I've been feeding semi barf for about a month, one meal Nature Diet or Nutro dried and the other either Natures Menu or chicken necks/wings etc from AMP. My 3yr old dog Charlie is fine with this but my 7mths old girl Molly is now refusing her ND meal and given a choice goes immediately to her raw food. (guess she know whats good for her, also one of my cats loves raw as well).

Given the choice between ND and Nutro she will choose Nutro. She always ate her Nutro over the whole day, just having a nibble when she felt like it.

Up to now I've been to scared to make a complete change over but Molly seems to be determined to change herself over.

My question is if I continue to give one meal Natures Menu and the other chicken wings etc would that be a good enough diet for her? I don't cook much for myself so she would get the Natures Menu complete although on it's own I don't think it fills her up. She prefers the coarser mince but I worry about protein levels by just feeding this.

I've read in the archives how to work what % to feed her but I may have worked it out wrong. Molly is a nearly 7mth old Staffie who weighs 12.73kilos and I worked it out that she needs 2.57lbs per day and for Charlie who weighs around 18kilos it worked out he needed 6lbs per day!!!!! Maths was never my strong point.

I only continued to give ND to be sure they were getting at least one balanced meal a day. She also suffers with her Anal Glands and I've read that the barf diet might help this.

I've been devouring all the old archives on barf and after much deliberation on which barf book to purchase first I'm going to order the one Tohme (sorry if it wasn't you) recommended, which is only available in USA, can't ofhand remember the name but I think it was by Sue Johnston, please correct me if I'm wrong.

I have joined the Yahoo groups but I find them very confusing and I have always been given good sound advice here so any advice will be welcome. Also I've read that the barf diet is only as complicated as you make it and after re-reading my post I guess I'm making a good job of doing just this!!!  Deirdre

I've read in the archives how to work what % to feed her but I may have worked it out wrong. Molly is a nearly 7mth old Staffie who weighs 12.73kilos and I worked it out that she needs 2.57lbs per day and for Charlie who weighs around 18kilos it worked out he needed 6lbs per day!!!!! Maths was never my strong point.

What % are you using to work it out? My bitch who weighs 32 Kg only gets just over 1 lb of meat per day (600g/1.3 lb), but my boy weighs 37Kg and gets 1.3Kg (2.8 lb) of meat per day - it depends on the individual dog.

If you work on 3% of their bodyweight (which is a good starting point), then Charlie, at 18 Kg would need:

3% of 18Kg = 0.54Kg

0.54Kg = 1.2 lb of meat per day

HTH :)

To Ice_Cosmos, First of all thanks for such a quick reply. I think I must have had a brain storm or put the dot in the wrong place on the calculator.  I thought 6lbs was a bit extreme. After I posted I did another calculation and came up with the same as you. So would I still use 3% to calculate Molly's as she's not yet 7mths old?  Thanks again, Deirdre

Hi Deirdre,

My boy was on BARF at 7 months old and I gave him 3% of his projected adult bodyweight to start with. I then kept a close eye on him and adjusted his food accordingly :)

HTH