Hi guys

Isn't it funny how someone can make a comment that really knocks your confidence. I was in the butchers yesterday getting my dogs shopping, was in the process of asking the butcher if he had managed to save me some turkey necks this week when the lady next to me said ' i bet those are for your dogs aren't they'? I replied yes they are and carried on with my order of liver , kidneys and hearts as well, this lady was still standing in the queue at this point so i made a daft comment about the dogs waiting at the door when i get home cos it's liver night tonight ;-). We were leaving at the same time so walked out of the shop together and had a quick chat, she asked me if the dogs were on a raw diet and i said yes they are and she said 'well why are you going to all that unnecessary expense with buying liver etc. I explained that my dogs had rmb's for breakfast every day and that for tea they had either liver and veg or kidney or hearts, chicken mince, fish etc and that over the period of a week they had something different for tea every night, sometimes with veg or an egg etc. She said that she had been feeding her gsd's raw for 15 years and that their diet consisted of only rmb's and nothing else as that was the original idea of the diet and that all the extra stuff was unnecessary.

So when i got home i was thinking about what she had said, got my books out and had a re-read and nowhere did it say that rmb's on their own were adequate. But i wondered how her dogs looked so bloomin brilliant (they were outside the butchers with her husband), they were glossy long coated gorgeous specimens of the breed.

I have been feeding raw for a month now and have noticed a difference in my dogs coats and they do actually seem calmer than before and the poo situation is brilliant!!

I just wondered if there was any truth in what she said about the original raw diet and has it been adapted over the years and modified?

Have a look at Bluegrace water dogs web page and go to their feeding, a fab site and a good read ,I feed my dogs this way with help from the raw feeders forum,which Bluegrace help run no veggies in this diet and after a month on this diet my dogs looked fab.Have a good read through it and it will explain why dogs need no veggies or supplements

Hi Curly

Thanks for the link, a very informative and easy to read site that pretty much covers everything. I must admit that i do feed veggies twice a week, i'm not sure if that is because i think my dogs need them or because it makes me feel better:rolleyes:

It could be worse i could be giving them veg every night, just ask my kids.hee hee

IT may or may not be necessary; it obviously depends on the dog.  Also, just because this person has been feeding this way for 15 years does not make her a nutrition expert. ;)

There are lots of things that are not "necessary" in life but they are enjoyable and harmless. ;)

I feed my dogs raw, around 60% RMBs but they also get regular muscle meat, offal (including liver, kidneys, lungs etc), fish, eggs, live yoghurt and of course fruit and veggies as some of these are rich in sources of nutrients that RMBs lack.

As for expense, well if you time your buying well you can make a killing, for instance only last week I stocked up on 15 packets of liver (circa 400gm each) for £2.10!

All dogs are individuals like us and some do well on some diets which others do not.

If you are comfortable and your dogs are well and it aint broke, why fix it?!

Thanks Tohme

I completely agree and my dogs look great so i am sticking with what i am doing at the mo. I just assumed that there would be something seriously lacking without the offal/muscle meat etc but apparently not for this particular dog.

While i think of it could you give me any advice on supplements. My 2 shepherds are young (2yrs/18 mths) and incredibly healthy and active but should i err on the side of caution and add some supplements just in case ia m not covering all the nutrients they require. I was thinking of something like keepers mix?  I currently add a small amount of garlic to their food as well as live yoghurt (once a week) and FBO.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

>I was thinking of something like keepers mix?<

It certainly couldnt hurt :)

No. Dogs 'probably' dont need fruit and veggies,but they wont hurt them either ;) They provide a huge array of phytonutrients,minerals,vitamins etc etc that would be hard to mimick with other foods or supplements.

>only rmb's and nothing else as that was the original idea of the diet<

I've never heard of this 'original way'?? Which sounds very unbalanced and unhealthy! Poor nutrition doesnt Always show it's effects overnight,it can take years and even generations to show up.If this woman does indeed feed only rmb's and nothing else and she can with all certainty say that her dogs dont catch their own dinner or get scraps every now and again,then i honestly can not explain why her dogs 'looked' so healthy,perhaps they just got a bath and brush through.... They may have looked ok on the outside but who knows what nutritional deficiencies were going on inside.The only way for her to tell for sure if her dogs are truly in good health is with a complete blood work up.
The easiest and safest way to feed a dog is to imagine the prey model and make sure your dog gets a bit of everything,including pre-digested stomach contents IMHO, and is a hell of alot more than just bones!

And of course dogs never eat lungs, liver, kidneys, heart when capturing prey do they
? ;)

Or help themselves to fallen fruit and veg??!

:)

FWIW I give my dogs Keepers Mix (one) and the other Easygreen (one overheats), Vitamin C, Vitamin E, FBO and EPO plus garlic either raw or when I travel garlic and fenugreek tablets.

But that is just me!

>And of course dogs never eat lungs, liver, kidneys, heart when capturing prey do they<

Exactly! If her dogs do catch a a rabbit or something,do they skin it pick out the meat and just eat the bones :p

Mich as you know Organ meat is essential to a home made diet,and  should consist of around 5% of the daily food intake. As for supplements,i give them too.Our soils are depleted,meat from supermarkets/butchers isnt organic(unless you look for it),practically everything we feed is missing something,we just cant compare our shop bought produce to what a wolf would subsist on in the wild,hence filling in the holes with supps.

I hope you run into this woman again so you can get more info,if her dogs are only getting rmb's than i am really worried about them!

I give mine Keepers mix and easy green, they also get garlic a couple of times a week and FBO and Vit E. One of them gets Devil's claw as he has a hip problem and they all three get a glucosamine supplement which contains MSM and Vit C.

Food wise they get;

Rabbit, chicken (legs, or whole chickens portioned up), sardines, lamb breast and pigs trotters when I can get them. Minced meats are green tripe, lamb, chicken and economy mince which is mostly lungs, they also get tongues and hearts and occasionally liver. The bones I get from my butcher are lamb, usually ribs, backbones and necks. Apart from the liver they get some of everything every week. I used to feed chicken carcases but I found they were too much bone and not enough meat and occasionally I noticed some spots of blood so I switched to legs or whole chickens. This week I bought some turkey necks for the first time, haven't tried them yet though! I also bought some HUGE marrowbones, I haven't given these for years as the last time gave one of mine dire rear. I am hoping that his digestion in now able to cope with them. The first time he had mackerel he brought it back up, and the second time but when I couldn't get sardines recently I bought some again and he was fine although it is obvious he prefers the sardines, maybe he remembers the mackerel made him sick....... I don't really feed much veg or fruit, they do get left overs and I tend to buy more bananas than I would eat so that they can have some but I don't specifically give them veg. I am not convinced that they need it although I don't think it hurts them to have it, mine certainly seem to enjoy it either way and don't have any problems.

They always get the last scraping of yoghurt or cottage cheese left in the pot and a raw egg always goes down well too although only one of them will eat the shell. I know people that add loads of supplements, not sure why, that's just the way they do things, I always worry if I am adding too many so I tend to give half the daily recommended amounts of the keepers mix and easy green and they seem to do well on that.

Colliemad i noticed you didnt mention organ meats,besides the odd bit of liver.How do you substitute the nutrients they need from organs,and with what? :) I still like to stick with the recommended amount of around 5% of their daily allowance should consist of organ.

I was under the impression that liver, heart, tongue and tripe is organ meat? They won't eat kidney's, they just end up being wasted.

Heart is muscle meat, not organ meat - not sure about tongue. Liver is certainly organ. There are also certain breeds and individuals in other breeds for whom offal is unwise and should be avoided.

This is one that comes up now and again that people disagree on and will doubtless continue to! :)  In Ian Billingshurst's Give Your Dog A Bone book, heart is included under the organ meat section (P163).

Tongue is mostly gristle and doesnt hold much nutritional value,heart is considered both a muscle and an organ,but in nutritional terms it is a muscle.Yes liver is an organ,but you said you hardly feed it.I dont think tripe constitutes as an organ,not sure  on that one however,i dont think it has as much value as organ. I was just making an observation that there didnt seem to be much organ meat in your dogs daily rations.

It's a few years since I ate tongue but I don't recall it being gristly at all in fact it seems a very rich soft meat rather like heart, which I have also eaten.  I would say it's pretty much all muscle and would be very nutritious.

Tongue is lovely and most definitely not all gristle :) My mother used to cook and press a tongue most Christmases when I was a child - I loved it as it was very tender :)

Daisy

:) Time to dig out the recipe books, the shop prepared stuff is not quite as good is it.  Thanks for reminding us what a lovely meat this is Ktee :)

I used to enjoy tongue with mashed potato and beetroot. Scrummy! :)

mmmm tongue and watercress sandwiches!!  my mum used to make these when I was little

Tongue is definitely muscle, or it wouldn't be mobile; if it was gristle it'd be stiff, like our ears.

Taken from this site about 'Variety Meats' (the euphemism for such cuts)
Tongue, beef, 4 oz. (113g) (raw)
Calories: 253
Protein: 16.8g
Carbohydrate: 4.2g
Total Fat: 18.2g
Fiber: 0.0g
*Excellent source of: Zinc (3.2mg), Niacin (4.8mg), and Vitamin B12 (4.3 mcg)

>>Tongue is mostly gristle and doesnt hold much nutritional value,heart is considered both a muscle and an organ,but in nutritional terms it is a muscle.Yes liver is an organ,but you said you hardly feed it.I dont think tripe constitutes as an organ,not sure  on that one however,i dont think it has as much value as organ. I was just making an observation that there didnt seem to be much organ meat in your dogs daily rations. <<

I said I fed liver occasionally, not that I hardly feed it. Occasionally to me is about once a fortnight. I don't think tongue is mostly gristle, I remember tongue sandwiches when I was a child, never that keen on the stuff but it certainly wasn't gristly. As annie Says, heart is listed as organ meat in Dr Billinghursts book along with liver, kidney's, brains, tripe and tongues. I have given up on the kidney's for now as they just won't eat them but I will try again at some point in the not too distant future. They get raw eggs every week as I only buy them for the dogs, I hardly eat them myself. My dogs get a good variety in their diet, I have discussed it with my vet and continue to do so and we are both happy that they are doing very well since the change over approx 5 months ago, she is particularly impressed with the fact that I can now maintain one of them at a decent healthy weight!

Funny that, my youngest won't eat kidney either though he doesn't have any problem with other offal.

Have you tried kidney from different animals? My boy hates pig kidney (looks at me in disgust!) and even manages to pick it out if I chop it into teeny tiny pieces and mix into meat. He loves lamb kidney though and will eat those whole :D

It is lamb kidney I've tried him with zarah, he spits it out even when it is chopped up and yet will eat liver with no problem.

Have you tried putting it in a blender with some carrot ?? My older dog refused to eat liver, but loves it blended with carrot :)

Daisy

Thanks Daisy, will give that a try next time. :)

I actually got my youngster to eat liver that was liquidised and mixed with his meat, he loves it in chunks now, but only lambs, none of them will eat any other kind. I might try the same thing with the kidney's :-) It's funny how far they have come, when I started deef would just look at a chicken carcase like it was going to bite him and I would have to cut it up,  Sol sucked his first chicken wings to death before finally chewing them up.:rolleyes: The had a turkey neck each tonight and couldn't wait to get stuck in! :-D They will eat whatever you put in front of them now no matter what it is or how strange it looks, (except kidney's!)

Neither of mine will eat any organ meat raw! I have to either lightly sear it in a little garlic and olive oil or bake it in the oven for a little while.

lungs are mentioned too :D

>>lungs are mentioned too <<

The economy mince I buy is mostly lungs although I haven't actually asked them to give me a percentage of how much is that and how much is something else...