Long story short, we've gone to BARF as per Oban's new Holistic Vet and I need to thoroughly grind up all his raw vegetables including very, very hard things like sweet potato, beets, squash and turnip.  They MUST be raw and I must not add water.  Right now I am baking the sweet potato but she, the Vet, prefers raw.  My 30 year old food processor and blender can't do it.  If you are doing this, what machine is accomplishing it for you?

I tend to grate the hard raw stuff - turnips ect. Blender also can't cope! Haha! But providing you use a large hole grater you can then put the gratings in the blender to mince up even smaller. It's quite laborious, but havnt found another way yet!

When I first started to raw feed I used to add raw vegetable to their diet but haven't done so for the last 7 years and my dogs survive happily without it. The only time they have veg is if there are any  leftovers from dinner - a rare occurrence - although they are partial to a raw carrot and peelings from swede.

I used to chop the veg up into small pieces and whizz it up in a food processor - if the pieces of veg were cut small enough it coped well.

I am almost the same as Harley :) My dog(s) get raw vegetables now when I am preparing them for us and also get cooked leftovers (we have plenty of veg from the garden atm so I cook extra). They also used to get blitzed raw veg years ago but I gave that up after several years. Also, my food processor never had a problem with veg chopped into medium size pieces :) Tara also gets bits of fruit every day when we eat ours.

"Also, my food processor never had a problem with veg chopped into medium size pieces"

Which food processor is it?  Did it turn them into mush?  Puree them?

I did put beets through my food processor with the grating blade up.  They grated up about as fine as you would use if they were carrots and you were making a carrot cake, not very big in other words.  And they came out looking the same as they went in.  Of the dog.  :(  I am checking output every day.

Perhaps some of the long story is needed.  Oban had Inflammatory Bowel Disease, he lost over 20% of his body weight, traditional western medicine (Flagyl then Prednisone) didn't work.  His poops were like a fire hose, liquid under pressure.  We thought he was going to die.  We were put onto a holistic Vet who used chinese medicine on him and we believe it's her methods that are responsible for him being alive today.  We cooked food at first but now are raw and he is doing very well with all his raw meats and bones.  And with his less hard vegetables and fruits.  It's just the very hard ones like the sweet potato that are a problem and sweet potato is a staple in this diet.  This Vet endorses the BARF diet as it is presented by Dr. Ian Billinghurst and since she is the reason my dog is still alive I feel whatever she suggests I should do I'm going to do it.

ETA:  Within reason I'm going to do it.  She actually suggests a juicer.  Her own is very expensive, $2500 today.  Probably with the exchange rate between Canadian $ and the pound sterling it would be about that in pounds.  I don't think she expects me to buy that one.

> Which food processor is it?  Did it turn them into mush?  Puree them

It's a Magimix. It just chopped them into very small pieces. I wasn't worried about how small they were, to be honest. Fortunately both my dogs that I fed raw and had the veggies have never had a problem eating anything, you name it, they ate it :)

I can't really advise on what's best for your dog - but if it were my dog (and it's not !) I'd just carry on as you are if he's doing well :) But then I've always had a fairly casual approach to raw feeding and not had a dog with problems :) :) :)

I just used the normal sharp chopping blade that whizzes round like a propellor and the veg ended up like mashed potato. My food processor isn't an expensive one and is quite old but it coped fine with the veg.

>Long story short, we've gone to BARF as per Oban's new Holistic Vet and I need to thoroughly grind up all his raw vegetables including very, very hard things like sweet potato, beets, squash and turnip.

Iused to use a juicer to prepare vegetables for my dogs. I would put the vegetables through the juicer and then mix the resulting pulp back with the juice. The juicer grinds the vegetables up very finley.  I dont feed much veg these days and havent for several years and my dogs seem fine without it.

>ETA:  Within reason I'm going to do it.  She actually suggests a juicer.  Her own is very expensive, $2500 today

saw this after I posted my reply. My juicer cost about £35 about 12 years ago. A quick search finds juicers in the uk from about £40 now. I would just try a cheap one for now to see how you get on

LOL, I did buy a juicer.  It did the sweet potato, cut into small pieces first.  But I thought it was going to burn out the motor in one go. 

We made banana, apple, pear and orange juice for ourselves and, oh man, it was so good.  But yesterday I used it again with mango and I swear it took me 15 minutes (not to mention a non-green, non ecologically smart amount of running water) to get the fibrous mango pulp out of the pulp chute.  And the pulp was quite wet, not a problem for Oban since I will add the juice to his pulp, but not so good for us.  It was so pulpy it was more like blended fruit.

Blenders and food processors are much easier to clean than juicers.

> Blenders and food processors are much easier to clean than juicers

I don't like the idea of juicers (for humans). Unless you have your own abundant source of fruit, it is very expensive and wasteful to make juice in the UK :) :) :) I'd rather just eat the whole fruit. So we don't have one which solves the cleaning problem ;) ;)

Another point, for humans, is why throw out the beneficial pulp and fibre when so many of our diets are lacking in fibre? 

By co-incidence I mentionned this quest at the Dentist's yesterday and, lo and behold, both the Dentist and the Hygienist have a VitaMix blender they both swear by.  They didn't know each of the other had one till speaking to me.  Blenders sound more healthy because they do use the pulp.   But, I can't see ourselves blending up strong tasting vegetables like kale, which is all the rage right now, and drinking it.  And you're right, I think, we should just eat the fruit.  Plus, I spoke with two VitaMix distributors and they both said the blender would need water added before it would mush up the sweet potato.

Sweet potato - if you are keen to feed this then the smaller you can get it the better or, as you rightly point out, it comes out just like it went in.

Options: grate it, use a peeler to shave it into small strips then use a knife, or hit chunks with a steak mallet (put it in a bag first!)

If you are convinced that the benefits of feeding raw sweet potato outweigh the hassle of preparing it then I'd persevere.  Alternatively I'd continue to lightly cook it before feeding: given that you know it's a struggle for your dog to process it in its raw state :)

So, if anyone else ever needs to know this, a friend used her Vitamix (comparable to Magimix and Blendtec, all top of the line blenders) and did up a sweet potato and showed me the result.  Better than my food processor but not around $500 worth better.  I tried mine again, shredding blade up and chopping blade down and got results that seem to agree with Oban so I'll save my money till I have to buy a new one.  Little bits reappeared in the same state as when he ate them but most of it is indistinguishable.  Yeah, I am.  I'm checking every poop.  Good thing I'm in a rural area with walks in the bush where I'm rarely seen doing this and sticks are plentiful.  :)

I would cook it too....just to soften and it will be bio available then. I don't really see that it is essential to feed it raw.

Not sure why the vet was so insistent on veg being raw? Dogs cant digest cellulose in raw veg so if you give veg and i am one of those who doesnt unless for weight loss some cooking is better to break down fibres.