Does anyone here feed their dogs a raw diet? I've been looking into it over the past couple months and I'm thinking about switching my dogs over. They currently are being fed orijen dry food in the morning and cooked chicken at night, usually with pumpkin and sometimes some cooked organ meats such as heart or liver.

One of my main reasons for wanting to switch, other than the fact that it just seems healthier and more appropriate (same with people food!) is my dog's teeth. The two pomeranians are getting pretty yucky chompers... I've heard that a raw diet in general is better for the teeth and will lead to less tarter build up, and then the incorporation of raw meaty bones helps to actually scrape off what's already caked on there...

If anyone has any experience or tips for how to get started, let me know! I've been doing quite a bit of research online about how to do it right.

We're thinking of doing a raw diet as well, but I have no actually experience in it. I've read about a lot of people who are advocates for it on the Doberman forum I'm on, and they all say that they would never go back.

Orijen is a great food, though. Do you brush your pups teeth?

Yep I use that tropiclean cleaning gel and i brush it on every night with a tooth brush for a couple minutes per dog.. That stuff definitely helps, but I'd rather feed them in a way that's not going to make their teeth so gross to begin with and then feed bones/brush just to maintain nice clean toothies..

Maybe we can dive into this endevour together, Shlee xD

If I end up sticking with my current feeding plan for them though, I think I'm going to start feeding Acana instead.. it's the same company as Orijen just the formula is less rich... I think the Orijen may be too rich for miz Winnie..

I fed Sydney Acana Pacifica for a long time. She does really well with fish protein it seems. The first thing most people comment on is her coat. It's really silky and smooth, and not at all greasy (like you normally get with longer haired dogs). The only thing was I couldn't keep up with the cost of it when we got Sasha. She eats 4 cups of food a day, and Sydney eats 2. When Sasha was a puppy she had a 'higher caloric requirement' than an average dog (this was found out after about 1k spent at the vet trying to find out why she looked emaciated when she was being fed 4 cups of Orijen 'large breed puppy' a day) , so she actually got fed 5 cups of food a day. I was going through a 30lb bag of food in 3.5 weeks and I couldn't afford spending $80 every 3.5 weeks. PLUS, where we live, there were no dealers that carried it (we live in the middle of nowhere) so on top of that cost, we had to drive an hour to pick up food. So yeah, not ideal.

Long story short, yes, Acana is good, haha.

But yeah, we can definitely delve into this together! :)

I know someone who does on facebook, if you were interested I might be able to get you in touch with her. She buys from raw4dogs.ca and processes some of her own meat (raises meat rabbits). It's something I'm kind of considering should we get a puppy....it might gross Keith out though haha.

I fed Buddy on a raw diet until the deer we hunted ran out and they kill you pricewise for meat around here. It was so rewarding though, next time we go hunting we will definitely dedicate a good portion toward his raw diet. 

I would love to do this for my dogs, but just cant afford it for them :/

I'd love to feed mine a raw diet, but i'm not sure what the cost would be for 3 large dogs. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Also i'll be stalking this topic XD

I've heard that homemade raw can actually be quite cheap, comparable to the cheaper commercial diets, mainly because you can buy lots stuff that people don't eat so it's dirt cheap :p Commecial raw diets are ridiculously expensive though.. and I don't know why you could even bother going that route unless you're really rich or if you can't handle dealing with all the meats and organs and such yourself :p

There's a butcher who deals exclusively with family run, small organic farms in the market by my house. I was thinking of going to see him and asking what sorts of things he carries and if he can source particular things as a special order for me directly from the slaughterhouse, such as green tripe. I've heard raw green tripe is like the holy grail of feeding raw, but it's difficult to find..

If I do end up going through with this, I'll be sure to share my experience here :D I still feel I need to do more research though, since I want to do it right and make sure the doggers get everything they need.. I found a guy on youtube that has always fed raw and he does a lot of informational videos. On his website, he says you can email him and he'll help you build a meal plan for your dogs so I may contact him as well.

Lemo: that would be awesome! I'll take a look at that website as well!

My friend was doing it for her cat for a while. Generally the pages I've looked at have seemed like they suggest adding chopped cooked portions for something to chew on, but this is also for cats. Not for dogs.

Link Tree

We feed raw from time to time when we have extra deer meat from hunting season. When we bag a deer, we separate a portion of meat out especially for our bulldogs. The last litter of pups we had I started on raw diets, first week was turkey sausage, then went up to ground up chicken meat, and so forth. Never feed your dog fish, they CAN and more than likely WILL choke on the tiny sharp bones. Chicken bone is okay as long as it hasnt been cooked. 

We stick to a high protein dog food, taste of the wild, and do raw along with it occassionally. I would look up Ambully/APBT Education on fb and ask there, they have a lot of bulldog owners that feed raw and can give you a good sample diet plan to start an older dog

*stalking topic*

I'd love to feed raw.  But I was advised against it for Tazz.  :/