Hi All

I am just wondering what meat dogs can eat as i would like to give me westie a bit more of a variety, i have posted other messages on the food board about him not eating his JWB biscuits so you will all probably be familiar with my westie Hamish. I have been giving him cooked chicken and today i have tried him with some tuna which he did like and he ate the biscuits with them aswell. Some other people have told me to try sardines in oil which they say are good for their coats, also sausages i have been told that they like, but what sort of sausage are they the hot dog sausage or not? I have also seen at our local petshop chicken mince which i know a lot of people use but i don't know whether this is any good or not, and also how do you cook this do you just boil if in water in a pot?
If anybody else has got ideas of what else i could try i would be very grateful as i would like to give him a bit more of a variety.

Thanks
Helen

Meat is better fed raw.I feed minced beef,chicken,lamb,turkey,pork,offal and anything else I can get my hands on.
I have recently started feeding natures menu which is a mixture of raw meat,veg and rice...its frozen,and even my fussy eater cleans his bowl every night
Archer

Hi

What do you do with this then, do you just defrost it and then feed it to them, as you said that you don't cook it?

Helen

Yep just thaw and feed...they love it .As Isaid even my fussy boy eats it.He will normally only eat every 2 or 3 days  but always enjoyed fresh meat so I decided to try the natures menu and he cleans his bowl every night!!
I don't cook any meat apart from liver chicken hearts as I use them for bait
Archer 

By the way Natures menu is a complete diet so no need to feed anything else if you don't want...1Kg bag costs me £1.99 I think and for a small dog recommends 250g daily
Archer

Natures Menu is a good well blanced food which we feed to our bitch and also we have been giving her Prize Choice frozen meals which you can either microwave or feed raw. We gave it to her raw the other night with some JWB mixed in and it was gone in record time, not that she ever chews her food. Timed her the other day and she at a whole sausage in the time it took me to count to three and was still looking at me as if to say where are the rest.

The natures menu that you said about does this mean that the meat is raw only i thought that you could not feed chicken that was raw, but perhaps i was wrong, have you got the choice to microwave the natures menu aswell or is it just the prize choice frozen meals that can be microwaved.
If you mix this with the JWB how much of the biscuit would you put to the prize choice or natures menu, and do you feed your dog once or twice a day only i don't want to overfeed him.

Thanks
Helen

The natures menu is raw and its fine for dogs to have raw chicken...their digestion system is different to ours.I only feed once a day and I do feed a small amount of complete still mixed with the natures menu....I just adjust the quantity accordingly.
I would feed the recommended amount and see how things go...increase if your dog loses  weight and decrease if he puts too much on. It might take a few weeks to get it right but you'll get there.
Archer

Is not natures menu cooked - I thought it was cooked in a bag or am I mixing it up with something else.
A friend of mine with Westies feeds raw - tripe, beef and chicken - and mixes it with a natural biscuit, Natural Choice Wholebake. he used to have skin problems with his westies  but since changing over to raw meat and wholebake has not looked back

I feed Natures menu frozen...the boys are not as keen on the prepacked cooked food.
Archer

You can feed pretty much any meat you want,raw or cooked,i lightly cook all my dogs meat as they wont touch raw. My guys go crazy for chicken sausages,the kind you get at the supermarket.

christine

Have you tried naturediet yet?Apparantly most dogs love it,it is already cooked for you,all you have to do is heat it up,you can mix the jwb in with it.This is the closest you will get to home cooked.

christine

Yes Ozzie

I use Nature diet (all varieties ) warmed through, and add either the hollistic "All in one" or Burn's Venison complete.. their dishes are emptied within mins, the best move I made if I have to say :-) And that's even my fussy old Sharpei dog that would turn his nose up at cooked fresh chicken :-)

Other than liver for treats and table scraps my dogs get nothing cooked - from newly weaned pups to OAP's.

Check out some of the raw feeding threads and you will find the various things that some of us feed :)

I have tried Hamish on the natures menu today the chicken,carrot and rice variety, he seemed to enjoy it added to his JWB, i just opened the pack and gave it to him like that. I know some people warm it through but i thought as i was already cooked when packed it would be okay. Just a couple of questions about it once opened does it need to be kept in the fridge, i have emptied the pack into a sealed container but i wondered whether it should be refrigerated once it was open, i know in the petshop it was just on the shelf but i was not sure once the pack had been opened whether it could be just kept in the cupboard, also when you open the pack how long can it be used for before it goes off, only there is quite a bit in a pack and i am only giving him a small amount once daily and it will last for about a week doing this i would think but will it be okay to last the week once the pack is open.
I know a lot of people of here use this so i thought somebody would know the answer to the questions.
Thanks
Helen and Hamish

You can feed dogs any and all meat, I do; I would not feed my dog sausages; I do not even eat them myself, most of the content of your average supermarket sausage is cereals, fat, fillers and floor sweepings!

I don't cook any of my meat my dogs are raw fed and get raw meat, fish, veg, fruit, eggs; they eat no commercial dog food at all, no dairy apart from live yoghurt and no cereals ever, at all.

Both our dogs are now completely off any sort of commercial food and thriving on it, they never seemed that fussed with any of the brands except Burns lamb+rice which they did love.

We have a fabulous local butcher who gives us most of what we feed free of charge which also results in a nice varied diet for our dogs as we don't know what we're getting from day to day :)

Everything we feed is raw and they chase the bowls around the room when their finished trying to get every last bit off them, we do feed potato now and again but their favourites at the moment are the stalks from broccally (Sp ?) and carrots which they go nuts for :)

Tohme I had to laugh at your desciption of sausage content as my wife takes great pleasure in telling people  " I wouldn't go near those their just lips and a**holes "

Steve

I wouldnt eat sausages either,yes they do contain lips and arseholes :rolleyes: But my dogs love them and i am trying to put weight on one of my dogs and they seem to be working where nothing else has :( I am going to change over to the steak sausages which contains nothing but minced steak,a wee bit on the expensive side but they only get them maybe once a week.

christine