Thinking of switcing to raw

[Hank DDB]

wings or minced chicken carcass have a high bone content, good for firming up stools! A whole chicken is about 31% bone and Drumsticks are about 33% bone, and a thigh is about 21%. So if you need to increase bone use wings or mince. If u need to decrease bone use thighs or breasts. If u wish to maintain stools consistency use drum sticks or the whole chicken but not the organs in the chicken keep these for your dogs organ meals. This is just a guide to help understand how different parts of a chicken can help maintain a good stool.

 

[LauraR]

I highly recommend raw feeding. We switched our dog and she loves it!
However, I will give you some advice. Try not to feed your dog at the same time you are getting ready to feed everyone else. I made this mistake and now every time I'm prepping raw meat for our dinner I get the "Where's mine?" face.

 

[Lkirkland]

Haha..that's good to know. He seems to have already figured out it comes from the fridge and every time I open it he is right under my feet hoping I'm getting something for him haha. It seems to be going very smooth and he loves it. He's ready starting to look better and hasn't really had much stomach upset after the first day. I'm very happy with it so far

 

[MichelleParlier]

There's a great raw feeding group on Yahoo.

Just my opinion....but I would personally do lots of research on raw feeding giant breed puppies before totally diving in.
Michelle

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[LauraR]

Haha..that's good to know. He seems to have already figured out it comes from the fridge and every time I open it he is right under my feet hoping I'm getting something for him haha. It seems to be going very smooth and he loves it. He's ready starting to look better and hasn't really had much stomach upset after the first day. I'm very happy with it so far

It only gets easier the longer you do it. We initially had a few hiccups, but now that we've been doing it a while I can practically work out her portions blindfolded. Plus after a month or two you become some what of a poop expert. I can always tell just by her poop if I am needing to adjust the bone or organ content.

 

[ruthcatrin]

There's a great raw feeding group on Yahoo.

There's a few of them actually, but the two big ones in particular I've stopped recommending to new raw feeders cause if you phrase your question even a little wrong you get stomped on by the folks who've been there FOREVER and who think they've already answered every question in the book and therefor see no problem in telling you how WRONG WRONG WRONG you are without actually providing any assistance or asking you why you're doing it that way. Even if it only barely pertains to raw feeding. For example I had 10 different messages telling me I was WRONG on the yahoo board, and another 6 by private email, BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T LIKE HOW I THAWED MY BULK ITEMS (and no, my method isn't risky, infact its fairly conservative *rolls eyes*). They've driven off new members who were feeding pre-packaged raw and joined to ask questions about home done, but got responses that boiled down to: OMG, YOU'RE KILLING YOUR DOG BY FEEDING THEM PREPACKAGED RAW DON'T DO THAT YOU'RE A HORRIBLE PERSON!!!!!

 

[MichelleParlier]

I definitely agree that its easy to get the long time posters riled up (been on the receiving end myself), but there's lots of great and super-helpful info located in the "file" section.

I feed my 3 adult giants raw (not solely)... but its really easy to mess up the skeletal growth of giant breed puppies if not fed properly.

I wouldn't feed giant puppies solely raw until they're 18 to 24 months old. Just my own opinion based on my personal research and discussions on my forum.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[LauraR]

It is all about balance, to much protein for a puppy is bad but a balanced raw diet can be far better, even for puppies, than kibble. Mixing kibble with raw can be kind of hard on their tummies though because they both digest at different rates. If you do feed both, make sure to not feed raw within at minimum 8 hours of feeding kibble to avoid stomach upset

Sent from my PantechP9070 using Tapatalk 2

 

[ruthcatrin]

Well, actually, if you do the math, that 10% bone is perfect for a growing large breed pup, though you want to try to avoid going over that for extended periods as it is on the upper range of the appropriate amount.

Infact, lets do the math.....

Lets take Apollo for example.

Expected adult weight 135lbs
2.5% for daily intake is 3.375lbs so .33lb bone and .33lb organ so 2.7lbs meat.
Or since the USDA site works in grams: 1530.87grams total daily, 149.6g bone, 149.6g organ 1231.67 meat.

Chicken drumsticks After running around in circles I finally figured out that the info on the USDA site is for boneless drumsticks (ie: the edible part), So, my local grocery has 1lb (approx) packages of bone in drums 5 per package, this means each drum is about 3.2ounces or 90.7g. As a general rule drums run about 30% bone so I need to feed 5 (give or take) to make up enough bone. Bone is about 19% calcium so 150g of bone means 28.5g plus another 40mg from the meat. Protein 70.8g (approx, there'd be some from the bone too and I don't have those numbers off the top of my head)

Beef liver, 74.8g daily. 15.2g protein, 10mg calcium.

Beef kidney, 74.8g daily. 13g protein, 10mg calcium

Beef, 928g daily. 192g protein, 46mg calcium

So, for a total daily intake of 1530.8g, 291g protein (19%), 28.6g of calcium (1.8%).

Yup, right where it should be.....

I'm not saying that raw is the perfect diet for all growing pups, every dog is different and the individual's growth has to be monitored to be sure that the animal is getting the right amounts of everything. But its by no means a bad diet for these pups, and when done correctly it can be a very good diet for them.