Help - I have been advised to put my 8yr old beardie on BARF. If I do this, I will have to change my 6yr old onto it as well. Has anyone out there got any beardies on this diet? Do hairy dogs get really messy on it? what about blood staining from the raw meat and bones? I show my dogs so they are in full coat with white feet and faces. I think my dogs will take to the diet fairly well so I am willing to give it a go but need to cover all angles.

Group #4 at WKC this year is a BARF fed beardie ;-) Think her coat looked just fab

Thanks, I'll get hold of her. I have Tina's details in a catalogue somewhere. Her dogs always look stunning. I didn't know she fed BARF. Thanks for the tip.

Sarah

Hello,

we have 7 beardies on BARF and 1 working cocker (yes those who know me - this is my new baby!!)

Our beardies range from 7 months to 12.5 years old and are all fed BARF made up ourselves from raw meat, fresh fruit and veg + vitamins and minerals added.

They are healthier and better in the last few years (since we started to feed BARF, which was approx 5 ish years ago) on the BARF, than they were even on Naturediet and that says something. My 12.5 year old is still competing on obedience and is so full of energy, she is like a 2 year old.

Is there a reason you are putting your beardie on BARF now? You will definately notice a difference in your dog after about a month or so.

Good luck

Manda
x

My oldest has developed an allergy to the additives in the complete he was on which is why I have been advised to change to barf by a UK specialist. Only problem is my local vet has reservations due to the fact that he sees a few dogs regularly with salmonella ! This is down to not being able to get fresh enough chicken wings locally. My Beardie is now on a Hills prescription diet at the moment until I can find a reliable supplier.

Salmonella can be caught via almost anything and, in general, should not bother a dog too much who has a ROBUST immune system. I know dogs fed complete and no raw who have contracted salmonella and campylobacter.

Hi,

I wouldn't worry about the Salmonella, as someone else said it can be caught from a variety of places. We buy our chicken wings from Tesco's, but get the rest of the raw food from a company called AMP (Anglia Meat Products), they have a website and will deliver to your door, so there might be a supplier near you.

They use only human grade meat and are very careful with their products and are very helpful.

Their website is:- www.prizechoice.co.uk

Hope this helps.

manda
x

Hi Manda

I have already replied to the original post but would ask you the same question. What made you change to BARF and how does this differ from Naturediet?

I became chronically ill myself some 2 years ago and was finally diagnosed, after a false Celiac diagnosis, with having a severe intolerance to Yeast. This means I can no longer eat any breads or dough, no cheese or yoghurt (they ferment and make their own yeast) no mushrooms (yeast fungus), no ready-meals/take aways due to MSG and no alcohol!! The difference it made to me was amazing and so I began to question what serving processed, complete dried food could be doing to our dogs.

There is so much contradictory information out there about dog food/diet but until recently all dogs were fed on left-over scraps from human food etc and it worked fine. So, I can't see why there should be a problem with eating 'human' foods now. My main concern is why does eating raw make a difference? I've read Kymythy Schultze's book and extracts from the original BARF book but as you've had 5 years personal experience with all your dogs your comments would mean more than the 'theory'.

Thanks

Elaine

I shall butt in here and give my own views. I have been feeding raw for 2.5 years now and no way would I go back to commercial food. The main difference between most raw feeders and Nature Diet is that we feed NO grains and Naturediet contains rice.

I chose to feed raw because after reading the books it made perfect sense, talking to people who already fed it gave me additional info and I wanted to do everything I could to prevent bloat (although feeding raw is no guarantee).

I feel that I am giving my dogs a species appropriate diet which fulfils all their nutritional needs with the added bonus of NO additives (or as few as possible without going to the lengths of raising ones own meat) :), and giving them a physical workout too. Plus, as the owner of a dog who has a lot of food allergies (beef, soya, maize, wheat, oats) I can prevent reactions such as the chronic ear infections he used to suffer from before I rehomed him. You are feeding food that has not been processed with all the goodness boiled out of it; plus fresh food contains enzymes important to metabolism which are destroyed during cooking. As we all know fresh, raw food is healthier for most everyone and that includes dogs!

My vet, who is NOT a fan of this method (few are) admits that my dogs are in terrific shape, with tremendous muscle tone (carbs tend to give a different outline to dogs), slow heart rates, sparkling gnashers and brilliant ears.

Raw feeding is not for everyone; you have to be psychologically prepared to feed it; but it is certainly no mystery, it is not complicated and does NOT take any more time to prepare than commercial food apart from, if like me, you buy in bulk, just the initial bagging up for the freezer; this takes me approx 15 mins every month. I then just defrost and chuck at em! :). The odd veggie meal takes seconds to pulp and mix in with live yoghurt and a raw egg.

HTH

I know this has probably been explained many times, but I still don't see why BARFers don't feed grain to their dogs. If a dog's prey happens to be a grain-feeder (bird etc), the dog will eat the gut and get grain that way. Mine also happen to pick themselves ears of wheat to munch while we're on walks. So I find it very hard to understand why grain is such a no-no.

Hi Jeangenie

Can't answer with any scientific background but it may be because eating the gut of a grain eating bird will be only occasionally (most BARFers feed wings and necks I think). If you see my post above I suffer from a severe intolerance to yeast - once diagnosed I didn't drink any alcohol for 6 months, no bread/dough for 7 months and still haven't eaten mushrooms, yoghurt or cheese after 8 months. Before I was ill almost everday because i was undoubtedly eating something daily that contained yeast. Now I can have a couple of glasses of wine each week (note my priorities here!) and one slice of bread/2 weeks and I can escape any bad effects. Dogs can be susceptable to grain allergies and if eaten everyday in commercial complete foods will suffer almost constantly but maybe the odd bit of grain every now and then will cause no chronic effect.

Maybe someone else will come along and have some 'proven' reason.

Many people believe that the stomach is eaten first when prey is killed; vast research done on this by various people studying african wild dogs, wolves, jackals, coyotes, etc etc have proved this is not so. The stomach contents are normally too acid for most dogs and although some, according to preference, may eat SOME intestinal content; this is vastly different from consuming LARGE amounts of mainly simple carbohydrates as supplied in commercial dog foods.

Dogs also help themselves to horse, cow, rabbit etc dropppings, and horse hooves; very few people would consider making those constituents the main portion of their dog's daily intake! Fine for the occasional treat.

Plus eating the odd ear of raw unprocessed grain is incomparable to a diet which consists mainly of less than premier quality cereal processed and combined with numerous additives.

In addition the dog does NOT have an alimentary canal designed to process these grains efficiently. Ruminants and other herbivores have at the minimum systems that are much longer to extract the nutrients and at maximum several rumen.

I can understand avoidance of a foodstuff if an individual has a genetic intolerance to it, but most people (and dogs) don't suffer from these problems. That is a medical matter.

It's just that the evangelical "all grain is banned" attitude seems a tad irrational! Only this morning one of my dogs caught (and ate in its entirety!) a pigeon which had been clearing up spilled grain near a barn. Natural feeding in its ultimate form.
:)

My dogs are often eating raw in its ultimate form; with rabbits and hares their speciality which they swallow head first!

Providing optimum health is not just about the clinical signs of illness being absent it is about ensuring a healthy robust immune system and PREVENTING problems from arising rather than fire fighting with medical intervention once clinical signs have emerged. This often results in symptoms being treated rather than the true identification of the cause.

Far from being irrational the removal of grain from the diet is completely logical when one observes what is eaten in the wild and studying the physiology of the dog. I will repeat - eating grain fed prey or fresh raw grain cannot be compared to feeding a diet composed of over 50% of processed, not fit for human consumption grain, which may or may not contain aflatoxins etc.

As for being evangelical, well anyone who believes strongly in what they believe is right, whether it is hip scoring, eye testing, buying only from recommended breeders, encouraging people to have the pet suitable for them or diet etc etc will naturally recommend what they believe (and for which they have empirical knowlege) is best.

We are all evangelists of one sort of another :)

It must be just me, then. :( The more passionate anyone becomes over anything, the less interested I become! I like to be given information and left to make up my own mind.
I'm a stubborn old so-and-so! Push me in one way and I'll go the other. And I know I'm not alone. ;)
:)

I agree with you there; everyone SHOULD make up their own mind; however, not everyone is in full possession of all the facts so that they can make an INFORMED decision. That is one of the reasons this board exists is it not? So that people can find out the difference between DL and KC registration, what is and what is not a good breeder (and how to find one), training methods etc etc etc. :)

The reason the majority of us are here is surely for the benefit and welfare of dogs in general and if we can promote best practice (whether it is to do with diet, training, breeding, showing et al) then everyone wins :).

I hope I never lose my passion for those things I strongly believe in; whether it is diet, kind training methods, health testing for potential breeding stock etc. :)

I agree with you! But there are people who can't tell the difference between passing on information and ramming it down your throat! (Not thinking of anyone in particular - just in a general way!)
:)

that is horrible !! are these dogs your pets ?i thought we were domesticating our dogs but you seem to want them to remain partly wild why?

Sorry I missed the post where anyone stated that anyone wanted their dogs to remain partly wild. Could you point that one out to me please?

Thank you

Hi Shaunie

Can't see why feeding dogs what is their natural diet can be seen as 'wanting them to remain partly wild'.
Birds eat seeds/berries/worms/insects always have possibly always will unless evolution denotes otherwise. Horses, cows and sheep eat grasses. ALL animals have a diet which they have lived on, mostly unchanged, for thousands of years. Fact - dogs and wolves share the SAME ancestor. Wolves and dogs are designed to eat meat - raw and including bones, vegitation, fruits etc.

Feeding them in this manner means respecting the dog for what it is and feeding it accordingly.

Hi Tohme

Thanks for 'butting in' it is much appreciated. So far, I've been feeding cooked 'human' foods for mine as a step away from commercial, complete foods basically for the reasons you state - it is better to a have a healthy basis from which to work rather than trying to get a correct diagnosis when problems emerge. Again, that is based on my own personal, medical experience. I've always believed 'you are what you eat' but for me some very normal, even what most would consider healthy foods made me very 'unhealthy' and cooking everything I eat myself made a huge difference to my health. It followed on that my dogs could benefit too.

There seems to be a great many more dogs these days who suffer from skin allergies (often food intolerance based), loss of fur/hair, celiac dogs (especially red setters) to say nothing of the really 'hyper' dogs who respond well to a change of diet. I think there must be a connection somewhere and it is good to hear from others who have a greater knowledge of the subject than me.

thanks again

Just been thinking about the 'grain' thing......my thoughts on this are, that the majority of wild herbivores that would have provided food for wild canids, do not eat a particularly large amount of grain.

When i was at college, part of my Btec Equine Studies was nutrition, and we were taught that although today we feed horses on mostly grains, they are not really designed to eat like this at all, which is basically the same for all herbivores.

Also, the cereals we have today are a million miles away from 'wild' grains several thousand years ago, and are grown in far more abundance with the advent of farming than they would in the wild. So, whilst i suspect most herbivores would consume some grains in the form of seeded grasses, these would not have had more than a fleeting resemblance to the grains used in dog foods today,a nd would have made up a miniscule part of a wild canids diet.

JG, does that help???? probably wrong in some respects but thats how i think of it.

Em

spot on!

Homo sapiens is not actually designed to eat processed grains either 8)

hI I AM VERY INTERESTED IN FEEDING MY CHOW THE BARF DIET BUT DO NOT KNOW ALOT ABOUT IT,
HE HAS AN ALERGY TO YEAST AND AS MOST DOG FOODS CONTAIN YEAST I WOULD LIKE TO TRY THE BARF DIET.

BUT WHEN I GAVE HIM A COMPLETE CHICKEN WING HE LOOKED AT IT MOST DISTASTFULL, WHEN I CUT THE RAW CHICKEN UP (OFF THE BONE) HE ATE IT . COULD YOU LET ME KNOW OF WHAT SUPLEMENTS, VEG E.C.T. TO FEED WHITH RAW MEAT (WITHOUT THE BONES) AS I WOULD LIKE TO TRY HIM . MANY THANKS DOUGLE

Do a search on this site about raw diets, supplements and you will find plenty of information.......please dont post in capitals as it is hard to read and comes across as if you are shouting.

Em

Join BritBarf and they will give you lots of info. Please do not feed meat without bones; you will deprive him of calcium. Supplements and veggies are, in the most part unecessary, depends on the dog and what the dog does in the way of work etc. Dogs do look at raw meaty bones in a funny way at first; after all this is the first time they have seen them!

And here`s another good site you might like to try.

NaturalBeardie-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Christine, Spain.