Feeding a raw diet

I'm a Iams guy....

Right now I use Dr Weils cat food..

Which, for being packaged.. is supposed to be really good..

Raw meat diets are fine if you are going to kill and clean the animal yourself. Personally, I wouldn't feed my dog Tyson, Perdue or Jimmi Dean meats, nor would I eat them myself. Most meat coming out of corporate slaughter houses is very high in bacteria and needs to be cooked to be safe - be it for humans or pets. For the money, I think it's better to feed animals a good brand pet food that doesn't rely on corn, meat by-products or chemical preservatives (look for food preserved with Vitamin E).

Following that exact thought process, this is what we feed

There are a lot of pitfalls to raw diets. The biggest is that people don't generally seem to realize that predators (like cats) eat a lot of organ meat. Skeletal meat is all well and good, but it's got a pretty limited range of nutrients when compared with a "whole prey" diet. I mean, people with snakes generally understand this, because nobody makes an effective boa chow, but the necessity of a bowel-rich diet is lost on the average cat owner.

Thing is, how are you ever going to get your hands on good quality intestines and liver and spleen that are free of any nasty bugs that are going to make Fluffy sick? (Well, maybe Fluffy is savvy enough to make a living on mice and rats and the odd squirrel, but that sets her up for tapeworm and exposure to nastier stuff like plague and, in the SW, possibly tularemia -- both of which could conceivably be transmitted to you or your veterinarian. To say nothing of running up against a tough rat who's willing to take an eye or an ear in his adrenaline rush to escape...) The bugs you can culture from good quality manufactured meats is scary enough without thinking of the stuff that is generally bound for rendering and, ultimately, pet food.





Snarkiness aside, putting together a raw diet for an animal is a tricky affair, and shouldn't be done without the help of someone who really knows what they're doing. (I wouldn't.) (And not somebody who only thinks they really know what they're doing, who can do more harm than good.)

If you're going to try it, get good help, seek multiple opinions, do as much research as possible, and be paid to have Fluffy's kip cost you a lot more time and money than it does now.



(Dogs are much easier than cats, but still easy to screw up with the wrong guidance.)

I freely admit I know nothing of how to feed a raw diet. And if it requires more ogan meat.. well, I am pretty much **** outta luck there.

Try finding a butcher anywhere in town who isnt just re-cutting packaged meat.. !

Oh wait.. I can find liver in a package.. >snort<

I never knew, or even thought about how important organ meat would be to them.. and that makes perfect sense..

Oh well..
Food out of a bag it is then. .

If I start reading that elementary school children are disappearing in your home town....and suddenly Fluffy's coat is really shiny and soft...

BBB
Or the Bean's goldfish start disappearing

fried children are overrated..

I've been tossing my dogs a pound or two of raw ground been every couple of weeks. Every now and then I'll give them a chicken breast or two.

They love it and I feel that the raw meat complimnets their dry food diet.


For dry food we've started feeding them Canidae All Life Stages dry food. We were giving Science Diet, but they had some poor reviews on this website and others (http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/). Science Diet gets 1 star, Canidae gets 5 an the price difference is not that much.