Dutch Shepherd Forum

Hey! So while I'm a few years away from my own DS, my Dad has a Belgian Malinois who he currently feeds kibble from BJ's. When he was a pup we used to feed him a mix of chicken backs, ground beef, boiled eggs and a little puppy kibble, but since then he's moved to a straight kibble diet for ease of feeding. I've been reading a lot about prey and BARF diets. Personally I think I'll go with a prey diet for my own pup down the line, but since I'm still rather amateurish at the process, could anyone recommend how I could go about switching the Belgian from his kibble to raw? My Dad wants the best for his dog, but easiness and price is a factor. So in short, can you give me a general run down of your costs for a month of feeding? Also aside from local butchers, can anyone in NY (Long Island, specifically) point me to their sources? Thanks for any and all advice!

Regards,
Matt

EDIT:

So some more reading has gotten me thinking and I want to make sure I'm on the right track. Conner (the Belgian) should weigh about 75lbs give or take. 2% of that is 1.5lbs a day. If a ten pound bag of chicken leg quarters is around .43 cents a pound, that means the bag should last a week (including a day of one large meal and a day of fasting). So that's $4.30 a week, times four weeks in a month, the total to feed a month (in this case) is under $20. Did I do that right?

I would switch cold turkey, don't bother mixing up meals of new raw and old kibble. Just pick a day and start feeding raw.

In addition to meat and bone which you will have front he leg quarters, you also need to add organs, green tripe, and possibly a veggie/fruit mix. Do your research but don't forget all dogs are different and what works for one dog may not for another so you will need to find what works best for your individual dog. Some dogs do better with some carbs added, some do better with some fruit/veg added... etc

You should also feed a variety of protein sources, so in addition to the chicken look for beef, pork, any other animals that are within your budget. The more variety the better as each animal will offer slightly different nutrition. If all you can do is chicken, then you should look into adding supplements to the diet.

2% of body weight is a good place to start but you may end up needing to feed more if the dog has a quick metabolism or is high energy. And to answer your cost question, that is going to depend completely on how much your dog eats, and how much all those ingredients cost you locally. These prices can vary greatly from one place to another. Look for any local raw feeders groups or coops that buy in bulk and split between members, look for processing plants they can be a good source of cheap meats, but the rule of thumb is plan to buy in bulk an freeze so if you want to feed raw on the cheap you will need freezer space.

If you want to go with the prey model vs barf, remember it's supposed to be WHOLE prey, a few chicken legs is by a long shot not whole prey.

Yes I know to avoid kibble mixed with raw since they digest at different rates. In addition to organs and green tripe in my reading I've seen that fruit and veg aren't exactly necessary. Again I'm going for a prey model as opposed to BARF. The chicken quarters were just an example, though this article proposes that variety is more of us projecting human needs to our dogs. I still plan on variety either way down the line, just my two cents. And in terms of whole prey, aren't chicken leg quarters sort of..Ideal? Obviously there is a need for organ meat but they seem like a decent staple (though more likely than not I will try to get chicken halves for Conner at first).

Matt, I feed mostly chicken because of the cost. I also love to feed rabbit. So much so that I bought 3 rabbits in hopes of breeding them for meat. that has been frustrating. I must have the only celibate rabbits on the planet.

I make sure to add organs (chicken livers, beef livers, kidneys, brains etc.) I would love to get my hands on some venison. Also I add salmon oil and vitamin e and eggs. I don't add fruits and veggies often but they seem to like over-ripe bananas and an occasional green bean.

I order some odd ball meats and tripe from Hare today gone Tomorrow... Admittedly it is a little expensive but it brings me so much joy to watch my teen aged daughter freak out over a rabbit ear, dead mouse or most recently a whole sardine . The dogs did not like the sardines to eat but they dig take them upstairs to the carpet and roll on them...

I can't give you an exact figure because their diet varies a lot according to what is on sale. Like Coochi says a freezer comes in handy!

Matt wrote:And in terms of whole prey, aren't chicken leg quarters sort of..Ideal?

No because a whole prey model is based on the fact that your dog is getting proper amounts in proper proportions of meat vs skin vs bone, etc.. If you look at these ratios on a chicken leg, the ratios will be very different then when you consider a whole chicken with all the bones, skin, feet, head, fat, organs, stomach contents, etc. of a whole animal. VERY different especially in the case of a leg which has a highly disproportionate amount of muscle on it.

And while some people dismiss veggies and fruit as not necessary, they do contain a lot of good things that benefit the dogs such as various antioxidants, and other nutrients/vitamins etc that are not present in meat. So no, your dog will not die if you don't feed them, but he will benefit from them if you do. I don't think it's necessarily accurate to say that they are completely not needed if your goal is to feed your dog the most nutritious food possible. Some of the whole prey movement out there is based more on what is convenient and easy rather then what is actually best. Originally whole prey model was based on feeding whole prey, as in the entire chicken (head guts and all), it has since been watered down for convenience sake to mean chicken legs and a handful of organ meats. Completely different. I think there is also a difference in feeding your dog based on what wild dogs can scavenge and find in the wild where they eat what ever they can and not necessarily what is best for them vs feeding based on a model that takes into account that we can assemble and provide what is best for the dog.

Lauren wrote:Matt, I feed mostly chicken because of the cost. I also love to feed rabbit. So much so that I bought 3 rabbits in hopes of breeding them for meat. that has been frustrating. I must have the only celibate rabbits on the planet.

I make sure to add organs (chicken livers, beef livers, kidneys, brains etc.) I would love to get my hands on some venison. Also I add salmon oil and vitamin e and eggs. I don't add fruits and veggies often but they seem to like over-ripe bananas and an occasional green bean.

I order some odd ball meats and tripe from Hare today gone Tomorrow... Admittedly it is a little expensive but it brings me so much joy to watch my teen aged daughter freak out over a rabbit ear, dead mouse or most recently a whole sardine . The dogs did not like the sardines to eat but they dig take them upstairs to the carpet and roll on them...

I can't give you an exact figure because their diet varies a lot according to what is on sale. Like Coochi says a freezer comes in handy!

I will definitely be getting a freezer! We actually have one at home now that's pretty empty. Breeding rabbits seems like an interesting undertaking, I hope it pans out for you!

Choochi wrote:

Matt wrote:And in terms of whole prey, aren't chicken leg quarters sort of..Ideal?

No because a whole prey model is based on the fact that your dog is getting proper amounts in proper proportions of meat vs skin vs bone, etc.. If you look at these ratios on a chicken leg, the ratios will be very different then when you consider a whole chicken with all the bones, skin, feet, head, fat, organs, stomach contents, etc. of a whole animal. VERY different especially in the case of a leg which has a highly disproportionate amount of muscle on it.

And while some people dismiss veggies and fruit as not necessary, they do contain a lot of good things that benefit the dogs such as various antioxidants, and other nutrients/vitamins etc that are not present in meat. So no, your dog will not die if you don't feed them, but he will benefit from them if you do. I don't think it's necessarily accurate to say that they are completely not needed if your goal is to feed your dog the most nutritious food possible. Some of the whole prey movement out there is based more on what is convenient and easy rather then what is actually best. Originally whole prey model was based on feeding whole prey, as in the entire chicken (head guts and all), it has since been watered down for convenience sake to mean chicken legs and a handful of organ meats. Completely different. I think there is also a difference in feeding your dog based on what wild dogs can scavenge and find in the wild where they eat what ever they can and not necessarily what is best for them vs feeding based on a model that takes into account that we can assemble and provide what is best for the dog.

True. As I said, I'm just getting my feet wet in the world of raw food so the advice helps. I still have tons more to learn in the mean time. The breeder we got Conner from is located pretty near by and I know he feeds raw. I'll have to take a drive past his place next week and see if I can figure out some stuff from him in regards to coops and the like.

Lauren wrote:Matt, I feed mostly chicken because of the cost. I also love to feed rabbit. So much so that I bought 3 rabbits in hopes of breeding them for meat. that has been frustrating. I must have the only celibate rabbits on the planet.

lol it's funny, rabbits have that reputation for breeding like well, rabbits! but I hear a lot of people who get them to breed for dog food have difficulty getting them to breed.

I have better luck feeding fish while it's frozen, they don't seem to want to roll on it and have no problem eating it this way.
Not much luck here with rabbit breeding either! This girl will ship whole rabbits (frozen) at a reasonable price, or even sometimes meet you to deliver if it's near a show that she's attending. (She will, I think, skin them too for a bit more $.)
http://www.doubledeckerrabbitry.com/

I feed Whole Prey, and we're finishing up a Chicken Month, going on to pork. Odin switched to a new foster home 3 weeks before we got him and had a terrible reaction to the Nutro kibble he was on there, so I'm sticking to one protein at a time now, just to make sure it's not a specific animal allergy. He's coming out of it, has a shiny coat back, the redness has almost completely disappeared, and his itching is slowly going away. I had a bad mango reaction a while back, so I totally understand the itching, and we're just giving that time and some vet recommended benydrl.

(Back to the topic) Like others said, the prices can vary, depending on the animal, and you'll want to eventually be switching up protein sources pretty regularly. I'll just give you the breakdown of our cheapest month.

Right now, I feed about 2 lbs of Chicken. This will decrease as I'm trying to put a little weight on him right now. There's also about 21% bone in the chicken quarters we use, so he doesn't get as much muscle meat, and therefore has to be fed more. I get this at about $0.49/lb on sale, so for a whole month, it's about $29.4. We practice 80% muscle meat, 10% edible bone, and 10% organs (balanced over time), so every week or so, some Chicken is removed, in place of liver. The liver is $0.99/lb, so that brings my prices up to $32.40/month. I also supplement with Fish Oil, but I'm not sure of the break down of that because my husband and I both do a lot of Olympic style weight lifting, so we buy it in bulk and just share.

On our pork month, we mainly feed pork hearts at $0.99/lb, and occasionally add chicken or pork shoulder to give the bone and make poops solid, so that runs about $45, but we would probably be only feeding 1.5lbs per day of the mixture.

The other meats are added in as they are on sale, or as hunters give me food. My old neighbor thinks he's forever in debt to my dad for getting him a job, so they can provide us venison during deer season. Lamb usually goes on sale right after Easter, and turkey after Thanksgiving. I'm looking for a good used freezer, luckily it's just me and my husband, so we have extra space.

Great places to look for Raw Food:
Hunters
Become Friends with your local butchers
Asian and Ethnic markets (I live 10 blocks from Chinatown, so I'm lucky)
Livestock Breeds (especially for rabbit)
Taxidermists that regularly throw away the meat (they only need the outsides, all that meat goes to waste)
Local Raw food co-ops
Livestock Auctions, buying a whole cow and getting it butchered is often much cheaper
Finding raw food buddies to split buying in bulk with

There are many yahoo and facebook groups that help Raw feeders unite, search for one in your area. I'm in the facebook group called Raw Feeding, and there almost 7,000 members, so someone should be able to help you a bit more. There's also a ton of docs for starting out on there as well. https://www.facebook.com/groups/261761471359/