I am hoping someone might be able to give me some advice/hints/tips etc.

I have two westie males who are 8 years old, pretty much since we have had them they have been fed on fresh chicken (this was after getting stomach upset - our vet advised we feed them on chicken and rice), we would like to get them off of this now as it is quite expensive.

Does anyone know that as we have been doing this for such a long time whether we will be able to ween them off of this anyway?

They do appear to be quite fussy when it comes to eating anyway, we literally have to stand over them to make sure that they eat their dinner in the first place, so I worry finding something that they will both eat may just have to be a miracle!!

Any help or advice would be most welcomed!!

Kind regards
Jackie

Do you mean fresh cooked chicken?  If you feed it raw you can buy minced chicken for quite reasonable prices and several companies will deliver.

I pay 34p per lb from TPMS (minimum order is 120lb or £40).  Berriewoods will deliver in smaller quantities - they use insulated boxes to keep frozen.

Presumably you could cook this mince if that's your preference but there's no need to.  I changed one of my dogs to raw food at 6 years old with no bother.  HTH

hey thanks for the post.

Yeah we cook the chicken, they do eat raw minced beef sometimes, we would ideally like to get them onto dog food, it may just be that we cave in too early.

We buy the chicken from the supermarket when we go shopping, it costs us anywhere between 20 and 30 pounds a week to feed the both of them, I am not sure if it would be cheaper to feed them anything else, would be more convenient for us really, problems we have are that they can't go into kennels cos they won't cater for a special diet like cooking and cutting up fresh chicken.

Jackie

With Westies I think you should try your best not to change anything if they are doing well on their existing diet.

It may be false economy to tinker....... you may end up with large vet bills for skin trouble or digestive upsets.

I use a lot of chicken for mine ( along with many other meats) and I find it amazing that two little Westies could eat £20-30 worth.
Big bags of frozen pieces roasted in the oven then de-fleshed would only cost a fraction of that and I have considerably more than 2 westie sized dogs.

If you are literally only feeding deboned (which you must do when cooking meat) and not supplementing than your dog's diets are missing vital nutrients and minerals; calcium in particular.   If you are not doing so already, I'd suggest giving a canine mulit-vitamin tablet daily.  And add a bit of calcium (you can buy tablets intended for people; but only use those with no additional vitamins or minerals) to balance the high levels of phosphorous from the chicken.

Or, try gradually adding a good, complete moist dog food to the chicken, such as Nature Diet or Natures Menu.  Alternatively, you can buy complete, frozen raw Natures menu Chicken Nuggets and if you cook it lightly for your dogs they might not even notice anything is different.

Not all Westies have skin and stomach trouble. Our Westie has never had skin or stomach trouble. We bought her from a very good breeder. It depends on where you buy your dog from some Westies are bred from when they never should have been.

hey everyone

thanks for all you comments, much appreciated, they have mixer biscuits in with their food, my dog also eats Bakers Meaty Meals for his breakfast but is not enough to be classed as a meal according to the box anyway (approx half a dozen cubes), my sister in laws dog only sees these a treat and not a meal at all so will only eat them if hand fed!! they have munchy rolls, rodeos and Pedigree Joint chews (not in one go obviously), think this is quite varied, my bad!!!

I think we may be buying them the good stuff and not the cheaper frozen options, i have just purchased two poaches of the nature diet food so i will give this a try!

My sister in laws dog is already suffering from bad skin and also have doggy dry so the poor little mite is having a hard time already, this may be bacuse he is not getting enough nutrients!!  Our dogs are supposed to be brothers but mine has not really had any problems (touch of arthirtis now, thats all tounch wood!!) but as above my sister in laws pooch has had the lot even down to a diseased hip!!

I have alot of westies who come in to be groomed with skin problems, the best diet they have found is Burns, and raw chicken wings, drumsticks, tripe, try to keep to much as raw as possible, it has really helped alot of there coats, skin.

I have 2 poodles one of whom is very fussy but after trying various foods have found that the one he likes is Natures Menu but the tinned version not the pouches which seems to be much softer than the tinned. I also give them occasionally raw tripe mixed in with some kibble again I buy Royal Canin mini sensible which says on the pack for fussy eaters it is very tiny kibble so mixes in with the tripe fairly well. I have tried other kibble such as Burns Arden grange and james wellbeloved but he prefers the Royal Canin so thats what I stick to now. I sometimes put the kibble inside a kong or a treat ball that chimes which I got from Tesco which he likes to roll around. I have to say that the younger poodle is much easier to feed which is just as well as he has eaten foods I have bought to try which the fussy one would'nt eat. Hope this is of help to you. Unfortunately the tins of Natures menu are not as readily available as the pouches so I tend to buy in bulk from Berriewoods.