I have a pretty lazy friend (who I love dearly) who has decided she’s sick of paying premium dog food prices, and who has decided she’s going to start feeding her dog a raw diet, because “There’s nothing to perpare. You just throw a raw carcass in the bowl. I get get left over parts from the butcher and freeze them. EASY”
Is it really this easy?
You might tell your friend there are several football fields worth of space between paying for premium diets and feeding free butcher scraps. Why not get the cheapest complete dry food she can find and feed that? My pooch consumes about $8.00 a month in the off brand dry dog chow.
It’s easy to feed butcher shop throw aways- but the chances of feeding the dog a nutritionally complete diet would be slim unless your friend does the equivalent of taking an entire animal - bones, GI tract content, etc. and mixing them in a blender. Just muscle meat and fat (which is what I think of when I hear butcher parts) is lacking in many nutrients and will cause problems.
Also, if it’s really raw there’s a possibility it will have Salmonella or other bacteria on it on occasion. Probably won’t make a self-respecting dog ill, but you never know.
My wife and I used to feed our pooch raw chicken with bones, but the little guy had a habit of dragging it around the house to eat in another room or on the couch. So, if you feed raw meat, especially chicken, you might have to cut it up or train the dog to eat in one place.
No. The primary reason it’s not that easy is that dogs are not carnivores, as commonly thought, but omnivores like humans - although admitedly they need less plant matter than we do. They also need their vegetables cooked and/or chopped fine, like in a food processor.
While butcher scraps are fine, she’s got to augment that with vegetable matter. Think of what a wolf might eat: a rabbit or a squirrel or a mouse. Including the stomach content of the animal, which is basically salad and/or grains which are chopped fine or partially digested.
I recently made the switch from kibble. It is neither cheaper nor easier, but not too much harder or more expensive. The main benefit is how much healthier and happier my dog is. (He sheds less, stinks less, scratches less, and loves me a lot more at mealtime. He was getting premium kibble but he sure didn’t enjoy it very much.)
I did some research before beginning, including reading up some, talking to other pet owners experienced in raw food, and consulting a holistic vet. Here’s where I ended up:
I pay probably too much for pre-prepared ground-up chicken (frozen in patties). I’ve considered butcher scraps but decided against that because
Either way, she would need to supplement his food with fruits and veggies. This is the easiest and cheapest part for me - carrots, apples, spinach, broccoli, collard greens, sweet potatoes are pretty standard. I don’t know about the steaming/chopping thing: he loves crunching on raw veggies, to the point that whenever I prepare broccoli or collard greens for dinner, he sits and begs and drools as if I was chopping a chicken. (I do agree that too much broccoli/cauliflower/cabbage can be a bad thing, altho I have never heard of problems with carrots or apples. I always steam the sweet potatoes.) I think it’s good for his teeth, especially considering the rest of his food is so soft. (Note that my dog has extremely strong jaws, and IANAVet (holistic or otherwise) so YMMV.)
I was told that dogs don’t need carbs, but I found that he does need a very small but non-zero amount. On a related note, remind your friend of the one major way you have to track whether you are feeding your dog the right things. She’s going to have to get awfully familiar with … er … the ins and outs of her dog’s digestive system. (Please pardon the pun.) It is far from the lazy way out.
This is the kind of stuff she doesn’t consider. I love her, but she is l-a-z-y. I mean I am a super-anal freezer/thawer/planner/preparer of food for my household of people, and even I am lazy and don’t have stuff ready every single day. But we can go out, or have a salad, or have a grilled cheese. She, on the other hand, is nothing like me—she has days where she eats dinner out of a chip bag in bed. 1/2 lb of carcass isn’t going to magically appear for her every day with no effort on her part.
Meh, I should just let it go and let her try it without putting in my 2 cents. It’s just that I would be willing to bet a decent chunk of denero that this raw food program will be ancient history in 3 months. These schemes she dreams up…now I understand the saying “like a fart in a windstorm”.
p.s. NOT saying a raw food program is bad. It sounds awesome. I’m just considering the kind of person my friend is, and the amount of dedication this program would take.
The breeder we got our dog from kept all her dogs on a BARF diet (bones and raw food). We kept Cosmo on it through his puppy-hood and gradually switched over to regular food. BARF was expensive, time consuming and we just didn’t have the time to do it right. The plus side is that the dog loves carrots as treats which makes keeping him in treats easy and inexpensive.
Good luck to your friend, but major diet changes like this aren’t good for dogs. She may be very unhappy with the immediate results.
You’ve got to be kidding me on that name. I mean, I get it’s an acronym, but REALLY. Heh.
I don’t make this stuff up, ya know. BARF What’s more fun is calling around to pet stores asking if they have any BARF products.
Feeding a raw diet is more than just giving the dog meat. There is a very specific formula that raw food feeders follow to make sure that their dogs are getting the right proportions of the nutrients they need.
My mom uses the diet, and when we dog-sit she gives us a schedule of what each meal should have. It’s not terribly hard to follow, but they worked everything out for us and for her dog’s size. The dog 's main diet is based on chicken parts (thighs and wings) with organ meat and veggies added in certain ratios. Her dog is much healthier IMO since starting the diet. Sandy had constant ear issues and gas. She is gas free and her ears are much healthier.
I don’t think it is as easy as it may sound to your friend. She is probably better off sticking with commercial dog food if she is that lazy.