If the low residue dog food doesnt work for lexie I may try the raw as last resort if that can prevent her from having a colonospcopy and endoscopy. what raw would be the easiest for me to feed her and the most digestable for her sensitive stomach?

I think a lot of us have found that raw really helped with our sensitive stomach hounds. One of the things I would emphasize if you try it is to keep it simple. Don't feed any veggies or grains, and start with only a single protein.

Many people choose chicken because it tends to be cheap and easily available, but if your hound does not do well on chicken then I would try something else. For chicken I would start with chicken leg quarters or bone-in chicken breasts. The breasts more expensive, but the bones are even softer so if she doesn't do well with the leg quarters I would try those. After a few (3-4) days you should see firm poop, if you don't I would try adding in some more boney items like chicken backs (so mix it up with 1 breast and 1 back, etc). I normally caution to not feed too much bone, but for some IBD pups they need it since that's what firms the stools.

For other proteins we can give you suggestions too if you need, of course. Chicken bones are one of the softest so that's another reason why it's an easy protein to start with. Generally though you'd want to start on items with not much extra fat and bones that are not too hard (so I wouldn't use any beef bones or pork/lamb leg bones at first). As far as amounts, I'd start with about 2% of her body weight.

I never fed a dog raw meat. I had a doxie for 18 years. Why is it safe for the grey to eat the bones? Dont the bones get lodged in their intestines? I am a lil nervous about the bone parts. Oh and this may sound stupid but can they get salmonala from uncooked chikcen like people do?

oh and if she is 58 pounds how do i figure how much to feed? like 2 breasts per meal?

I am still relatively new to feeding raw.. however this is what I have learned. Greys can DEFINITELY handle chewing up bones as long as they haven't been cooked. In fact, Choo Choo's teeth are showing wonderful improvement since I started feeding a partial raw diet. The salmonella question is NOT stupid... however, if you think about the ancestry of dogs.. wild dogs eat raw meat ALL the time, in fact, that is their primary diet. Their bodies are designed to handle bacteria that our bodies are just not designed to deal with. If salmonella was going to kill a dog, wild dogs would die from their diet pretty quickly.



There is an equation of how much meat to feed per pound of body weight. Choo and Ty are both around 70lbs and I feed them 12oz of meat per meal... but I admit I don't remember the exact equation. I know someone else on here will be able to tell you it though.

your fridge must be full of chicken parts all the time...rofl

Mine isn't because I only feed a partial raw diet. I have seen people who feed raw full time who have chest freezers full of chicken.

oh yea, I can see me telling my husband now...Oh honey, we need to buy another freezer just for the dog...lol.. we just spent 800 bucks on backyard lights last year just for her...lol

Fridge & freezer.

l love this site for a starting place for home prepared food info: Dogaware. It has a lot of options & alternatives if you're just starting to do some research.

The usual recommendation for feeding quantity is 2-3% of the dogs body weight in food/day. So if she is 58 lbs, 2% is about 1.2 lbs of food for one day.

Heck--not just chicken...I have pork neck, turkey neck and beef parts too! Oh--and then there's the containers of veggie slop....

(I have a shelf for human food too....really.... )

Anyhoo, do your reading first! Join the NaturallyGrey group on Yahoo. I think the equation is 1-2% of their ideal body weight, but after a few years I just went by how Mac looked. Ican't say enough good things about a good raw diet, properly fed. It's a PITA, but Mac was so darned healthy. In the 6.5 years we were together, he just had his yearly for his shots. He would have had his first dental next year...

Jan

We recently began feeding Whidbey a partial raw diet (and yes, we have an extra freezer for all the poultry carcasses! ). Started with chicken, cut up into quarters or halves, and am now just beginnign to introduce turkey into his diet. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you should be feeding about 2% to 3% of your pup's body weight. He loves tearing into dinner now! I still watch over him whenever I feed raw though, to make sure that he chews and doesn't gulp. Hearing all the bone-chunching, tooth-cleaning goodness makes me smile because he HATES the toothbrush.

Cooked bones are an absolute no-no. Cooking changes the properties of the bone, and makes them extremely dangerous- obstructions, perforations, etc.

UNCOOKED is another matter entirely. Uncooked bones- poultry and otherwise- are generally safe in terms of digestion. (There would be some exceptions for very large, heavy bones- which is why feeding weight-bearing bones is not a good idea: they'll chip teeth, and there's the possibility of ingesting a chunk too large to digest.)

Try feeding one drumstick- one raw, uncooked drumstick and see what happens. Not all dogs know what to do with it.

Raw grosses me out too. But the trade-off is that the poop is not so gross, I can practically pick it up with a tissue.

And no big checks to the vet. Those checks were really gross.

It's safe to feed raw bones, but never cooked ones. The cooking draws out the moisture (which is how boiling bones gives stock flavour) and makes the bones brittle. This is true for all breeds, btw, not just greys. Cats, ferrets, and other meat-eating animals can also eat a raw diet. Canine stomachs have much more acidic stomach acid than we do, and it is also much shorter, so meat and bones does not stay in there long and the acid takes good care of it. My two have been eating raw for, let's see, I think almost 4 years now.

For your girl I would start feeding about 1-1.5 lbs per day. If you feed two meals per day you would divide that approx. in half. My average chicken leg quarter is about 1/2 to 3/4 of a lb, so that would be about two of those per day - you could do one for breakfast and one for dinner. Not sure how much bone-in breast weigh but I would expect about the same or a little less.

Yes, we have a separate freezer - it makes shopping much cheaper because we can buy stuff in bulk and stock up on sales. This goes for dog meat as well as the big bags of frozen veggies and stuff that we buy for ourselves at Costco. I keep human food on certain shelves and dog food on others, to make it easier to find things at a glance.

I forgot to add but I would not feed any organ meats (liver, kidney, etc) for now because it is typically richer and loosens stools. It's an important part of the diet, but you should get her stabilized on a very basic diet first before adding in variety. Personally, since it sounds like she has a very sensitive tummy, I would just feed chicken (or whatever meat you choose) for a couple of weeks before even thinking about adding more stuff. Feeding too much, too soon, is the most common reason for big D in new-to-raw dogs. Also, no gradual switch is necessary (in fact I wouldn't do it as for some dogs it causes problems) but you may want to start on a weekend so you can be home to let her out if she has an upset tummy for the first day or two.

I'll chime in with a stupid question: everyone talks about keeping all the raw meat in the freezer. Do you defrost it before feeding? Partially, fully, etc? I guess you do 'cause I would think frozen meat would break teeth...but I'll ask the question anyway.

When I buy chicken quarters in the 10# bags, I split them up (3 for a meal) and refreeze in Zip Lock bags. That way I can grab 3 bags out of the freezer to defrost for 3 evening meals. Mine will eat them partially frozen if I forget to get them out in time. Frozen meat takes them longer to eat so if you have a dog that eats too fast, it slows them down. They get the chicken quarters in the evening and a boneless meal (venison, pork, beef) in the morning.

I did purchase a used freezer so I could take advantage of people cleaning out their freezers for this years wild game.

I usually thaw by taking the item out of the freezer in the morning and setting it in the kitchen sink. By the time we get home from work most things are thawed (we feed once a day in the evening). I feed most things thawed, unless I forget to take something out. Certain things I feed mostly frozen though - whole smaller fish, chicken feet, any other small items that would barely get chewed if thawed. For these items I might just run the water over them in the sink or only thaw for an hour or so. Frozen meat doesn't break teeth, and I don't think frozen bones would either unless you are taking about very hard bones which I tend to stay away from anyway.

Other things I feed partially frozen, like chicken leg quarters, pork ribs, turkey necks and other chicken/turkey pieces. One of the reasons we feed raw is for the tooth cleaning, and frozen items take longer to eat and thus accomplish this better. I can't always provide challenging things to eat, so partly frozen kind of does that. BTW, this is also one of the reasons I feed once a day - one bigger piece takes more work than two smaller pieces.

I replaced the bottom drawer of my refrigerator with a plastic bin that fits perfectly. The frozen meat goes in there. It is not fed until it is thawed- or at least un-frozen enough I can stick a fork into it. I don't want any teeth breaking on hard-frozen foods.

Lots of great advice on this thread.

Here's what I could remember to "answer" or add!

Don't worry about complete nutrition for your dog at the beginning of raw feeding. An unbalanced diet will be fine for a few weeks. That will give you time to learn more.

A dog can "get" (swallow) salmonella. He won't get sick from it because his gut is too short for it to flourish. Not a stupid question at all.

Do not feed weight bearing bones (leg bones) from larger animals. Broken teeth end up happening that way.

Start with 2-3% of your dog's weight. Watch your dog. Too thin? Add more. Getting chubbers? Feed less. (As an aside, Duncan eats 4% of his body weight. That just goes to show you that there is variance in how much to feed.)

Bone firms poops; organs loosen them. Choose accordingly. But stay off the organs for the first week! You'll be sorry if you don't.

Start saving up for a freezer. I never thought I would get one. Now I do and it is filled with weird things for Duncan that I never thought I could feed. I can just imagine someone rifling through my freezer and wondering what I do with goat mammary glands, deer lungs, beef lungs, etc. The level of nausea you feel at the beginning of raw feeding drops precipitously with time.

very informative ty you all. has anyones dog ever swallowed like the whole chicken leg at once? Or has anyone's dog just eaten the meat and left the bone?

That would be called choking. I think some dogs (including Mac) didn't chew much, but I never saw him swallow something that big without a FEW crunches.

And, no, the bones are GONE.

This from the dog who could pick out kidney beans from leftover chili.

Jan

Heck, I've had greys swallow an entire tom turkey neck the same thickness of my wrist after chewing it twice- as in "chomp, chomp, swallow."

Never had them pick the meat off the bone. Normally it's crunch crunch crunch crunch swallow, more, please!

That's one of the good things about chicken leg quarters - their shape makes them quite difficult to swallow whole, unlike something that's in a straight line like a neck. As for eating the meat and leaving the bone, that would take a bit of effort on their part because we're talking about items where it's not easy to separate. Typically dogs will crunch down on the meat and the bone in the same bite.

BTW, re: freezing - at the beginning, and especially since you have a sensitive tummy dog, I wouldn't try to feed anything frozen. Let the meat come to room temperature if you can (but no microwaving or anything like that or you'll cook the bone!).

lol too funny about picking out the kidney beans...you giving your dog chili???? roflmao
you like the smell of gas??? lol

i think everytime i go to the store now and buy chicken i will be looking at the legs. it is tempting to try . I know lexie would love it. Right now the vet just put her on a bg of the low residue so i will stay with that 2 weeks and see if no change i will try the raw. The bag of food was 40 bucks..lol

i am curious to see what my vet will say when i ask him about giving lexie raw? do vets usually reccommend it?

oh and since turkey day coming up how many of you having turkey ..do your greys come running when ya pull the raw turkey out to bake in the oven?..lol any grey ever swipe the whole raw bird??? lol

Some vets are on board with raw feeding but most are not. They don't get much nutritional traing in vet school and what they get is sponsored by Kibble companies. Of course, dog food companies want the vets to sell their expensive foods when they set up practice!

Some people don't mention the diet unless the vet specifically asks! My vet hasn't asked me about the dogs diet but my cousin who is a vet thinks it is better for the cats & dogs.

Oh no, most vets are not on board with raw. My previous one was raw-friendly though and actually fed raw to his own dogs. I'm in the "don't mention unless asked" camp. My current vet is very mainstream - he wants to give all the vaccines each year, recommends feeding Hills Science Diet (he sells it too, of course). He asked what I fed and for how long. When I told him he went through a speech about why he wouldn't do it, all the "dangers", blah blah blah. Then he said the dogs look great and to keep doing what I'm doing.

I was in a pet store the other day getting tripe. They had pre-packaged "Raw" meals. Chicken, beef and lamb. Anyone tried these? They looked like patties.

The only thing that gave Mac BAAAAD gas was dog food.....Go figure!

My vet did pretty much the same thing--"Raw seems extreme..." but "Mac is the best looking greyhound I have seen in a long time..."

Joey will be raw fed too. I have just a little over a week to wait!

Jan

this may sound stupid too but will lexie take the bones out and eat them all over her cage with her blankets or eat over her bowl??? lol I dont want raw meat all over her bedding. she eats in her cage. I guess i can only answer that question...lol just was curious what other greys do.

I wouldn't expect her to eat in a bowl. What I do is feed in their crates and they eat right on the floor of it - the bowls are only used for water these days or if I'm feeding something like eggs that needs to be contained. Right now they're only used for eating, but when we still had dog beds in them I would just pull the beds out for dinner time and put them back in after they were done and the crates were dry. Since the bed was lying right beside the crate, the dogs would sometimes lie on it there if they wanted to so it wasn't a problem.

I feed them on old towels on their beds. Then we just have to wash the towels. Some people feed them outside when the weather permits it.

I switched my old man Luther to raw - cold turkey last May. Until then he had chronic big D. I started out with the Natures Variety in small bits..he wolfed that - it is very $$$, but I know I am very lazy and could not do the "real thing". Then I went to Bravo! because it was a lot cheaper..they have a great variety. Lastly, I switched to Omas Pride..definately the best of the prepared type raw diets..To make a long story short, Luthers BIG D cleared up almost immediately, his breath improved and at 15+ years, he found a new spring in his step.

I highly recommend the book - "Switching to Raw" by Susan K. Johnson. She was a great personal help too. I think the only way to get it is through her website www.switchingtoraw.com - Her no nonsense, logical approach is so refreshing compared to some of the esoteric, bs that's out there. I don't work for her, but I am a huge fan..

Best

Martha and Luther in MA

PS - because of my own laziness, Lu is now on Innova kibble + tripe for AM meal and raw for his pm meal..still going strong

I fed outside as often as I could. I was facing a problem here in Iowa, because Mac hated my tile floors in the kitchen--which is where I would feed him in the winter. Joey doesn't seem to be scared though.

Bleach and vinegar are the raw feeders FRIENDS.

Jan

Just. Don't. Mix. Them.

We use them when we travel. I like Oma's pride and Nature's Variety. We've used Primal (which is good but $$$) as well.

Most vets are against raw feeding. They rarely see anyone do it right. Mostly what they see is some good old boy tossing whatever he has into the backyard for his dog to eat. Those dogs rarely get a visit to the vet. When they do go, they are in awful shape.

My pretty dern uptight vet has come around with raw being okay for Duncan. Because of the aforementioned good old boys, I seriously doubt I will ever hear him extolling the virtues of raw.

Just my thoughts about why some vets don't like raw.

Jeez, Aaron. Take all the fun out of things.