I am wanting to change the food my puppy is on as he is on Bakers at the moment as thats what the breeder was feeding him but i dont like it at all. I am thinking of changing to Naturediet but i was also thinking of adding a natural mixer. Can anyone recommend one pls? Many thanks :8) xx

Naturediet is a complete food, containing meat, bone, carrots and rice; it does not need a mixer!

I know its complete, then you're probably thinking why are you asking about mixer then!, it's just that i was reading through some of the posts on the forum today and quite a few people seem to mix it with a complete dry fod or just a mixer :8) xx

A good quality complete food should not need any mixer, It is complete! The only time I feed anything else is when I have a puppy. For the first few weeks I feed puppies on tins and add some Terrier meal to provide something hard as a tooth cleaner and to add some solids to the diet. By six months I change to an adult complete food only.

Best wishes, John

Hi rockpig, at the moment I feed Naturediet mixed in with Nutro, I had to jiggle about the amounts fed until I found what works best as they are both complete foods, but the boys love it!  Although, I am considering trying on them on Burns, but at the moment, I still have a lot of Nutro to get through!  Anyway, my boys love a bit of crunch with their meals, so thats why I continue to combine the two.  So long as you keep an eye on the levels you're feeding, if you're going to feed naturediet (which is a high quality food), I would be tempted to balance it out with a high quality dry food also, depending on what your dogs like! :)  Hope thats of some help! :)

I feed a raw diet but do add a natural/holistic mixer as well.  I don't (personally) agree with feeding a raw natural diet with a 'complete' food I just feel it counteracts what goodness is in the meats but that my opinion.

May i ask what the point of a mixer is? We only have complete dry foods here on Oz.I have no idea what a mixer is

In answer to your question i can only advise you on the good reviews i have read here. Burns,Jwb,pascoes???,arden grange. I would try and get sample packs of the foods you are interested in and see which one your dog likes and does well on.

The one dry food we have here in Australia that you guys also have is called,eaglepack.I cannot reccomend this food highly enough,you can check it out at: www.postalpets.co.uk  they also have another brilliant food called Fromm.

good luck :)

christine

A mixer is a dry plain biscuit, usually added to tinned meat :)

Hi rugrott. What brand of natural mixer do you use? Just to give me an idea :8) xx

I use Natural Choice Holistic mixer - have done for several years now - the dogs love it http://www.holisticfeeds.com/ unfortunately I don't know where you can buy it, as I get mine through my training classes.

Daisy

I use Natural Choice health Meal which I get from my meat supplier. I also use one of the Laughing Dog range of meals which are also natural and their original Dog Cakes. If you contact Natural Choice they will give you a  number of a supplier  near to you.  For Natural Choice I pay £19.99 for a 15kg bag and £22.50 for a 20kg breeder bag. The laughing dog prices range from £11.50 to £15.00 according to which one I have. Hope this helps.

Hello spaniel-lover, thanks for your help! I have arden grange so i could use that if im really careful with the quantities. I didnt want to feed just dry food and also thought it would be nice to have a little crunch with his nature diet!

I do have a puppy, thats why i wanted to add a little mix to the nature diet to give him something to crunch on for his teeth.

If you are feeding complete, it IS crunchy so you don't need to add anything. If you want to look after his teeth, you could always get a large bone from the butchers for him to nag on :) My puppy has a massive bone that she has in the garden :)

Naturediet is a complete, moist food.   No crunch. 

Ahh thanks for that :) In that case, I would get a bone for the pup for crunch and to help his teeth

The thing is Mel, there is more than one way to skin a cat! I have not given bones for over 30 years now because of the wear they can cause to teeth! We all have our own way of feeding and all believe ours is the right way but at the end of the day I doubt there is an awful lot in it. My ways are based on the fact that I'm an old man and cannot handle these new fangled ideas!!

Best wishes, John

Likewise, John, I'm not keen on giving large marrowbones to my dogs since our lab sheared off parts of two molars on one. :(

John and Jean,obviously bones such as marrowbones will do that to a dogs teeth!
What wer'e talking about are "edible" bones such as ribs and wings etc.which will not only keep the teeth gleaming but are also excellent nutrition,some people only want to feed canned foods but are worried about the effects it will have on their pets teeth,all this could be avoided by giving a bone daily.
John are you saying feeding bones etc. is a new fangled idea?If so i think youv'e got it confused with commercial food,which IS the new fangled idea!

christine :)

Ozzie Christine, you'll find from the various BARF threads that raw marrowbones are recommended as 'recreational' bones.

I personally think this advice should be given with the warning that they can be extremely damaging to teeth.
:)

Ozzie72. You are obviously incapable of understanding English and not wishing any more of your nasty PM's so I would not bother to reply to you.

I never feed complete to a young puppy Mel, I remember all the troubles which occurred when the very first complete came into this country. I'm afraid it rather put me off of complete for many years. In fact it was only when I had a diabetic dog and needed to have a very controlled sugar intake that I finally started to use one. I have now got to the stage of feeding complete from about six months onward but still will not use it for the first few months. I use a tinned food for this early phase and this is the time when I use Terrier Meal as a solid food intake.

In this day and age is almost unbelievable but years ago there were "Family Butchers" and we had a twice weekly delivery of fresh meat. Tuesday and Friday if my memory serves me correct and there was always a "Bag of bones for the dog." in with the order. It was only digging the garden this year that I dug one up which must have been buried for possibly 40 years or more!

I must say that in all these years of not giving bones I have only (last year) had one dog with one tooth which needed pulling and the vet could find no reason why this one went bad! Of course, I need to balance that by saying that I never had a dog with a bad tooth when I was giving bones either!

Best wishes, John

Thanks for that John :) I knew I would get a good reply from you. We are lucky enough to have a couple of family butchers here in the town which makes it easy for us to pop along and get a bag of *bits* for the dogs.

Cheers again

Mel :)

John seeing YOU brought it up maybe you should explain to the whole board why i had to ask you questions and the lovely replies you then sent me,if you thought mine were nasty i would hate to see how you would react if i did send you a nasty one as i thought i was polite and had no intention of being "nasty" even tho you tried your hardest to make a fool out of me and my dogs!
Anyway i dont want to drag anyone else into your petiness,maybe YOU should learn how to explain yourself clearer and put your words in the right spots and then people wouldnt have to ask you the same question over and over,trying to get a straight forward responce out of you is like pulling teeth.John i really wish you hadnt dragged this out onto the public boards like this,it would have been appropriate to keep private things private!This is the last i want to hear on this matter,Goodbye!!

Jean as for the marrow bones,that's bad luck what happened to your dog,my dogs dont like marrow bones so i cant really comment but there are other rec. bones such as soup bones,knuckle bones these have got loads of meat on too.
The king of "teeth cleaning" bones would have to be chicken wings,i havnt seen greater success with any other bones when it comes to cleaning teeth :D

I have for well over 20 years fed my dogs marrowbones (and so did my parents etc) and never had a dog with broken teeth. They have marrowbones once a week and ribs also once a week.  I always remember as a young girl going down to the village butchers with my brother to get the dogs mince, coming back with a large bag of bones as well. It kept the dogs quiet for hours!

That fair enough John :) What would you suggest for the pup then ..in order to give him something to crunch on? I have to say I am not keen on a mixer being added to a complete ...

:)

Mel

chicken wing! just substitute some of the meat for a chicken wing a few times a week (or a few chicken wings depending on the size of the dog).... clean teeth in no time at all, if it can get rid of 9 years worth of crap off my salukis teeth in a few months, s'gotta be workin!

Em

This is for someone already feeding complete Em ;) I feed chicken wings to my pup and to Hudson but not everyone feels somfortable doing so :)

~Cornflakes~ :D ;)

I can remember my gran feeding "lights" to her dogs when I was young, she used to cook and slice them on the kitchen table, she has passed away many years ago. Can someone tell me what part on the anatomy lights are, her dogs always looked good and lived to an old age without problems.

They are lungs :-)

If you are thinking about obtaining lungs and feeding them beware.............

I feed lungs raw, however they are very big and they can be difficult to cut up, usually easier if semi frozen.

If you cook them, which I used to do when living abroad, they honk something rotten!

Mine used to like playing tug o war with them in the garden :D

Yes it was the smell that has stayed with me for the last 40 years.