Hi All,

As you know I've had multiple attempts to get my parents around to the idea of a raw diet. Recently we have made a bit of a breakthrough in which my Mum bought Nando a raw bone to eat.

Anyway, now I think the time might be right for me to switch him over to a raw diet- starting with a minced diet. I've seen Prize Choice in the local PAH and also in the local food supplier that I buy Nando's food from. Is Prize Choice a good enough product? It looks fairly cheap, does it work out more expensive than ordering from DAF/Landywoods etc?

I currently feed him half-and-half naturediet and beta. Would it be acceptable to swap out the naturediet for some prize choice mince, or should I perhaps switch the beta for a simple mixer, too?

I'm worried about giving him too much protein.

Josh

PC is good just don't buy from PAH it's a crazy price there, I'd order direct as the prices will be much cheaper. I've also used Albion and Berriewoods for raw food which are also good quality. If you're going to go raw then it's much much cheaper to order direct otherwise the cost is extensive. I recently paid £2 for a bag of their free flow tripe, in these pet food shops I'm sure I've seen it for around £4 a bag!!

I feed 9 toydogs and 35 cats on Price Choice ONLY and the cost is around £250 a month for all that lot. :) Buy direct of course. There's not just minces but plenty of other products too. The big dogs don't get any Price Choice, their meat comes from the local butcher which works out at a fiver a fortnight.

My main problem with ordering direct is that you need to place a minimum order of £60 and I can't store £60 worth of food! LOL. I have space for maybe a month at most and judging by the fact you spend £250 on 44 animals, I think £60 for one animal, when being mixed with other foods, would be more than a month! lol

Ask around on FB to see if anyone local to you wants to split an order ?

Josh I buy from TPMS and their minimum order is £40 - although you're right it is a lot of food to store

Prize Choice is a great starter food as you can buy it from a number of 'local' pet stores but it will work out more expensive.  It's also so very finely ground that many of the meats look more like pate or mousse and aren't that satisfying to feed/eat.  The tripe is very good though and the beef chunks are a favourite with my dogs.

Two options: ask around your local butchers - many produce their own pet mince at quite good prices:  also have a word with your nearest independent pet shop - they may be willing to give you a special price on Prize Choice if you buy in bulk, even if you only only collect a smaller number each week e.g. pay in advance for one months worth of food but collect weekly.  Any enterprising pet shop owner might be willing to help a little for regular custom :)

The food supplier we currently go to is a 'bulk' pet food store that many caters to owners of many dogs, or owners of large breed dogs. Their prices are usually quite good so I will see what I can get there. I have a freezer draw free that I can use.

I have researched the raw diet so I get the overall concept, however when it comes to actually ordering it I'm really confused so I think I'll go to the pet food place for the first month and then I'll get a better idea of how much I need to order direct. It seems that if you order direct for home delivery there is no minimum order! (Just a delivery charge)

Will I be causing big trouble by mixing it with his Beta? Should he have one raw meal and one kibble one, or should he have a half kibble,half mince meal?

I still think in order to introduce it to my parents it does need to be mixed with something at first so I'm not quite onto the bit of RMBs just yet. Should I get a plain mixer rather than Beta? and should I do a gradual change over like I would do with normal foods?

My main problem with ordering direct is that you need to place a minimum order of £60 and I can't store £60 worth of food!

No you don't need to do this any more if you chose delivery by courier, you can have any size order then, but the delivery charge is slightly more. About £5.90. You'd have to work it out if you saved. I find petshops charge at least a pound more per bag. http://naturesmenu.co.uk/delivery/

> Will I be causing big trouble by mixing it with his Beta? Should he have one raw meal and one kibble one, or should he have a half kibble,half mince meal?

When I first started feeding raw I bought into the whole idea that you cannot mix mince with kibble, due to different digestion rates blah blah blah BUT I soon realised that this doesn't really stand up to analysis. 

I raised my youngest dog on half and half til he was 6 months old and he kept a small amount of kibble in his meals til he was 12 months.  It suited him.  The adults were, as he is now, on raw for the majority of the time although they have a kibble once every few weeks as their 'fish' meal.

I see no reason why you can't just introduce mince to Nando's usual meal of Beta but just watch the amounts as he'll need more weight of mince to replace the Beta.  As a rough guide I work on the basis that 100g of kibble is equal to app 250g of mince - there's no science to that other than what feels right to me to keep my dogs weight balanced... 

I've bitten the bullet and just done it. Ordered about 20 days worth of chicken and turkey minces from Ann Ridyard. I'm going to buy a copy of the book. Is it sad that I'm really excited about buying mince?!

Not sad at all (well i dont think so) i'm just as excited as my new freezer came today :) eeeeeee!!
My mum is popping into her butchers in the morning to get various things for me to fill my freezer with :)

My silly boyfriend suggested we use the new freezer for us and the old freezer for the dogs.......as if lol

im sure you wont regret it,neither will nando!Ive got the book,but i wasnt aware you could buy meat from ann ridyard?The book is brilliant,well worth it.Ive been a raw feeder for about 3 years now,still get the worries sometimes,but no way will i change back.I do use Orijen kibble,which is a cereal-free kibble with great ingredients,for when we re away,or if ive forgotten to get any frozen meat out!,doesnt seem to cause any probs.Good luck!

She is a distributor in my local area via DAF. She and her husband sell it from their grooming salon monthly. She gave me tons of advice about it today over the phone, very helpful.

thats nice!If you speak to her again,tell her I think her book is great!

I've already told her that I've been recommended her book a thousand and one times. She was impressed I had read Tom Lonsdale's book. She is a really nice lady and I'm sure if you ever needed more advice for raw feeding she'd be more than happy to speak to you. She has a Facebook group if you're on there!

Visited Ann this morning, bought her book (which I have now read) and also 20 chicken meals and 10 Turkey meals. Nando has now polished off half a kilo of chicken mince. It was a very loose mince so plenty of bone chunks in there too.

Even as a vegetarian I found it was easy to feed. No packet to open as they are opened for you, I just tipped it into his bowl and then mixed it around with his fork. I decided not to give him the Beta at all with it, just the mince on it's own. and it definitely smells a LOT less than the Nature Diet did.

you will have Mum feeding him next  :)

I've been talking to her all day about feeding whole rabbits. That way tomorrow when we go to sainsbury's and buy chicken quarters they won't seem so bad ;)

(Perhaps I should ask for a horse... then the Weimeraner pup I want won't seem nearly as bad)

Good for you for biting the bullet
My parents are a bit old school and when i was explaining to my dad about how I feed raw to my dogs he was quite surprised and was convinced something awful was going to happen to them. My mum was very squeamish about it all.
During a visit to my parents house, my dad gave me a book about dogs & their health etc  that he had bought from a charity shop. He had, had a brief look through it but that was it. I showed him a chapter in it about the best diet for a dog and a raw food diet was a big feature in this book. What surprised me the most is that the book is at least 30 odd years old and he had never heard of a raw food diet.
I am glad to say he is now a convert to RAW/BARF and wouldn't give his dogs anything else and he's in his 70's.
As the saying goes your never too old to old to learn :-)

My mum's the same - never fed anything but "Dog Food" to her dogs in over 40 years, and never gave them any leftovers like cooked chicken or turkey because 'it would give them the runs'.

She can't believe what I feed my dogs [raw, veg, scraps, almost anything really but I avoid grains] and yet they never have the trots (touch wood!) and very rarely have flatulence. I've explained to her that it's because they have such a wide variety of foods, they can digest things better, as they have the right bacteria in place to process it, and that scientific study of the digestion process has come a long way in the last few decades - we now know it's all down to bacteria, and also stomach acids.

Those Australian guys some years back who got the Nobel Prize for their work on digestion and stomach ulcers have really changed the way we understand the whole process.

Everyone always says to me "What is his poo going to be like now!!" or "Oh god, he'll get salmonella"- people do NOT really understand that or dogs are not omnivores!

Quite agree, Josh... And then there are people who avoid all spicy food because they say it doesn't agree with them, not realising that spices have been part of our diet for centuries. Fennel and dill seed is a big part of gripe water for babies, and I sometimes add a pinch of those to my dogs' veg mix.

Also we are just discovering that turmeric has significant anti inflammatory properties.

I was astonished to learn mothers in Thailand when weaning their babies add some hot chillies to the rice...lol

I have to say it is easy to understand why someone would think they are omnivores, but they are lacking the distinction of opportunists vs actual omnivores.

My brooke is definitely an opportunist in the full sense of the word .last night pinched some bacon out of the pan just as I turned the pan off and turned my back to open the front door ! Counter surfing at its worst! Little beastie! out of kitchen while cooking now !! Still it was meat lol

I'm lucky, Nando doesn't countersurf but he does get awfully close to your plate just to have a nose, and then sits and stares you out!

I the chance today to compare Prizechoice with DAF and mine preferred the Pc by a mile! I shouldn't have been surprised as DAF is only a 15 min drive for me whereas I picked up the Pc at Batleys (30 mins) lol.

That's good to know! I'm shocked as many say that the Prize Choice is quite a lot like a mousse, and I have to say it is the one of the two that looks more like human mince. The DAF is very rugged/natural looking. Nando LOVES it so much. He must know what is good for him as he was never overly keen on his food!

I found the opposite. The DAF minced chicken/tripe/liver etc came in square blocks and the dogs didn't like the loose texture. The Prizechoice bags of beef/tripe chunks both contained large chunks/strips of meat which the dogs loved. Looked more like natural feeding to me than the DAF mush and the dogs enjoyed being able to rip and tear at the strips.

That's really interesting. I've only seen Prize Choice frozen not defrosted as I've only been raw feeding the past few days. I will buy a bag of Prize Choice to try.

I started off with PC about 3-4 yrs ago and only found certain flavours weren't accepted. However I also raised a litter of kittens on PC plus butchers meat and had no issues at all.

In the last year have bought from Albion, thanks to recommendation from a CD member. No problems at all, and if I run out my local pet shop has PC tripe which is fine til I get back on track.

Sorry no comparison with DAF but more than happy with Albion (many thanks Merlot).

It will have to be PC soon anyway because I can't get another DAF order for a month.

>> Also we are just discovering that turmeric has significant anti inflammatory properties

I saw this mentioned on a post the other day (Nikita's possibly), do you have any idea on what quantity would be needed to be of benefit?

My girls get Glucosamine, and Omega oils daily, but we've increase their exercise recently (nothing major, just a bit of off lead time so they can have a run about with each other), and they're both looking a little bit stiff for the first few steps when they get up, and thought I might try adding some Turmeric.

T

ive just orderd the book to :) getting a new pup that will be weaned raw so i need to know what im doing! i cant wait to read it.

The book was great :) Have a google for Pascha's blog, too. That's handy for moving a pup onto raw.

will do thanks! did you read the 1 where she started a litter at weaning time onto raw cant remember whos blog to was :).

>(Perhaps I should ask for a horse... then the Weimeraner pup I want won't seem nearly as bad)

ROFLMAO!!  :-)  :-)

I like your way of reasoning!!