Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I thought you may find such amusing. We talked about raw feeding over the last few days, and I mentioned I had been researching it for the last three months.

Well, this morning it all clicked to me. I had been going about this ALL wrong - I've been trying to balance each meal and putting too much importance on vegetables and supplements. It clicked with me this morning, despite having been told such over and over and over at every website I visited, every book I read, that very thing. I guess it was a difficult thing for me to grasp, as when I make food for myself, I balance each meal. When I look at dog food, I look at the nutrition and make sure it's a balanced meal.

Creature of habit, I suppose. But his first 12oz turkey neck is thawing out right now. Let's see how things go!

Try that book I mentioned. Alot of repeating things, and alot of info, but it gives you confidence to try it.
Turkey necks are low in fat, and no skin so you may see some constipation, this can be adjusted by adding more organ meats, and mainly veggie fiber.
Try chicken backs, they seem to cause less problems if used more often as the RMB part. There are alot of RMB options you can use out there, use non-weightbearing limbs as opposed to weight bearing limbs (the concentration of the bone surface is much higher and gives them more problems chewing them, and can wear teeth faster, also cause more constipation).
I was told that it takes about 9 months before the full effect of a new diet is really visible. The hardest part of the raw diet can be scheduling when food needs to be defrosted.
Watch how he digs in like hes been eating raw his whole life. Like second nature, its instinct for dogs.

Well he's had 3 Turkey Necks, and one chicken leg quarter so far. I've got all the organ meats, but I'm following the advise of staying with one source for a while until they are used to the switch. I'm also adding a bit of pure pumpkin and fish oil, the pumpkin is to help with conspitation until his body is used to it and I start on organ meats.

So far he's been going #2 OK. No problems that I can see. He is still figuring out how to eat them, he's pretty confused. The first time he ate a Turkey Neck, I think he assumed it was just a treat, and he would get food later as he only ate half of it and left it. And around the usual time I fed him, he started begging for food. I gave him the rest of the neck, he did not eat it and just whined for his food.

The next morning he gobbled the rest up, and at night he gobbled the next neck up. But this morning when I gave him the chicken guarter, he did the same thing as his first neck... spent some 20 minutes trying to figure out how he's supposed to eat it. He eventually figured it out and consumed it. If things keep up for another few days, I'll offer some organ meat.

As for veggies, the method I decided to follow has no veggies in the diet, except as a treat or table scraps.

This is the website I enjoy:

http://www.kaossiberians.com/rawfeeding.html

They have much more information here.

http://www.kaossiberians.com/health.html