Changing to RAW feeding from Kibble

[CrazyCharlie]

I'm not sure if this should be under RAW feeding or just Feeding in general so bare with me. lol

So I have been wondering about RAW feeding because a lot of members seem to do it and I love my babies, but I don't have a lot of extra time with work (2 jobs), school, visiting my aborable niece and nephew and family get togethers and having time to breathe. lol

So my questions are these;

How time consuming is it?

How much better is it for them than kibble?

What does it cost in conparison? I live in the mountains and everything costs more here because its hard to get it to us so this is a big concern for me.

What are the benefits of RAW vs. Kibble?

If I were to change them to RAW would I do it liek I was changing their dog food? Slowly and mix the RAW with their kibble?

I'd like to understand a bit more before I go deciding to do something I can't and get frustrated. lol

[Stub]

Feeding raw is no more time consuming than feeding kibble. Go to the store, buy some meat, hand it to your dog. You can even feed it to them straight out of the freezer. (I do this one meal a day usually, but not with boney meals)

Anyone who raw feeds is going to say it is 100% better than kibble, unless they had a bad experience. I will never feed any dog I own ever again anything BUT raw. Gus has eaten raw since the day he came home at 8 weeks old, and Toby ate raw the last 2 years of his life.

If you know any hunters who will get you venison or elk in those mountains, it can be free. Or you can possibly score free meat off craigslist or join a raw-feeding co-op. There are many ways to cut costs besides just buying meat at the store. I currently have half a freezer full of free meat off CL. Prior to that I was spending about 50-80$/month buying meat at the store. Comparable to high-quality kibble I think.

Raw is much more totally digested by your dog. His poop will be much smaller. (my 60-lb dog poops less than some 12-lb cats I know who are on kibble!) His teeth will be cleaner (little or no tarter) and his coat will shine like glass. His dandruff (if he has any) will go away. His immune system will benefit greatly. His breath will be sweet. (my 14-yr old dog had deadly breath for years which I always thought was from a rotten tooth. I switched him to raw food and it cleared up in a few days and he never had bad breath again!) Some people have reported that hyper dogs are much calmer on raw.

Since kibble is digested at a much slower rate than raw meat, you do not want to mix them in the same meal. If you did not opt for a cold-turkey switch (which can be hard on owners due to possible digestive upset until their systems adapt to digesting the proper food again) I would feed the kibble meal at a time when he is not going to eat again for 8-10 hours.

[whiskers]

I do not feed raw anymore (paranoid family) but I'll give you my experiences and what I know about it

How time consuming is it?
In my opinion... it really doesn't take any more time than it takes to scoop out kibble. In some respects it depends on your dog, Juno is a gulper and so I would have to hold her food to make sure she chewed it, and even after being on raw for a month she STILL didn't learn to just chew the stupid thing on her own lol. Most dogs are not like this, and you can just hand them a chicken quarter and go on with your business. But even having to hold Juno's food, it would take her less than 5 minutes to eat so it certainly wasn't a big ordeal having to do that for her.

The most time consuming part is when you turn your kitchen into a butcher shop after you've gone shopping for meat. You figure out your own system for how you want to organize and store things, but for me, as soon as I'd get home from the store I'd take all the meat out and cut it to an appropriate size, and put everything in labeled Ziploc bags (one bag for chicken quarters, one for chicken wings, one for pork ribs etc etc). Depending no how much meat you can store though and how often you go shopping, this might be something you only need to do, say, once a month. And I'm a weirdo and thought it was fun.

How much better is it for them than kibble?
Way. I believe that dogs are carnivores and a raw diet is what they were made to eat--so in my opinion even the very, very best kibble on the market is nothing compared to a raw diet. You know exactly what your dog is eating, no ambiguous ingredients or unnecessary things added. When you feed your dog chicken, it really is chicken and it's the exact same stuff you prepare for yourself for dinner. The dental benefits are amazing, bones are nature's toothbrush! Their coat usually becomes shinier, they shed less, and don't get much of a dog odor. And the poop--OH, the POOP! They are tiny and odorless and turn into a white powder after a couple days. This is because everything they are eating is highly digestible and their body is actually using it. I miss Juno's raw poops.

Our biggest benefit of raw was that it actually helped Juno's incontinence. Raw fed dogs typically don't drink much water, because there is a lot of water in raw meat. And so since she was drinking less (A LOT less), I suppose that meant she wasn't keeping anything in her bladder to leak out. It was nice.

What does it cost in conparison? I live in the mountains and everything costs more here because its hard to get it to us so this is a big concern for me.
Well for me it was more expensive because we use Costco kibble, which is like $30 a month. But it was cheaper than most high quality kibble. I think I probably would have been able to stay in the $30-$40 a month range. In the beginning I think it is more expensive, because you have to introduce each protein source one at a time--so if your dog is only eating chicken and turkey, you can't just wait for it to go on sale. But when your dog is a seasoned raw eater and you can feed them anything under the sun, then you have the ability to wait for a pork sale, because your dog doesn't NEED pork if you have other meats in the freezer to feed. If that makes sense? It's also cheaper if you have the space to buy in bulk and have a supplier to order from, versus purchasing at the grocery store. I tried not to spend more than $1/lb on things if I could help it.

What are the benefits of RAW vs. Kibble?
I think I touched on that a bit in the "how much better is it" question. Here's a list though: Benefits | Prey Model Raw (that whole website is good!)

If I were to change them to RAW would I do it liek I was changing their dog food? Slowly and mix the RAW with their kibble?
It can be a little complex here. Don't feed raw and kibble together--kibble digests much more slooooowly than raw does, and if they are fed together the kibble will keep the raw "held up" in the digestive tract, and that's when bacteria can start growing (this is the reason why dogs don't have issues with salmonella etc from eating raw meat--their digestive tracts are short and raw moves through so quickly, bacteria doesn't get the time to grow). You are better off switching to raw cold turkey (no pun intended ), or if you have a bag of kibble you need to finish off, then do a raw meal in the AM and a kibble meal in the PM or vice versa.

This is a really good guide on how to transition a dog to raw--I would follow it to a T: How to Get Started | Prey Model Raw


A raw diet looks SO COMPLICATED when you read about it. So many numbers, percentages etc. Let me tell you, don't let that scare you off. It scared me off for so long, I thought I'd screw up and not feed the right things or not provide all the nutrients that were needed... but once you actually start doing it, it is way easier than it sounds.

Feel free to ask whatever questions you come up with!!

[Stub]

Oh yeah - I forgot about the butcher-shop time after shopping! If I find a road killed deer that I KNOW is fresh and it's in winter, I will take it home and butcher it myself. That can take me 6 hours, but then I have a whole free deer which will last for a long time, plus bones and organs. Luckily I live alone so there is no one to get grossed out by the deer leg or torso lying on my kitchen counter being chopped up. lol!

whiskers I'm sad you had to stop! But I totally understand paranoid family.

[CrazyCharlie]

Thanks guys! That is a lot of great information! I am a little concerned about butchering my own meet... I can barely even peel shrimp without feeling bad. LOL. I can eat them no problem but peeling them is another story

I will talk to DH about it and see how he feels, I want my babies to be as healthy as possible and even though they are really healthy and do well with their kibble, I am sure they can do better on RAW.

Thanks again! If I think of any other questions I will be back to ask!!

[whiskers]

Originally Posted by Stub

whiskers I'm sad you had to stop! But I totally understand paranoid family.

I'm super bummed about it! I was so happy with how the transition was going. I don't know why it took a month for the paranoia to set in, but now I just have to "patiently" wait till I can move out so I can feed her how I want! =P


The "butcher shop" stuff doesn't have to be anything too major. I'd occasionally buy whole chickens 'cuz they were cheap at Costco, so then I'd have to break those down myself, but most of the time I could just buy a pack of chicken leg quarters and all I had to do was transfer them to Ziploc bags for freezing. It sometimes got tedious though, I was super precise about it all and weighed everything before freezing it. Or when I got boneless pork ribs, I cut them all up into 1 ounce chunks. And if I was really in the mood for it, I'd individually wrap everything in suran wrap so that it wouldn't all stick together and turn into one giant frozen block of chicken lol. It was just easier, for me, to do that sort of preparation before it was frozen. It's something to play around with though and everyone kind of finds their own system that works for them.

I HATE touching raw meat, but somehow you find the strength to do the things you never thought you would.

[Stub]

Yeah, I certainly don't expect normal people to pick up road kill! I usually freeze things like chicken quarters and cut-up meal size meats on wax paper individually, and then bag them up after they are frozen. Like the bags of boneless skinless chicken breasts you can buy at the store individually frozen. So if I buy a 10-11 lb pork loin I cut it into slices and freeze them then bag. This is only going to work while I have a shelf free in my upright freezer though! If it gets full I'll have to come up with a different method. Or buy another freezer! It's no worse than preparing your own dinner, it's not really 'butchering'. It just sometimes feels that way!

[Malcolm]

The others have covered everything I would have said.

One really helpful suggestion I received on another board was to figure out how much food your dog should get per week (e.g. Malcolm should get ~1.4 lbs/day, so that's around 10 lbs per week). Put a week's worth of food in a container, and then feed from that in approximately equal meals. No need to weigh/measure EACH meal individually, and you're sure at the end of the week that the dog has eaten the right amount.

Plus, when you move on to more proteins, organs, etc., it's easy to make sure that the ratios are right (e.g. I would put 1 lb of organ in the container for Malcolm for the week, and then could portion it out however it would work best for him).

[Stub]

THAT is a super great idea! I've always just eyeballed Gus's organ consumption and recently I figured out that he's not getting nearly enough. This is such an easy way to get the right amount for the week, even if I don't do it for all the whole weight of food. THANK YOU Emma!!