hi all Colin

i have a Cocker spaniel [Rocky] 12 weeks old I feed him dry food,but some advisers suggest I give him chicken or lamb
but HOW much he has 40 grams of dry food three times a day

Welcome to the forum colin4 I am sure someone will be along to answer your question shortly.

The trouble with feeding a raw diet, and many people are all for this, is the ability to provide a properly balanced raw diet.   It's not a question of just feeding raw meat, by a long way.   Because I've never felt confident enough to do this, or really convinced it's better to raw feed, especially with a puppy, than to use a good quality complete food, to say nothing of the time involved when running a kennel-full, I have preferred to do just that - feed a good quality (tried and tested by me) food.

Basically do what you are comfortable doing - and talk to the breeder of your puppy because as long as they are good breeders, with a proven track record, nobody knows better what works for their breed, and individual bloodlines, than them.

Hello Colin, Don't mess with your dogs diet.  Keep feeding him the dry food he is on at the moment.  What ever it is, if he hasn't got an upset stomach, the food will will have all the right nutrients for his age group and adding to it will throw the balance out.

You really need to be reading up fully on raw diets, there is a lot of info on the net and many barf FB groups too. Lots of books to buy to get your head around it.

Hi Colin if the dry food is suiting him then stick with it. Are you wishing to only use a raw food diet? Our Cocker has wet and dry food together as all dry food I was advised not great for their kidneys. Same with the cats mix of wet and dry! We kept the same brand as our breeder we only changed style of brand at 6 months as "new improved " he turned his nose up! I wish manufacturers didn't tweak their stock - new and improved means to us oh dear they won't like it!
Have lots of fun days with puppy

Hi Colin.

We feed raw, as do what I think is an increasing number these days. When we switched from (many years of) kibble, all our dogs' health, condition, digestion improved immediately. (They don't need a "balanced diet" with fruit and veg etc; they're not humans; they just need the right proportion of mixed meat, bone and offal).

However, the great majority of the wonderful Champion and Ftch dogs you see are fed purely on kibble. It's certainly not doing your pup any terrible harm.

So leave them on that for now, sticking with the brand for now that you got from your breeder, and in the meantime read up on raw feeding. It's actually very easy, but you need to know what's involved and some basic principles before you start.

Don't mix and match, particularly with young puppies. Just leave them as they are for now and look into raw (the raw feeding Facebook group has some useful stickies https://www.facebook.com/groups/rawfeedinguk/).

"new and improved means to us oh dear they won't like it!"

    When I see this on a product, I always go to 'why?   Was it so dreadful before?'     In which case I want a REFUND.

Many times our youngsters started to go off their puppy food by around 8 months at which point I switched to either a Junior version of the same brand, or straight to Adult.

thanks all for your info

regardscolin

Raw is simple and easy to sort but and its a big but you do need to research. nothing complicated but I recommend as others have you join a couple of the fb groups assuming you are on fb
The fruit and veg argument will go on doesn't matter if you choose to or not ( I don't ) its doing your reading and understanding what you are trying to achieve before jumping in thats important. Stick with what he is on until you know what you want to do. personally I raw would always be my first choice and it would take a lot for me to change. simplest book I have found although I am sure there are plenty of others is the dogs dinner by ann ridyard

Raw food is my choice too. My puppy's parents were raw fed and so was she from birth. They gave me a detailed feeding regime which was very easy to follow. I have viewed  Ann rudyards web site which tells you everything you need to know. She is very knowledgable and will answer any queries you may have on the phone. Look at the dogsdiner web site.