitchen list and ask Monica herself.
 
Thanks to those who posted ingredients for the cooked recipes. I think I'll buy that booklet and try those diets as well. I was just worried it'd be a waste of money should all the recipes around Cherokee's weight use exotic meats I can't find, or grains, which I don't want to feed. But it sounds like they'll be okay, so thanks again.

Sometimes we just crack me up. I'm sitting here soaking up every word (and being unendingly concerned for what my dogs eat) while also chomping on some salty chips and dip with unpronouncable ingredients.