Raw food diet - Ox heart?

GinaGem

GinaGem

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Got two from the butchers last night and have chopped them into 1/8's and put the portions in the freezer. I know you have to introduce this sort of thing slowly (have only been doing this diet for the last couple of weeks) but how slowly is slowly? Also once introduced how often and what portion size can my dogs eat? they are both lurchers - dom is 15kg and bes is 24kg.

Also does anyone know if pearl barley is dangerous - i sometimes make soups/stews with it in and wondered if they could have the leftovers?

Thanks
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I don’t introduce the diet slowly personally I just change it and many purists will do this. The thing you must avoid is feeding raw in the same meal as any form of biscuit as the raw travels through the system much faster and you can get impactions. The diets are so very different I don’t mess about.

I usually start mine on chicken wings, the ones you can get in the supermarket as they are young birds and relatively soft boned. My cattle dogs, two adult males weigh about 20kg and they would be fed once a day

They have 5-6 wings each. They would have a whole side of lamb rib cage for a meal, they will share about a lb of mince mixed with a couple of eggs and 2-3 tbs of liquidised veg I like spinach and carrots 2x a week, with a kelp tablet and occasionally some pumpkin seeds for a dewormer (it is thought to scrape them off) . They have the occasional pig tail and bit of back bone or a trotter each. They have a tin of pilchards or mackerel in tomato sauce each sometimes mixed with a raw whitebait or fish heads. They have 2 lambs hearts each. They have 1 pack each of the pet food frozen tripe, and one chicken carcass boned out each.

I really feed by eye and if one is looking bulky I’ll cut him down a bit for a while. They get smaller lamb bones or ones with little meat as treats and Bob Martins beef jerky (cut into bite size pieces) and the occasional dog biscuit as a treat.

Personally I don't feed mine any grain, apart from what they pinch from the horses bowls, they don't really need plant bulking like we do, bone and hair/fealthers is their natural fibre. I don't like modern grains particularly wheat!
 
They are completly switched to the raw food and it's going really well, it's just the heart that i'm not sure about as i presume it's rich so i don't want to feed a big portion as they aren't used to it. They've had a small bit of liver once a week but i haven't fed heart and obviously an ox heart is enornmous (not much smaller than my head!!!) so i don't want to give them the runs or anything.

They have freeflow mince and veg for breakfast or pilchards once or twice a week and then meaty bones in the eve. Mostly chicken but also lamb, rabbit or whatever else i can get from the butcher.

Will leave the pearl barley then, we don't tend to feed anything like that now unless we have the odd bit of rice or pasta left overs. I can always add it separatley for us if i want them to have some stew.
 
Though Heart is classed as offal it isn't very rich, it's really just a large hollow tough muscle with a bit of fat, mine have 2 lambs each.

Mine too get table scraps but I just make sure they don't creep into the diet too much, especially wheat based products.
 
have you guys got a good online link about raw food diets and how to source/provide/balance them?

I tried my elderly lurcher when she was younger and she hated it - but maybe time to try again now... I have a good local butcher who'll do minced green tripe and pretty much anything else I want to ask for, but I don't know what kind of 'lamb ribs' to get, or how to define what I'm asking for

have read Billinghurst's book, but something UK-based would be good

thanks

E
 
The lamb ribs I get are the whole of the ribcage minus the backbone, they start at the tapered end with cartalage and that might be good for the oldies if you butcher could mince that bit, then they get wider and harder as the ribs get bigger. If I think about it tomorrow I'll take a picture and post it.

Four those without a butcher Morrisons have started selling a stock pack of raw lamb spine bones with a bit of fat in the pack, at around £1.20 it's a good alternative if you are struggling to get bones.

In my humble opinion Billingshurst is OK for a starter but in his later books to me having started the "movement" he has somewhat moved away from his early theories, and some of what he suggests is not what I would feed.
 
Good web site - thank you

and

I agree with you about Bilinghurst. WHat I'd truly like is a UK-based book showing what can be done and how to do it.

Maybe I need to practise a bit and then write one...

many thanks

e
 
Many including me have been nagging sis to write one . Will try again but she's busy with a follow up horse base coat study ATM, and I need that more!!!!
 
I'd add to the nagging - her webs site's excellent... did she breed another litter with raw food for the dam, and was the result the same?

and

what's the horse base coat study???

intrigued

definitely she should write a book tho'. I'm a novelist who used to be a vet. I could offer to help? (when the current projects are out of the way...:))

e
 
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