Prey Model

Workingdoglover

Would you be willing to share your spreadsheets?  I'd love to have something to kind of "go off of" in regards to making my own.  When I first read that you did that, I thought it was a great idea and I think I would benefit greatly from one.  I do my best to get everything in, but I just keep feeling like I could do better.  I still think that I'm doing better than dog food companies do, but that's not a very high standard, either.  

I was going to say Sure," but then I remembered that the information is copyrighted.  I can use it but not distribute it.  I can probably doctor a copy so it doesn't include the copyrighted material.  Give me a day or so. 

the most common raw-feeding mistake is to feed a diet of almostly exclusively chicken. Chicken is very low in a number of important minerals.

 Becca, I just ordered Optimal Nutrition, and I've got it, now. I'm going to make up some spreadsheets, because I *love* your idea of whipping them out when the vet questions what I feed.

I don't know HOW they can, anyways.... they've got their hands on my dogs! Pfft! Of course, I don't feed prey model, so this is sort of off topic. I have been considering, lately, doing everything up again, though, and maybe paying for a consult. I've got a feeling something's a little off. I can't decide what, so I'm going to just.... run the numbers.

 The nice thing is that if something does come up, you can either track down any issues easily with the help of an expert, or you can stand there at the vet and say, "Look, I know it's not the food - I'm pretty sure my dog is not suffering from a Science Diet deficiency!" 

 They're in such great general shape. Beautiful skin and coats (and hello... Emma is a demodex dog!), fast growing, rock hard nails, full of energy, bright eyed, happy dogs. They both have great muscle, too. Every little thing that comes up is because of their food, though, LOL. I made the mistake of telling the vet what I feed. If I'd JUST feed them a major brand food, I wouldn't have these issues. When the Chinese Crested had a skin infection (from SUN BURN in her previous home), they asked if I was feeding her "like Emma". At the time, I wasn't. She was on Innova. Then, they were certain that she'd do better on a "science based" food. No, thank you!

jennie_c_d

 They're in such great general shape. Beautiful skin and coats (and hello... Emma is a demodex dog!), fast growing, rock hard nails, full of energy, bright eyed, happy dogs. They both have great muscle, too. Every little thing that comes up is because of their food, though, LOL. I made the mistake of telling the vet what I feed. If I'd JUST feed them a major brand food, I wouldn't have these issues. When the Chinese Crested had a skin infection (from SUN BURN in her previous home), they asked if I was feeding her "like Emma". At the time, I wasn't. She was on Innova. Then, they were certain that she'd do better on a "science based" food. No, thank you!

I just started feeding raw to Zack and I'm so afraid to tell my vet what I'm feeding.  He's a fairly traditional, pro science diet vet.  When Zack had explosive diarrhea on the I/D he gave me he refused to believe it was the food.   I just don't want every issue that I could ever come in for blamed on the raw diet.  Since I've been feeding raw, Zack's poop is now 1/10 the size, doesn't smell, and his horrible smelly gas disappeared.  He also has so much more energy now, I can't even keep up with him!  On kibble he was sluggish with intermittent bursts of energy.  His breath is odorless and his coat is shining.  I'm sure the vet would still find something to blame on the diet.

Science based, right.    The same science that brought us a generation or so of cats with heart problems because taurine wasn't recognized as an essential nutrient - and EFAs still aren't!   

Okay, a picture's worth a thousand words - but I won't post it here.  The OP asked for a definition of prey model versus random parts of whatever is cheapest or most convenient at the grocer's.  This was dinner tonight for Ben.  I skipped all supps except for fish oil and his thyroid pill, because this is true prey model!

Ready?  Please be warned - this is seriously Wild Kingdom time here - very gruesome.  But that's how true prey model is.  Only click if you are prepared for serious raw feeding grisliness.  This lamb died of natural causes last spring and as always, I immediately froze him for later use.  Each lambing produces six or seven casualties and Ben eats them at a rate of about one per month.  They are completely consumable and yield from seven to eleven pounds of edibles - this guy was right at eleven pounds.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/brookcove/Ben/BenPreyModelCut.jpg 

 My brain wanted to make that a stuffed animal. It tried, so hard. I kept seeing him destuffing it, LOL.

I *wish* I could feed that way. 

brookcove

Science based, right.    The same science that brought us a generation or so of cats with heart problems because taurine wasn't recognized as an essential nutrient

Which was also the same "science" that did realize the importance of taurine. Now, I'm not saying that people have vets of varying degrees of knowledge about nutrition but how about we just blame those specific vets and not an entire branch of human endeavor. Then again, I think it takes education and time and accreditation to be come a nutrition expert, in spite of the fact that we all know how to feed ourselves. I was taught to cook with lard but "science" taught me a better way to cook. Or I could reject science and go back to cooking with lard.

I also think that, for the longest time, people were not concerned about a cat diet. I know of a person who lets his cat run all over the 10 acres or so because she gets all the cotton rats and mice. I don't think her diet is balanced and he isn't going to shed a single bead of sweat worrying about it. But we do worry about it now and we expect science to worry about it. Although I've heard this bit about taurine for quite some time now as a reason to reject commercial food, even though those deficiencies were solve some time ago, even for breeds like Dobermans. It's like saying "that crappy old science. It allowed Apollo 13 to blow up." Well, yeah, over 40 years ago.

1. I'm not saying real science is a reason to reject commercial food.  I'm saying commercial food doesn't have exclusive claim to being scientifically based, nor is their "science" infallible, as many vets and pet food reps would lead you to believe.
2. Taurine's not the only one, just the most notable.  As I mentioned, EFAs are at this moment still not recognized as an essential nutrient by AAFCO.
3. I'm not asking anyone to reject commercial food, just to realize there are sensible alternatives.  Vets don't like these alternatives because they don't come in easily measurable packages.  Vets like data, though, and most vets will accept carefully researched, calculated, and recorded diet data in lieu of a bag of Kibbles-n-Bits.
4. Your friend's cat is probably getting a healthier, more nutritionally complete diet (assuming a proper level of nutrition and being wormed regularly) than a housecat exclusively fed kibble.  See Dierenfeld, E.S., Alcorm, H. L., Jacobsen, K. L.. (May 2002) "Nutrient Composition of Whole Vertebrate Prey (Excluding Fish) Fed in Zoos."
    

ron2

I know of a person who lets his cat run all over the 10 acres or so because she gets all the cotton rats and mice. I don't think her diet is balanced and he isn't going to shed a single bead of sweat worrying about it.

 Sounds like your friend's cat is getting the most balanced diet possible.  No need for him to worry at all :)

 As a scientist myself I am all for scientific evidence, but the funny thing about vets is that they will make claims without any evidence to support it.  It depends on what point they try to make.  There is absolutely no scientific evidence that raw diets are bad for pets, that kibble is better than a homemade diet, or that big name brands are healthier than a holistic brand, yet they will make all these claims without any reserach to back it up.  I find it funny actually.  With raw diets, they will point to studies that prove that raw meat has bacteria.  Wow, really?? If we had only know raw meat had bacteria we wouldn't feed it! lol 

 And no, not all vets are like that, but most are.  You really have to dig around to find one that isn't IME.

Becca, I'm so jealous that you have lamb!  I can never find it here.  

I have access to lots of other things though.  My guys regularly eat goat, duck, turkey, quail, pheasant, turkey, rabbit, & trout.  I *think* that I now have access to deer, & elk from a local farmer who is willing to part with his fawns that don't survive.

As of late, I have been grinding their meals.  There is something about having a half chewed rabbit head dropeed in you lap that makes you wonder why you didn't grind...

  Although I've heard this bit about taurine for quite some time now as a reason to reject commercial food, even though those deficiencies were solve some time ago,

ron, nutrition studies are well, difficult to do. Most of the studies of doggy nutrition are, frankly, really bad and not capable of defining what sort of diet would promote optimal health for the entire long life of the dog. Same with human nutrition studies- generally only really overt nutritional deficiencies like scurvy are easy to study. Bottom line NO ONE has fed different diets to dogs for ten, fifteen years and studied the results critically. All I know is that my informal questioning of dog owners and observing their dogs tells me feeding your dog the same brand of grain-heavy kibble seems to promote early aging  and an assortment of health problems usually blamed on age instead of diet in the majority of dogs and feeding fresh meats as all or part of the diet seems to promote a long healthy diet in the majority of dogs. There are exceptions of course.

mudpuppy

an assortment of health problems usually blamed on age instead of diet in the majority of dogs and feeding fresh meats as all or part of the diet seems to promote a long healthy diet in the majority of dogs

Reasonable answers, everyone. And just for the grits and shins of statistics, there are some dogs or cats that will do okay on prey, especially if they start out with a healthy consitution and plenty of reserves. The guy with the free roaming cat may feed her kibble (I think I remember seeing such in his garage. I was actually there doing some work to bring power to a new well pump.) and the rats and mice are just extras. She would have to range pretty far or have an infestation of rodents to eat enough all the time. Unlike a mountain lion that can bring down a deer and eat about 15 or 20 lbs of food at once and be okay for a few days to a week. But you said it best, prey diet would be all the parts of the animal and no supplements added by us humans. Not that that is a necessarily balanced diet.

I will trot out my old story once again, not to tick anyone off but to offer comparison. My old cat Misty lived for 17 years on kibble, though once or twice a year, when I would be fortunate enough to catch some fish (usually from a private, clean lake), I would clean a Perch for her and feed it raw. I would remove all the bones, first, and that takes a while because Perch is a pan fish (so small that you cook the whole thing in a pan.) For 16 years, she ate Delicat by Purina. The last year, she ate Purina NF (nitrogen free) for her diminished kidneys. Now, I know someone will say that she could have lived longer if fed totally raw, being an obligate carnivore. I kind of doubt that. Because, and I will have to check, I don't think fish has a lot of taurine in it. Taurine is usually found in mammals as a side product of the breakdown of other amino acids and is part of bile. A cat with a taurine deficiency can suffer retinal degeneration and, in extreme cases, dilated cardiomyopathy. So, a cat would get taurine, which they can't make on their own by eating another mammal. She was never interested in our human food. And was absolutely pitiful at catching rodents. Though she was murderous on crickets. Jade, on the other hand, will hunt. Shadow's actually the better hunter but at least Jade tries.

But I would also venture to say that just as one might think that a steady diet of just one kibble might not provide the variety or balance we think a cat or dog needs, neither would a steady diet of just one animal. As for the farm cat, it's possible she gets enough taurine both from the kibble and the cotton rats (the most common field rodent around this area. The are small and look like a gray mouse.) But I don't know if she would get enough from eating just a rat or two a week. And she would be starving and malnourished, to boot. Part of the real prey diet is long periods of starvation from unsuccessful hunts.

ron2

Part of the real prey diet is long periods of starvation from unsuccessful hunts.

I'm not sure that this is necessarily the case, though I have no doubt that sometimes it is.  I have seen wolf packs up here that look like our regular house dogs in build.  Full glossy coats and meat on their ribs.  They have good years.  I'm sure they also have bad years, and oddly enough you don't see them as much.  We also saw the big cats on the Africam when it was running(anyone know what happened to that?) that were nothing but skin and bones.  I'm not sure I would say their condition was caused by what they were eating, so much as how much they were eating.

Anyway, Thank You Becca for sharing your thoughts.  FWIW, I would love to see your spreadsheets.  Did you get them from Optimal Nutrition?  Is that why they are copyrighted?  If so, perhaps I'll order it.  My dogs are doing great, but they could always do better.