Some questions about raw food diet?
I’m thinking about switching my pug to a raw food diet. Rather than starting a debate here, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good book on switching to such a diet, what to serve, how to prepare it, how to transition from commercially available dog food, etc?
Also, about how much will it cost on a daily basis to feed such a diet, to a 20 pound pug?
Thank you.
Tagged with: daily basis • dog food • raw food diet • transition
Filed under: Raw Food Diet
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As to cost, that will vary. If you can get free raw meat from freecycle or craiglist, if you live in a hunter community, if you can join active co-ops (a small group of raw feeders in your local area who buy in bulk to make meat cheaper), if you have small farms in your area, if you can make a deal with butchers, or if you have to rely on grocery store meats, websites, and/or premade raw. Utilizing all the above, I can spend less on raw meat than I would on a bag of high premium dog food, and still give a balanced variety raw diet. It takes alot of planning and getting familiar. When I first began raw, I learned as I went along on how to get the most for my money. I buy most of my meat for under $2/lb and usually for $1/lb or less. Organs can get more expensive. Kidney, pancreas, spleen, etc are over $3/lb sometimes however they only make up 5% of the organs. Liver is the other 5% of the secreting organ..so organs are just 10% of the overall diet. Once a month I splurge on something "exotic" like venison, bison, kangaroo or rabbit.
Check out this forum:
http://dogster.com/forums/Raw_Food_Diet
and i suggest joining this awesome group
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/rawfeeding/
Links below.
There are also numerous email groups you can plug into for advice.
The first link lists books also.
You can read a lot of naturesvariety.com if you do it right it is expensive. I feed raw chicken backs, natures variety kibble and patties. Both my dogs do very very well on it.
Book:
http://www.amazon.com/Raw-Meaty-Bones-Promote-Health/dp/0646396242/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226883255&sr=8-1
Helpful links:
http://www.rawfed.com/ (RawFed)
http://www.rawlearning.com/ (Jane Anderson’s Raw Learning Site)
http://rawfeddogs.net/ (Raw Fed Dogs)
http://www.rawmeatybones.com/ (Raw Meaty Bones)
http://rawfed.com/myths/preymodel.html (Raw Prey Model Diet Vs. BARF Diet)
http://community.livejournal.com/rawdogs/profile/ (Raw Dogs Livejournal Community, excellent raw feeding information on the profile page and overall helpful community for raw feeding questions)
http://www.rawfed.com/myths/index.html (Myths About Raw Feeding)
Darksong~