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Okay, so I have an Olde English Bulldogge NOT an Old English Bulldog. He has bad allergies and skin problems. No vet has ever really been able to get to the bottom of it aside from just giving him steroid shots over and over. I feed him good food Royal Canin but still issues I guess could be to any of hte ingredients but also guessing he's allergic to grass as well.
Someone suggested a raw diet. I'm gonna give it a try. I've been buying chicken necks, turkey necks, turkey wings, liver, gizzards, etc. I hear people talk about chicken backs and that they only like 30 cents a pound but can't find them anywehre.
I hear some people say dogs stomachs dont let them get salmonella and stuff like that but my vet though he didn't discourage it said salmonella is a risk and said he's rather see me try some natural forumula dogfood witha few ingredients.
Just a few questions about raw diets. What types of meats do you feed? Where do you find cheap meat? Do you feed whole bones or use a grinder and if you do use a grinder can you recommend a cheap one that works well? I hear its better not to grind but my dog wont eat veggies unless I were to grind them up ina meat patty.
Any suggestions tips or advice you have would be helpful.
We fed raw for over ten years. There are many good reasons to feed the diet, and allergy control is just one of them. But first, you really do need to know what your dog is allergic to. The diet is best when it includes a wide variety of raw foods served in a nutritional balance over time. That means every meal doesn't have to be balanced, but you're good to go if you can balance it over the course of every few days or so.
I recommend you read a book on the subject. At least get a book to use as a reference. I used Ian Billinghurst's "Give Your Dog a Bone" because at the time, it was the only book on raw feeding that was available. I will leave it to others to recommend newer books. Now, to address your specific questions:
Don't worry about salmonella. Dogs on this diet eat raw chicken and whole raw eggs, both of which are assumed to contain salmonella in certain percentages. Some say salmonella can be harmful to dogs who are ill. I can tell you it defenitely is not harmful to healthy dogs. And when you think about the things dogs put in their mouths, and the places they like to lick (ugh), you have to agree that dogs' systems are designed to deal with pathogens that would make humans sick. Frankly, I think the pet food recalls that concern salmonella have more to do with danger to humans than danger to dogs.
Most vets still are not on board with raw diets, but I think that is mainly because it requires a commitment to learning about it, feeding it in a balanced way and doing it right.
What type of meats did I feed? Chicken, turkey, lamb, whole fish (not salmon, because of parasite risk and COST), pork, beef organs, chicken organs, pork organs, and any other interesting stuff I could find at the European grocer I used to use. But then we moved to Kansas, where the selection was very limited and a lot more expensive than Chicago, and the diet became very difficult to maintain.
Where to find cheap meats? To be honest, nowadays? Nowhere that I know. Buying in bulk and in cooperation with other raw feeders works for some people, but you need a freezer. Even chicken has about doubled in price since we began this diet in 2000. We have two different dogs now, and we're feeding a good kibble, and our dog food expenditure is at least 30-40% reduced. I never found chicken backs for 30-cents a pound ten years ago, and even I could find chicken backs now (which I can't), they would likely be over a dollar a pound. I used to buy lamb breast for $1.59 a pound in Chicago. On the rare occasion I could find it in KC, it was $8 a pound, and no, I didn't buy it.
But here's an important point about feeding things like chicken backs and wings (which used to be really cheap until the Buffalo wings fad started.) Backs aren't an adequate source of protein on their own. You need the balance provided by the whole chicken. That's a balance of white and dark meat, a balance of meat to bone ratio, a balance of calcium to phosphorus. So what I did with our two raw eaters was, cut up one chicken for a day's meals for the two of them. Over the course of two days, each dog ate a whole raw chicken. See? Balance.
To grind or not to grind? Don't grind meats or bones. Let the dogs do the work of chewing. They won't choike, trust me. Opponents of raw feeding always like to scare you with generic stories of dogs that died from choking on bones or dogs who had massive bowel obstructions from bones. Over the years, I challenged many people to give me a verifiable example of one of these horror stories, and they couldn't. There are many apocryphal horror stories out there. Just know this: dogs instinctively know exactly what to do with animal parts. If they gulp down a half a chicken back in one bite, they'll just hork it back up and eat it again. I saw that a thousand times with our girl Hallie.
Besides, most bones, even soft chicken bones, will choke a grinder into nonexistence. Do grind or process veggies, though, because dogs' systems aren't really designed to break down the cellulose walls of plant material. In Nature, wolves get their green material via stomach contents of their prey, so you'd be feeding small amounts of veggies that are in a "semi-digested" state.
So if you really want to do this, do it right. Get a book, get started, tweak as you go, and give yourself time to get used to the new routine, because it IS more work and it IS more expensive. We stopped feeding raw a few years ago when our old boy developed an ulcer and got sick on raw food. So I began to homecook. That was even more work than feeding raw, and I vowed to feed kibble to any dogs we adopted in the future. I was just sick and tired of cutting up chickens for ten years.
We feed Natural Balance now because it is a limited-ingredient diet that has formulas which are good for dogs needing "unique" proteins for allergies. Those unique proteins would be things like duck, venison, or buffalo, and the nice thing about NB is that the limited-ingredient foods don't automatically contain chicken. That's a big distinction between NB and say, Blue Buffalo, which has chicken in just about all its foods.
I know this was a bit rambly, but hey, I'm suffering with a cold and not sleeping this week!
We fed raw for over ten years. There are many good reasons to feed the diet, and allergy control is just one of them. But first, you really do need to know what your dog is allergic to. The diet is best when it includes a wide variety of raw foods served in a nutritional balance over time. That means every meal doesn't have to be balanced, but you're good to go if you can balance it over the course of every few days or so.
I recommend you read a book on the subject. At least get a book to use as a reference. I used Ian Billinghurst's "Give Your Dog a Bone" because at the time, it was the only book on raw feeding that was available. I will leave it to others to recommend newer books. Now, to address your specific questions:
Don't worry about salmonella. Dogs on this diet eat raw chicken and whole raw eggs, both of which are assumed to contain salmonella in certain percentages. Some say salmonella can be harmful to dogs who are ill. I can tell you it defenitely is not harmful to healthy dogs. And when you think about the things dogs put in their mouths, and the places they like to lick (ugh), you have to agree that dogs' systems are designed to deal with pathogens that would make humans sick. Frankly, I think the pet food recalls that concern salmonella have more to do with danger to humans than danger to dogs.
Most vets still are not on board with raw diets, but I think that is mainly because it requires a commitment to learning about it, feeding it in a balanced way and doing it right.
What type of meats did I feed? Chicken, turkey, lamb, whole fish (not salmon, because of parasite risk and COST), pork, beef organs, chicken organs, pork organs, and any other interesting stuff I could find at the European grocer I used to use. But then we moved to Kansas, where the selection was very limited and a lot more expensive than Chicago, and the diet became very difficult to maintain.
Where to find cheap meats? To be honest, nowadays? Nowhere that I know. Buying in bulk and in cooperation with other raw feeders works for some people, but you need a freezer. Even chicken has about doubled in price since we began this diet in 2000. We have two different dogs now, and we're feeding a good kibble, and our dog food expenditure is at least 30-40% reduced. I never found chicken backs for 30-cents a pound ten years ago, and even I could find chicken backs now (which I can't), they would likely be over a dollar a pound. I used to buy lamb breast for $1.59 a pound in Chicago. On the rare occasion I could find it in KC, it was $8 a pound, and no, I didn't buy it.
But here's an important point about feeding things like chicken backs and wings (which used to be really cheap until the Buffalo wings fad started.) Backs aren't an adequate source of protein on their own. You need the balance provided by the whole chicken. That's a balance of white and dark meat, a balance of meat to bone ratio, a balance of calcium to phosphorus. So what I did with our two raw eaters was, cut up one chicken for a day's meals for the two of them. Over the course of two days, each dog ate a whole raw chicken. See? Balance.
To grind or not to grind? Don't grind meats or bones. Let the dogs do the work of chewing. They won't choike, trust me. Opponents of raw feeding always like to scare you with generic stories of dogs that died from choking on bones or dogs who had massive bowel obstructions from bones. Over the years, I challenged many people to give me a verifiable example of one of these horror stories, and they couldn't. There are many apocryphal horror stories out there. Just know this: dogs instinctively know exactly what to do with animal parts. If they gulp down a half a chicken back in one bite, they'll just hork it back up and eat it again. I saw that a thousand times with our girl Hallie.
Besides, most bones, even soft chicken bones, will choke a grinder into nonexistence. Do grind or process veggies, though, because dogs' systems aren't really designed to break down the cellulose walls of plant material. In Nature, wolves get their green material via stomach contents of their prey, so you'd be feeding small amounts of veggies that are in a "semi-digested" state.
So if you really want to do this, do it right. Get a book, get started, tweak as you go, and give yourself time to get used to the new routine, because it IS more work and it IS more expensive. We stopped feeding raw a few years ago when our old boy developed an ulcer and got sick on raw food. So I began to homecook. That was even more work than feeding raw, and I vowed to feed kibble to any dogs we adopted in the future. I was just sick and tired of cutting up chickens for ten years.
We feed Natural Balance now because it is a limited-ingredient diet that has formulas which are good for dogs needing "unique" proteins for allergies. Those unique proteins would be things like duck, venison, or buffalo, and the nice thing about NB is that the limited-ingredient foods don't automatically contain chicken. That's a big distinction between NB and say, Blue Buffalo, which has chicken in just about all its foods.
I know this was a bit rambly, but hey, I'm suffering with a cold and not sleeping this week!
my vet actually recommended that natural balance you mentioned. i am kind of struggling between whether to continue the raw diet ive only been doing for a few days or whether to give that natural balance a try. its frustrating that it takes so many weeks to see results to see if the experiment so to speak is working. thanks for all the info and such a thoughtful response.
OK it can be tricky. But it's great of you to do all this for him. Once you get in a routine it's not hard at all.
The two terms you're looking for are: Raw Meaty Bones or BARF. I'd go with raw meaty bone type feeding if it were me.
There are many groups on the internet to help you. Some people feel dogs are mostly carnivores and feed 70-80% raw meaty bones and others think they are more omnivore and feed lots of other stuff mixed in. If I were doing a raw diet eliminating allergies I'd start SIMPLE.
You're not going to do alot of nutritional damage with a simple elimination diet short term just to see if it helps, IMO, of course EVERYTHING has to go through your vet. Also give it TIME a few months but you may see an improvement right away.
I never fed primarily red meat only chicken and turkey but I would if I thought he'd be allergic to the fowl. I also added Offal, game, whatever I had access to. After his allergies settled I added neutral foods like green beans, some other veg stuff a bit.
Meanwhile, let me tell you how I did it with my traditional ENGLISH Bulldog.
You must use the bones for nutritional balance if you're doing the Raw Meaty Bones or BARF diet.(bones and raw foods). There are variations with supplements, though too. Of course hopefully YOUR dog has normal TEETH and not a twisted up esophagus etc and can eat like "a normal person" LOL. Your dog should NOT be choking, regurgitating or barfing up his meal. My mother's Lab never did but the Bulldog was a train wreck waiting to happen as you probably know. I could give the LAB anything and her teeth and jaws were proper enough to eat it If you're not sure hold the item for him and observe how he does things at first.
I would NOT GIVE ONE SINGLE SUPPLEMENT during this elimination time. LOTS of things are allergens like FLAX.
I ordered fresh never frozen chicken backs from a meat store. 40 lbs at a time. I ground them all up bone and meat in my Kitchenaid mixer with the meat attachment. Bulldogs as you know can have trachea problems etc especially the regular ones who are pretty deformed and have awful teeth and jaw placement. I did NOT trust him to not swallow a wing whole and choke etc.He had choked before on other things. These sites on the internet will discuss various other grinders available. Also some people serve the food frozen (partially I guess) because it lasts longer as it thaws out but that's only the WHOLE BONE not the ground but I never did that.
THEN I'd put them in servings and freeze. I would THAW IN THE FRIDGE OVERNIGHT. VERY IMPORTANT. Half warmed raw chicken is disgusting - just watch last night's episode of Kitchen Nightmares LOL. Some dope tried to thaw his raw chicken on the warming tray and Gordon Ramsey was barfing let alone panicking that he almost killed people!
Sometimes I'd prepare with veg and freeze that too. HE LOVED collard greens LOL.
I worked for a guy with a gorgeous smallish Mastiff and her entire diet was two to three large chicken legs a night or the equivalent She was 6 and had a gorgeous coat and teeny tiny stool! Her vet said she was very healthy.
He kept the legs in individual serving baggies in the fridge, fed her on the balcony, and tossed the bag in the trashcan out there lined with a bag and tossed the bag in the dumpster nightly. I guess he washed the patio every now and then. She didn't get much on it, though LOL. She didn't even use her paws much she was a very neat eater. But I wiped her paws down after eating.
You want to feed him in a controlled tile or paved area. You can leave a mat down like a placemat or bunch of paper maybe or something that you can wash or toss out. It depends on him but he's likely to drag it across the floor. And your climate where you live etc. Maybe a laundry room?
When handling the food yourself if you're grinding you can use rubber gloves from the hair supply shop and just keep tossing them off and on. They're cheap in a box.
IT's easier than keeping on washing before you're finished.
Wash your mixer too of course - soap and water and rinse.
Start here, IMO: 70% Raw Meaty Bones - I just did a quick google on things I knew about. I bet there are several groups like on Yahoo that you can join to get all kinds of info from the community.
its frustrating that it takes so many weeks to see results
IMO you should see at least SOME improvement pretty fast if the major culprit is food. Of course decreasing the allergic load in ALL AREAS is important so make sure you're using no fragrance in the laundry or the floors, no burning candles etc and NO TREATS OF ANY KIND outside of the diet.
If he's NO better at all in weeks I'd be suspicious of the fowl if you're feeding chicken AND I'd buy ORGANIC just to be safe anyway at first.
I imagine it's not that easy to buy a whole carcass of say, kangaroo, a unique protein!
BUT IME it's not usually the protein, while this is not true for everyone. I did read here someone's dog had allergic reaction to grocery store chicken but not organic. So it could be anything like the "natural juices" they have on that label on some brands.
There is a great Yahoo! group, "Raw Feeding." Join it and read. Then read some more. Then more. This group is what I followed for a couple of months before embarking on the raw diet. Best education on raw feeding one could ever get. I started the raw feeding for a dog I had that was allergic to god knows what. But the raw diet saved her. DM me if you want to hear her story...it's quite involved.
Also, this same group has a facebook page. They have many of their group files on the the page. GOOD PLACE to start reading.
Good luck. If you have any specific questions, please post here. We'll be more than happy to help you.
There is a great Yahoo! group, "Raw Feeding." Join it and read. Then read some more. Then more. This group is what I followed for a couple of months before embarking on the raw diet. Best education on raw feeding one could ever get. I started the raw feeding for a dog I had that was allergic to god knows what. But the raw diet saved her. DM me if you want to hear her story...it's quite involved.
Also, this same group has a facebook page. They have many of their group files on the the page. GOOD PLACE to start reading.
Good luck. If you have any specific questions, please post here. We'll be more than happy to help you.
I just want to add one caution about raw feeding forums. They're a lot like organic gardening forums. They tend to make the topic sound like rocket science. Everything gets unbelievably complicated and so many people become self-appointed experts. People obsess over calcium-phosphorus ratios, for example. To hear them talk, you have to wonder how the fragile canine managed to escape extinction over all this time.
So take a lot of the posts with a grain of salt. It really isn't complicated. It's just something new and takes some getting used to, like changing your own diet plan would be if you were diagnosed with diabetes. It becomes second nature after awhile.
When my recently deceased border collie developed a kidney issue after an infection several years ago, I took to cooking for him. My best friend is a vet with an interest in holistic medicine and nutrition, and she helped develop a plan for him.
Basically, I'd make a "loaf" out of a lean ground meat, eggs, a couple of vegetables (like squash or green beans) and a fruit (usually berries). You can add whatever supplements you want. I'd vary the ingredients for each loaf and usually have two different loafs with entirely different ingredients stored in the freezer. My old guy LOVED it. And my vet (not my best friend) was shocked at how quickly his kidney issues disappeared.
With your guy, I'd research what is needed for a well-rounded diet - it's so long ago, I forget the instructions I got on how to select ingredients. But there's no need to go completely raw. And it might not even be his food...
When my recently deceased border collie developed a kidney issue after an infection several years ago, I took to cooking for him. My best friend is a vet with an interest in holistic medicine and nutrition, and she helped develop a plan for him.
Basically, I'd make a "loaf" out of a lean ground meat, eggs, a couple of vegetables (like squash or green beans) and a fruit (usually berries). You can add whatever supplements you want. I'd vary the ingredients for each loaf and usually have two different loafs with entirely different ingredients stored in the freezer. My old guy LOVED it. And my vet (not my best friend) was shocked at how quickly his kidney issues disappeared.
With your guy, I'd research what is needed for a well-rounded diet - it's so long ago, I forget the instructions I got on how to select ingredients. But there's no need to go completely raw. And it might not even be his food...
That sounds delish. I should have done that so I could eat what my dog was eating - cut down on cooking!
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