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BARF & home made food?


Crested

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I thought I'd ask you guys if it's any idea to switch from porridge + dog kibble feeding to porridge + Barf? I'm not that fond of the BARF idea that [b]everything[/b] has to be raw. I mean... I understand and support the meat and the vegetables, but I don't know if I think the wheat, grain etc. think is ok. I mean... I've tried to study BARF, but there's not that much information that I've had the chanse of getting. Especially in Finnish to fit the Finnish lifestyle and goods.
I've got a lot of information of why not to feed dog kibble and the info is pretty appauling, so I thought I'd ask what you think of feeding diffirent kind of grain, wheat, rye and stuff like that in a porridge with raw meat and a mixture of vegetables and why not even fruit?
I still don't trust myself enought to know about all the vitamins and such, so I will be feeding a bit of dog kibble, but not even close to the ammount I feed now.
I mean... atleast I'd know what I'd be feeding...

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like most other dog food questions, i'm sure you'll get a million different answers. many people will not feed their dogs grains at all for different reasons. many dogs can't tolerate grains.

with a barf diet, i do feed grains. most mornings roxy will get a bowl of oatmeal with honey and a little peanut butter mixed in. we've had no problems and she loves it. i say, if it works for you and your pups, then do it. (i don't think grains can be fed raw anyway, though i could be wrong).

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if you want to feed the grain raw, soak it overnight or even longer. dogs can not utilize grains in their natural state, so you have to help them along by either cooking or soaking them.

i would also recommend rotating between different grains, since they all contain different levels of nutrients. barley, brown rice, whole wheat berries, quinoa, cornmeal, millet and several others are some alternatives.

most fruit and vegetables are fine too, just stay away from onions and grapes, and go easy on cabbage type veggies, because they can cause gas.

if you want to feed a homemade diet, you will have to offer as much variety as possible so your dog will get all the nutrients he needs. don't make the mistake of falling into a routine and feeding the same things for an extended time. not every single meal has to be balanced, but you need to achieve a balance over a timespan of a couple weeks.

try to get the book "Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats". as posted in another thread recently, i don't necessarily agree with [i]everything[/i] he says, but overall it's a very good book to learn the basics of feeding a homemade diet, regardless if raw or cooked.

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mydogroxy: I know that there are as many ways to feed a dog as there are owners, so my goal is to find out as much as possible about home feeding and BARF. ;-)

TDG: I currently feed Ben and Bella with a porridge that's made out of buckwheat, millet, barley, rice and ground meat put in a bowl of water and then in the oven for a 2-3 hours. I'm planning on starting to get Ben used to raw meat (he's never had it. Bella has eaten raw meat even at her breeder's and I've continued with it. Ben hasn't been that fond of it) and then taking the meat totally out of the porridge and serving it raw instead.
Is it OK to put mixed veggies, raw meat and the porridge into one bowl and giving it? I'm not sure where to start or what to do, so all the advice you can give me is to good help. I've tried to understand about all the vitamins, what they do etc, but it seems very hard. Might be that everyone explains it in a very difficult way or that I'm just plain dumb. :oops:

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crested, i know it can be challenging in the beginning, but once you have a good overview of the required nutrients, it's rather easy. here are a few key things that come to mind:

1. if you feed meat without bones, regardless if it's raw or cooked, you need to balance the phosphorus content by adding a calcium supplement, otherwise you are opening the door for orthopedic and kidney issues. fortunately this is not hard to accomplish - you can either feed a bone meal supplement, or go the really easy route and use dried, ground up eggshells. (i do not recommend manufactured nutritional calcium supplements, as you risk oversupplementing that way, which is not good for a dog's health.) each whole eggshell makes about a teaspoon of powder, which equals about 1,800 milligrams of calcium. i use 1 eggshell or 1 teaspoon of powder per pound of meat.

to process the egg shells, wash them after breaking open the egg, let them dry and then bake in the oven at 300 degrees F/150 degrees C for about 10 minutes. then grind them up in a blender or coffee/spice grinder, or even just a mortar and pestle, depending on what you have available. just make sure you grind them into a fine dust without any sharp little pieces left.

whenever i make a full recipe worth of food, i just toss the whole egg, shell and all, into the blender when making the veggie mash.


2. if you cook your dog food ingredients, don't cook them for hours on end. the longer they are cooked and the higher the temperature, the more of the natural nutrients and enzymes are killed and you basically end up with something that is just as processed as commercial foods. toss the meat into some simmering water and just stew it long enough so it's cooked through. any longer and you have a greater loss. for the grains, i also recommend soaking them overnight and then simmer at low temperature for 15-20 minutes.


3. any fruit and veggies you want to feed must be either mashed into a pulp or steamed for a short time to break down the cell walls, otherwise the nutrients are not available to the dog. they don't have the enzymes to accomplish this. fruit can be fed whole if it is overripe and mushy already (e.g. bananas with a dark brown peel).


4. you can mix everything together in a bowl if you want to, or feed doggie porridge with a little fruit and yogurt or cottage cheese for one meal, and meat with veggie mash for another. whichever is convenient for you. personally i try to keep meals as varied as possible just to make it a bit more interesting for my dog.

5. just as with the grains, you need to vary your fruits/veggies, and (most important) your protein sources as well. this is important because different meats contain different levels of aminoacids. eggs, cottage cheese, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, duck, goose, fish, venison - whatever you can find. in my feeding program, i mostly rely on turkey, chicken, beef, pork and lamb for meat based proteins, because it's what i can get easily. eggs and cottage cheese are easy to get pretty much anywhere even when travelling, so i use them a lot too. if your dog has any allergies to specific meat proteins, you need to keep that in mind of course.


6. as far as vitamins and minerals go, it's not all that difficult. the main thing to keep in mind is that if you feed a diet that is varied enough, you will cover most of the required nutrients naturally. whenever you can, pick organically grown products, since they are not grown on depleted soils (or fed things grown on depleted soils) and not treated with pesticides, antibiotics etc. - for me this is of highest concern when feeding organ meats like liver and kidneys etc., since they filter toxins from the blood.

here is my "short list" again that covers a large number of nutrients with a relatively small number of food ingredients:

[b]vitamins[/b]:
- vitamin C: green leafy vegetables, carrots, berries, tomatoes etc.
- B vitamin complex: liver, brewers yeast
- biotin: beef liver, brewers yeast, cheese, eggs, chicken breast meat, salmon
- choline: egg yolks, beef, wheat germ, oats
- inositol: wheat germ, brewers yeast, liver, brown rice, oats, vegetables
- vitamin A/beta carotene: cod liver oil, liver, egg yolk, carrots, dark green leafy vegetables, yellow/orange fruits
- vitamin D: exposure to sunlight, cod liver oil, fatty fish, liver, egg yolk, dark leafy vegetables
- vitamin E: whole grains, wheat germ and wheat germ oil, avocado, beef, seafood, apples, carrots, celery
- vitamin K: leafy vegetables, cheese, liver, also produced by the bacteria in the healthy intestinal tract


[b]minerals[/b]:
- calcium: dairy products (cottage cheese!), blackstrap molasses, fish, ground eggshells
- chloride: kelp, tomatoes, celery
- magnesium: dairy products, fish, meat and seafood, apples, blackstrap molasses, avocados, bananas, dark leafy vegetables, whole grains
- phosphorus: meat, poultry, fish, eggs, bones - most dogs get too much instead of too little, often resulting in kidney damage
- potassium: fruit, vegetables,whole grains, blackstrap molasses, fish
- sodium: present in many foods, also best avoided in high amounts
- sulfur: eggs, garlic, lettuce, cabbage

[b]trace elements[/b]:
- boron: honey, fresh fruit, green leafy vegetables
- chromium: eggs, beef, whole grains, brewer's yeast, blackstrap molasses
- cobalt: vegetables
- copper: whole grain, liver, blackstrap molasses
- iodine: eggs, seafood, kelp and other seaweed
- iron: meat, poultry, fish, grains, fruits, vegetables
- manganese: avocados, eggs, brown rice, whole grains, leafy greens
- molybdenum: spinach, liver, whole grains, dark green leafy vegetables
- selenium: whole grains
- silicon: oats, alfalfa, leafy green vegetables, whole grains
- zinc: muscle meat, poultry, seafood, grains, eggs, seeds, brewer's yeast

rules of thumb:

* there is no danger of oversupplementing water soluble vitamins, since excess amounts are excreted daily in the urine. drawback: these have to be supplied on a fairly regular daily basis to keep the animal healthy.

* the fat soluble vitamins on the other hand (A, D, E, K) build up in the body, which may cause health problems. lucky enough, you only need to watch out for A and K, since there is no toxicity in oversupplementation of vitamin E (the body utilizes it as an antioxidant), and vitamin D is synthesized in the body in sufficient quantities if your dog is regularly exposed to sunlight (3x 15 minutes per week is enough already). go easy on feeding liver and cod liver oil and there's barely a risk of feeding "too much".

natural sources of nutrients are preferable, but if you still feel insecure, add a multivitamin supplement to your daily feeding program. kibble will [b]not[/b] cover this!

if you want to feed vitamin supplement, stay away from your typical run of the mill "pet supplements" sold at most large pet store chains or department/grocery/drug stores in the pet supplies aisle - they are mostly made from poor quality ingredients and are a waste of money. i don't know about the situation in finland, but in germany and in the US i was mostly just able to find the quality stuff in specialty stores or mail order/internet. supplement brands like solid gold, wellness, wysong and azmira holistic animal care are quality products.

if you have any more questions, i'll be happy to help out.

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Do you think it would alter the quality of a cooked diet similar to that above if the meat were lightly cooked, frozen and then reheated by boiling? What I'm wanting to do is cook up big batches at a time. I have one of those vacuum sealer food saver thingies and was thinking about lightly cooking the meat, adding the veggies and the egg with shell thing (hey, I like that!), vacuum sealing and freezing it and then later reheating it by boiling the sealed bags. Do you think that would be counterproductive? Right now, we are feeding Canidae supplemented with cooked/fresh foods, but I am thinking of going solely homecooked for three of them. If lightly cooking, freezing, reheating by boiling is feasible, I could easily make up batches on the weekends. I guess my question is more like... will it alter the quality by effectively cooking it twice?

(Sorry, Crested, for just butting right in :oops: )

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horsefeathers, why not mix it up raw and just cook it as needed before feeding? each processing step contributes to losses and changes in the food ingredients, so if you could eliminate as much of that as possible, you'd be better off.

personally i make up a big batch (usually around 8-10 servings for my little dog of 22 lbs) and store/freeze it in resealable 8 oz yogurt containers. they are very convenient for me because the size is exactly right for one meal. each evening when i feed one portion, i transfer one container from the freezer to the refrigerator so it will be thawed the next evening (morning meals are kibble or prepared grain mix with yogurt and fruit).

but of course the vaccuum sealing method would work too!

most of the time i am lucky enough to get organic or at least antibiotic/hormone free meats, which i do feed raw. anything i'm not completely satisfied with gets cooked for safety tho.

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So you feed it cold/thawed, no reheating?

I was thinking of making one all inclusive (except yogurt) batch and freezing it into separate meals. I hadn't thought of just freezing it raw and heating to serve. Wouldn't that affect the veggies in it then, cooking them with the meat when heating? What I had planned to do was just drop the vacuum sealed baggies of mixture into boiling water to heat. Maybe more feasible to just prepare veggies and meats separately and then put together at mealtime?

I'm really trying to make it as simple as possible for me because (I'm really simple minded?) if I could make it practical, I am considering switching all nine of my dogs over to primarily homecooked instead of just the three. Sorry to say I lack the *ahem*cough* "ambition" to cook for all nine now, but I think I could be motivated by simplicity. :oops:

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i do it really simple too, because i'm not the most well organized person. and yes, whatever i feed out of the freezer is just thawed and not processed any further. 24 hours in the refrigerator is usually enough to completely defrost whatever is in my little containers.

if you cook the meat before freezing, you don't really have to boil it again, tossing the vaccuum baggies into a pot or bowl of hot water should do nicely and won't be hot enough to affect the food. or just defrost in the refrigerator.

personally i'm not really good at using up leftovers promptly enough, so i just freeze everything in the same portion-sized container, but i suppose you could do the meat and veggies separated too if it's more convenient.

here's a description of my typical routine:

[b]morning meal:[/b]
kibble or grains with a good dollop of yogurt or cottage cheese, sometimes an egg, and (if on hand) some fruit. i try to keep this really simple, because i'm not a morning person but my dog dances allover the place awaiting his breakfast. the only reason i haven't eliminated kibble completely is that i don't want to put an unnecessary burden on anyone who might pet sit or board my dog in the future for whatever reason may come up, or on road trips when it might not be practical/possible to feed homemade stuff. thank god he is a little chow hound and will eat most anything i put in his bowl, regardless if kibble or fresh.

[b]evening meal:[/b]
i alternate (on no particular schedule) between raw meaty bones and prepared meat/veggie meals.
* rmbs: lamb shanks, turkey necks, pork neck bones, beef rib bones and small beef bones (oxtail, chuck neck bones etc.) - i buy them fresh, chop the bigger ones into smaller pieces (6-8 oz) if needed and freeze them. sometimes if the bones are excessively "meaty" i trim off some meat and use those trimmings in my prepared meat/veggie meals. i feed bones right out of the freezer for the most part, except on the day i bring home a new supply. keeps my dog busy a little longer.
* meat/veggie meals: prepared in batches, depending on how much stuff i come home with. i buy meat either ground (mostly beef and turkey) or in whatever pieces i can get cheap (chicken, lamb), which i cut into small chunks of about 1 inch. for the most part this is muscle meat, but i do try to organize my shopping to include enough organ meats to feed them 1-2 times a week. heart, liver, kidney etc. - if you mix them, stick with one species, e.g. beef liver/heart/kidney [i]or[/i] chicken hearts/liver etc. - supposedly the nutritional value is higher that way, which does make sense since different species have different levels and types of aminoacids, enzymes etc. which work together.

vegetables, whatever is on hand, 2-4 different kinds go into each batch of veggie mash and i keep notes so i don't feed the same things all the time. e.g. one batch could be parsley, carrots and broccoli, next time squash, zucchini and bell pepper, the time after that green beans, sweet potato and turnips.

[b]preparation:[/b]
i get our my scales, set out my little yogurt containers and weigh about 4 oz of meat per container (mostly raw, but boiling anything i don't quite trust). once all that is divided up, i cut up my veggies and toss them in the blender, mixing them up until it's a smooth mash. sometimes a little water is needed to get everything blended properly. if you add eggs with shells instead of egg shell powder, toss them in first and blend them into a smooth mass before you add anything else. i learned from my mistakes. :roll:

once the veggie mash is done, i spoon 2-3 tablespoons full into each container and put the lids on and off they go into the freezer, minus what i plan feeding the next 2 evenings. to keep organized, i bought little blank self-adhesive stickers to label the containers so i know what's in each one. makes it easier to pick out specific meals to keep variety in the schedule when you prepare large batches of different things, for example because you found some nice deal on a particular foodstuff.

i haven't been doing this for very long yet, so some more experienced people may have more to contribute, but at least for one little dog it's really not a lot of work, especially if you enjoy cooking anyway.

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Thanks for the input. I was mulling it over today... nine dogs, eighteen meals a day. Wow. Double wow when you factor in that I do not cook at all, period. My husband is in charge of the kitchen simply because I'm a hazard (give me a vacuum, washer/dryer, dust cloth and I'm ok, but the kitchen... ack!). I am allowed occasional microwave privileges.

Seriously, I've been supplementing a bit of cooked with the kibble for quite a while, but I am now considering doing the full meal deal with three of my more "problematic" dogs (allergies, innard problems). I just went to town and bought up some veggies and tub on top of tub of yogurt and cottage cheese and have taken down some chicken with the intention of getting in the kitchen this weekend and having a go at it (under close supervision, of course). I just don't think it's feasible for me to try to go about putting all nine on a solely homecooked diet, though they do all get a bit of cooked in their kibble. Better than nothing, I reckon. Heck, they eat better than me. I can eat at Burger King and never give it a thought, but when my kid sister offered a french fry to one of my dogs one day, I told her, "don't give him that crap!" She still has "issues" with the fact that I "love" my dogs more than her ("you eat that crap, but don't give it to my dogs"). :oops: Of course, I can't win because my husband thinks a dog is deprived if it doesn't get supplements of cheese puffs and cookies. :-?

Anyway, I digress. Sometimes my mind takes these trips and I have to go out looking for it.

Thanks again.:)

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  • 2 months later...
Guest Anonymous

Hello Crested!
I feed my dog whit BARF and I think that wheat doesn't belong to dog diet. Thats because dogs natural preys (moose, deer...) doesn't eat wheat.

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[quote name='Hannamari Immonen']Hello Crested!
I feed my dog whit BARF and I think that wheat doesn't belong to dog diet. Thats because dogs natural preys (moose, deer...) doesn't eat wheat.[/quote]

just for the sake of debate - i doubt very much that "wild" dogs would hunt moose, deer or other large sized prey.

dogs are not wolves. regardless of the relatively recent renaming of the species from "canis familiaris" to "canis lupus familiaris" (which i don't agree with at all by the way), they are not the same animal. wolves have different skull and body proportions compared to dogs. dogs have smaller skulls and smaller jaws and teeth, much less suited for hunting large prey.

as far as i see it, "wild" dogs (as far as that term is even applicable, after all what [b]is[/b] a wild dog?) are scavengers that mostly live on small prey they consume whole, including fur, skin and bones (mice, lizards etc.) and whatever they can scavenge - which most frequently includes discarded scraps from garbage dumps as well as feces of large animals and humans.

if you are interested in reading about the topic, buy a copy of ray and lorna coppinger's "Dogs: A Startling New Understanding
of Canine Origin, Behavior & Evolution". i know for a lot of people it's a romantic thing to see their dogs as something like the noble wolf, but i think that is neither correct nor fair. neither is the situation dogs live in at this point in time comparable to what things were like 10,000 years ago.

today, we have billions of people and millions of dogs, all competing for resources grown in a more and more polluted environment. the more people and the more dogs want to eat high quantities of meat, the more of the environment gets cultivated for farming (either to produce feed or to house animals) and polluted with pesticides, manure etc.. on top of that you have industrial pollution and emissions of all kinds of vehicles. among anything edible, meat and fish are the most polluted items.

for those reasons, i find it selfish when people just go by a theory of what "wild" dogs "would" eat, instead of taking into consideration the state of our environment and the cost of producing commercially farmed meat, fruits, vegetables and grain.

there is sufficient literature written by respected holistic practitioners that cites dogs can and do thrive on a diet that includes grains and legumes. further, there are many dogs who live on entirely vegetarian diets, and the oldest dog alive to date is a vegetarian as well.

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Guest Anonymous

Hey you guys..I'm sure glad I stumbled into this forum. I currently feed my dog a bit of everything..sometimes she gets wellness dry dog food, and other times I boil some chicken and vegetables with various herbs and whatnot... I was thinking of converting her into a vegetarian, but I am not sure as to how I would go about doing this... Point being, I want her to have all the nutrients she needs....if I have to feed her meat, so be it..if I don't, then please let me know what some good recipes are. I feed her twice a day so...if anybody has any good recipes and weekly meal plans, PLEASE let me know... :lol:

Thank you :wink:

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pitbulletta, this is not a thing you should dive into unprepared if you want to make sure your pet stays healthy. pick up a few good books about homemade dog food, dr. pitcairn's "complete guide to natural health for dogs and cats" is a good start.

it has recipes for a meatless diet and discusses the proportions of nutrients and what kind of supplements are required. if you feed a dog a vegetarian diet, grains, legumes, eggs and cottage cheese will be the main sources of protein and they need to be balanced properly for the correct amino acid and mineral content.

you can find information for example at [url]http://www.vegetariandogs.com[/url] but i would not make any changes to the feeding regimen without consulting professional literature.

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