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| About a year ago, I became very interested in canine nutrition (i.e.: what I feed my dogs). We’d fed our first two dogs a combination of dry & tinned dog foods from the supermarket & they’d always seemed to do fine on their diet but when we got Pagan we found the breeder gave his dogs a premium dry food so we switched our other dogs as well. Well gem & blue are ‘general stomachs’ but pagan wasn’t too keen on his dinner so we switched brands (even more expensive) & we were very happy with ourselves for giving our dogs what we thought was the best diet we could. Blue shed her coat an awful lot & Pagan seemed to have lots of ear infections (the vet loved him !!!) Someone on the net told me about the chemicals (BHA,BHT, Ethoxyquin & Propyl Gallate etc) which were in the very expensive dog food I was feeding (some of them were listed on the packet but I didn’t know what they were or what they do). I emailed the company concerned only to be told in some many words that all chemicals are bad in the wrong amounts, but they put less in their products than they were allowed too !!!!! They didn’t respond to my assertion that they could have used vitamin E instead but then that’s more expensive & more importantly (for them) cuts down the shelf life of their products. So I became looking for better brands of dog food, I kept seeing articles on BARF (Bones And Raw Food or Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) promoted by Australian Vet Dr Ian Billinghurst B.V. Sc (Hons) & other vets with special interests in nutrition.. Also called SARP (Spieces appropriate raw diet), Natural Raw Diet or just plain Raw Diet They all basically mean feeding an animal what evolution designed it to eat. Which in the case of dogs & wolfs (they are zoologically classed as the same spieces) means Raw Meat & Bones with a little vegetable matter. Well to begin with the idea of giving my dogs raw meat & bones was something I wasn’t prepared to think about but the more I researched exactly what goes into dog foods (If you feed your dog or cat commercial foods this is a MUST READ) I couldn’t help but feel bad about pouring out a dish full of dry food. So I switched my dogs to an organic dry food without chemicals (Yarrah organic pet food) & spent a year searching the several hundred BARF sites which are sadly almost 100% in English, ordering the books (also only in English) & joining 15 barf lists to learn more from experienced barfers. The barf diet consist of: 60% RMB’s (raw meaty bones, approx: 50% meat & 50% bone). The most commonly fed are chicken & turkey necks, chicken wings & backs, also beef & lamb rmbs, some barfers also feed pork necks etc. It depends on personal choice the important thing is a mixed variety because different Rmb’s have different nutrition values for example more EFA’s (Essential fatty acids) in chicken than beef. 40% Vegetables such as green leafy vegetables, carrots, cabbage, turnips, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, squash, brussel sprouts etc that are crushed in the food processor or juicer so that they resemble the stomach contents of a prey animal because dogs cannot break down the cellulose of plants. Cooking also breaks them down making them digestible but destroys vitamins & enzymes as in the case of dog foods (which are cooked twice !!) Other foods commonly fed are: Offal: kidney, heart, liver, tripe Fish Raw eggs with the shell – Excellent protein source Dairy products: yoghurt with active cultures (Puts good bacteria into the intestines) Cottage cheese, goats cheese Fruits: apple without seeds, avocado, banana etc ACV (or apple cider vinegar MUST be raw NOT pasteurised) Alfalfa & Kelp Vitamins E & C Omega 3 oil usually Flax seed oil or Salmon oil (flax seed can cause the itches in some dogs, Note: Is also found in some ‘dog foods’) Not all barfers feed exactly the same foods in exactly the quantities, because in spite of the 100% complete & balanced doctrine spread by the dog food companies every dog is different & can’t be pigeon holed into a size & age chart quite as easily as we are lead to believe. I am now much more questioning of what I feed my dogs & myself. I’m amazed how many people blindly reach for packets of dog food without ever asking themselves what’s in it & if it’s good for their dogs, (……must be Ok it has 25% protein !!!??) Then off they go to the vet with yet another skin problem, ear infection, allergy & just blame it all on ‘Bad luck’ ..... I know from experience !!!! I haven’t tried to make this a how to barf page because I think it’s a subject that needs a lot of detail so I’m currently working on a 100% French barf site with lots more information. To read about my personal experience with a raw diet & the effects on my dogs see THE BENEFITS OF BARF Please go visit the links & feel free to email me with your questions & comments BARF GROUPS BOOKS BARF LINKS |