It seems to me that it my dog would love a raw food diet. This concept intrigues me but I know very little about it. Can you recommend a place I can educate myself online? I don't trust myself to just go to the store and figure it out.

i've heard of a raw food diet for pets for awhile ... i hear it's much healthier overall and easier on pets with alergies and special diet needs. quite time consuming to make, though, like any other food made from scratch.

I've heard a lot of good things about this yahoo group:

But I literally JUST got around to joining, so I don't know it personally.


The big things are the how and the why. "Why" is easy- my dogs are way healthier on a raw diet than they ever were on kibble. We were given a border collie in December, who had been on a kibble diet for several months at his old home. His breath was SOOO bad it could stink our entire living room. 2 months on raw, and it's not even a shadow of what it used to be. Their teeth stay much cleaner, their coats are better, they have less gas, they poop less and when they do poop it's not even the same kind of poop! It's so weird! That was my biggest surprise. I expected the other improvements, but poop is poop and it's always gross, so I didn't think it would change. There is a lot less of it, and what is left disintegrates quite quickly, so I don't need to go clean up their area of the yard nearly as much as I did on kibble.
And yes, they love raw. I've now fed raw with 3 dogs (my two, and one foster dog), and saw drastic improvements in all of them.

As for the how... it starts out sounding completely intimidating, but once you're in a routine and you're more confidant in your knowledge, it's very easy. It's not terribly expensive, especially when you hold it up next to the cost of really high quality dry dog food like Timberwolf or Nature's Variety. I spend between $50 and $60 a month on two dogs.
It is sort of time consuming, but I cut up and bag food twice a month, then freeze. It probably takes me an hour each time.

I'm more than willing to write more, if you want, I was just afraid of boring people... lol

I'm very interested.....write all you want and I will read it.

I've got no problems with raw food diets in general, but I urge you to at least let your Vet have a look at your proposed plan before starting. They might catch something you haven't, or might notice a lack of a required vitamin or something.
Ya never know.

Well... suppose it's best to start with the basics, then.

Amount- As a base starting point, 2% of your dogs body weight is a good amount to feed daily. See how your dog does on that for a couple weeks, and tweek it from there. My pit bull does fine on that, but the border collie is still growing, and really hyper, so he gets fed a higher percentage. The big issues that would make that % change are age (puppies need more, and it changes quickly as they grow), pregnancy, and activity.

Foods- First, the meat. Chicken, turkey, beef, lamb, venison, eggs, rabbit are all good. Pork brings with it trichinosis concerns, so I don't even bother with it. They can eat the eggs shell and all if you mash the shell up enough, but my dogs have never been fond of it and they'll lick the eggs up and leave the shell. Some people dry the shells & make a powder, though, and have more success with it that way.
With bones, they generally crunch them right up and digest them easily. I do avoid beef ribs, because I'm afraid they'll splinter. I might just be paranoid, though. Like I said, my base meat is chicken, and I supplement with the other stuff when/if it's on sale.
Next, organ meat. This is really important to include in their diet. My dogs get it 2-3 times a week (in addition to their chicken, not instead of). Generally, the easiest stuff to find is chicken hearts/ livers and beef hearts/ livers/ kidneys. In hunting season I have friends & family who give me their deer organs, too. Sometimes you'll see lamb kidneys, and those are usually really popular with the dogs.
As far as other bones, my dogs always have marrow bones in their crates, which I replace pretty much weekly. I don't know how needed they are as far as nutritional value goes, but they LOVE them, and I think it really helps with clean teeth and good breath. They're always kept in crates, though, and the crates are closed during the day so no one can bring a bone out and start a scuffle over it.

Supplements- The woman who got me started on raw, and who I go running blindly to if I have a question, recommends daily salmon oil and kelp powder. My dogs get salmon oil once a day, and it has helped with dry skin issues. The oil and kelp are easy, and help to fill in gaps that may have been left.

Other food- Goats milk & the powdered egg shell can help with calcium requirements if you have a dog that can't handle or doesn't like bones. For dogs that have a hard time keeping weight on (like really hyper dogs or athletes that are worked a lot), full fat plain cottage cheese or full fat plain yogurt can help up their calories if extra food just isn't cutting it.
If you feel that you want to add vegetables (I don't, anymore, but I used to), I think an easy way to do it and stock up is to run a bunch through a food processor with a little water or chicken broth to make it liquidy, and freeze it in a few ice cube trays. That way you can just pop a cube or two into a dish for them. It's also easier for them to digest if it's pureed like that- do them whole and expect to see them whole coming out the other end. lol

Finding food- Walmart has cheap chicken leg quarters, that are sold in 10lb. bags. Those are the easiest. I get the organ meat from the butcher shop section of the regular grocery store. If you can find a REAL butcher, that runs his/her own shop, you might be able to tell them what you're doing and get some really great stuff for not a bad price. It's worth hitting up meat processors during hunting season, too. You might get funny looks, but it's worth asking (and I find that a quick "My dog has food allergies, so he's on a raw diet" pretty much takes care of the weird looks and attitudes you might get- or mention the recalls. People are a lot more understanding of raw food after all the recalls...). I know a woman whose butcher loves her dogs so much that he delivers their food right to her door.


You get used to the downsides like the time, the preparation, and the grossness. My husband doesn't do the twice-a-month processing of food. He'd be fine with it after a few times, I'm sure, but he thinks it's pretty gross that I spend an hour in the kitchen sawing leg quarters in half with a hack saw, cutting up beef organs into single serving sizes, and filling our freezer with all kinds of stuff he'd never dream of eating. I'm so used to it that it doesn't phase me, but once or twice I've had friends drop by while I'm RIGHT in the middle of it, and you can see their stomachs turn a bit. My sister-in-law totally avoids the kitchen if she happens to be here on a dog food day.
But a lot of people comment about the dogs, and ask me how I get their coat so shiny/breath so odorless/teeth so clean, so I guess it's worth the trouble if they are that noticeably healthy to total strangers. It really does get easier as time goes on, too.

Thanks for all the info. This sounds like a lot of fun for me and my dog. I'm definitely going to try this out.

One other question, do you chop the meat into kibble sized pieces or is that unnecessarily small?

well .. can a raw food diet work for cats? i don't have a dog anymore, but i have a cat that goes outside often enough and eats a modest portion of kibble a day, but she's FAT.

You don't have to chop it up at all. Both of my dogs can handle a chicken quarter with no processing. Puppies or really small dogs might have some trouble crunching up the thicker bones, but a medium to big dog shouldn't. I only cut them in half to get the right daily portions. Same with the organ meat, I only cut it up because of serving sizes.
Most dogs, though, will need some training. They tend to start out by trying to wolf down a leg quarter without chewing it enough, and that can be a problem. You can train them to slow it down by giving them one end of the leg quarter to chew on while you hold the other end (wrapped in a towel, or it'll slip right out of your hand. lol). That way, you can train them to slow down by controlling how quickly they eat it, and also teach them to chew with their back teeth by moving the chicken to the right spot. Both my dogs got the hang of it quickly, I only had to do the towel thing a few days.

(If you have more than one dog, feeding them in totally separate rooms where they can't see each other at all might help slow down their eating, too.)

You can, yup. I haven't, but I have a friend who does raw for both her cats and they do really well on it. I found this site about it.

One thing I've found is that my pit bull doesn't like raw meat as much as cooked. He won't even eat raw meat, he'll spit it out and wait for me to cook it. I don't think the puppy would have any problem with it. Ever had a dog that refused uncooked meat?

As for the comment about the fat cat, I would highly question whether it is being fed proper proportions, I work at a veterinary hospital and see many overweight cats. If we feed them what the owner suggests, they gain weight while boarding with us. If we feed them light food and/or less amounts we generally start to see them lose the unnecessary weight. Feed for your cat's healthy weight (consult your vet), not it's current weight, or it will never lose any. An outside cat that gets enough exercise should not be fat. I would suggest switching to a light food and not feeding as much until you notice some weight loss. I don't think any rodents/food it is getting from outside would be enough to effect it's weight loss. Overweight animals have so many more problems than those who are not.

I have had one dog (out of 3) who refused raw chicken at first. Emma, our foster dog, just wasn't into it. It freaked her out, and she didn't know what to do.

I tried boneless, chopped up chicken, to ease her into it, but in the end I just had to stop babying her. Once she realized that was the only food we had (which took about 36 hours), she tried the leg quarters and once she tried them we didn't have any more troubles. That FIRST leg quarter, though, took sooooooo long for her to finish. I think it was like an hour.

The other thing that might make McGruff try it is if he saw the little guy eat it. Levi (our pit) wouldn't touch beef organs. Actually, he did the same thing your dog does- just spit them out and wait for something else. When we got a second dog and he saw that dog eat them, he realized he had competition, and now he eats any of the organ meat I put in front of him.

Here's a sample recipe for anyone interesting that can give an idea on starting point. This diet is geared for dogs with chronic disease or cancer, but can be used on any dog. I have also been told to never feed raw egg whites. The egg whites will actually deplete the efficiency of nutrients from the other foods. There is a good supplement called "Kelp Help" that can be purchased from KV Vet supply that is supposed to be excellent to supplement a raw diet with.

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This diet supplies the necessary macronutrients and micronutrients with a reduced caloric intake. Studies have shown that lowered calorie, balanced, high quality protein diets aide in treating chronic diseases such as cancer.

These diet directions are the daily requirements for a 40 lb. dog of moderate activity, or a dog which exercises about 2 hours per day. If your dog is more athletic, muscular and lean than increases the amounts by 10 % to 25 %. If your dog is more sedentary, overweight, or elderly, then decrease the quantities by up to 10 to 15 %.

Use the guide below to adjust this diet to the weight of your dog:

Weight Multiply quantities by


5 lb. dog: .10
10 lb. dog: .33
25 lb. dog: .75
40 lb. dog: 1.00
60 lb. dog: 1.50
85 lb. dog: 1.75
125 lb. dog: 2.33

8 oz chicken, turkey or fish (raw or very lightly poached), or lean raw beef or lamb, or 2 cups low fat cottage cheese or plain yogurt, or a combination of above, (eg.. 1 cup cottage cheese and 4 oz. meat/fish).
4 to 6 Units of vegetables (See below for unit amounts)
1 tbsp olive or canola oil (extra virgin or cold pressed is best)
Approximately 1400 mg. calcium (2 tsp. bone meal, calcium carbonate, lactate, gluconate, or chelated calcium) DO NOT use bone meal with kidney problems!

Micronutrients Give the following amounts daily- do NOT need to multiply based on weight:

Vitamin C, 500 mg twice daily.
Vitamin E 200 IU once daily.
Grape Seed Extract/Pycnogenol, approx 1 mg. per lb. body weight., twice daily.
Fish Oil or Salmon Oil, one-two capsules or Secure, one-two capsules daily.
Pro Vita Min or equivalent multivitamin supplement – as directed on bottle.
Homeopathic Cell Salts 1/4 tsp. daily








* Each UNIT of raw or lightly cooked vegetables below equals ONE UNIT of vegetables in the recipe. These can be mixed with each recipe preparation.
Variety is beneficial according to the tastes of each individual animal. ( For example, 6 UNITS can be 1 & 1/2 cups cabbage, 2 cups green beans, and 1 cup of potatoes.)


EACH OF THE FOLLOWING AMOUNTS = ONE UNIT

1 & 1/2 cups- Cabbage, red or white, or cauliflower (raw food processed)

1 cup- Green beans, broccoli, brussel sprouts, greens, ( kale, turnip greens etc..),yellow squash or zucchini. (raw food processed)

1/3 cup potatoes, lima beans, peas, yams (cooked)

1/3 cup black or kidney beans, chick peas, lentils (cooked)

FRUIT- One Unit = 1 apple or orange, 1 peach, or 2/3 cup melon

OATMEAL (NOT instant or quick) or COOKED BARLEY CAN BE SUBSTITUTED FOR UP TO 3 UNITS. = 1/3 CUP COOKED OATMEAL or BARLEY.

Certain raw vegetables can and should be added to this diet without any adjusting of the other nutrients, if your dog will eat them. Up to 1 cup of the following can be added to each recipe: Spinach, lettuce, bean sprouts, shredded broccoli, cabbage or cauliflower,

THE RATIO OF PROTEIN TO CARBOHYDRATES MUST BE MAINTAINED FOR EVERY MEAL FED.

This Cancer diet MUST be followed EXACTLLY ! The combination and ratio must be exact and blended with a food processor or blender for easy digestion ( so they don't throw it up ) The ratio of carbs and proteins and fruits & veggies is measured to the correct portions.