I am trying to add more natural foods to my dogs diet. (Got disgusted searching for kibble made out of something other than ground corn and bone meal).
I have been feeding my dogs some stuff with their kibble and they seem to like it a lot better. I cannot afford to switch to the recipe meals suggested on websites, and I don't want to be kiling the pooches, so if anyone can tell me if anything I'm supplementing with really sucks, please do!
I have a source for meat-a place gives me a little meat they have to throw out due to health code stuff (I'm not talking rotten green stuff-I mean the stuff that they have in the frig too many days, been touched without a glove, or falls on the floor or what have you). It smells and looks good to me and I have been very tempted to eat it myself. If I thought it was bad, I would not feed it to my dogs.
Some days it may be ground beef, other days beef or pork cuts, or chicken breast. A couple times it's been shrimp or fish.
Corn muffins too-I think it can't be any worse than kibble made from ground yellow corn-at least I can see the vegetable product in it.
Raw eggs, with chopped shell.
I cook and mash lots of pumpkin, and have been mixing this in as well. Puppy man loves this, bitch will carefully spit each bit out.
Peas. Sometimes greens.
Sometimes beans or barley.
Big beefy bones a couple times a week. (I buy these).
Puppy man seems to be enjoying this alot and has had no change in stools. Bitch is producing enormous turds and getting just a little runny. She will not eat any veggies, or beans/barley/and spits out eggshells too. Eats the whole shrimp up though (no head, but I leave the shell on). She has eaten nothing but dry kibble for six years.
I know this isn't scientific at all, but is it better than just the kibble? Worse?

Something I learned working in a crappy job this summer about shelving of meat/dairy/fish in the grocery store....

The meat they are giving you, isn't even "bad" yet. They mark down meats the day before the sell by date, and that meat that hasn't sold has to be thrown out ON the sell by date. Sell by dates are set so that you have 2-3 days to store and then cook the food before it will go bad, so in all actuality the stuff they have marked down is not bad at all. As long as you are using it either right away or freezing it, I see no problem with this. Trust me, if the chicken is bad you will know as soon as you open that package. It stinks beyond belief!

I wouldn't feed both the kibble and the raw at the same meal. They digest at different rates and mixing can cause upset tummies from the toxins of the raw going rancid in transit. Maybe do a raw breakfast and a kibble dinner if you really cant switch to all raw. Some dogs don't like the veggies, so you have to really mix the food up well. My dog will eat the eggshells by themselves... I sometimes will toss them to him when I am cooking and he will crunch them down. I had a foster that wouldn't eat them until she realized he liked them, so they must be good.... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> dogs are funny like that. I am not one for encouraging situations of competitve feeding, but I will let another dog finish what one dog leaves behind. It usually doesn't happen more than once.

Beans/barley really aren't needed by dogs. It is one thing to feed it if you are just getting rid of leftovers, but I wouldn't go out and buy it specifically for the dog's to eat.

I know the raw diet seems more expensive, but in my experience it is actually either cheaper or at a break even. There are several email lists of people who buy things in bulk and distribute them to other barfers. Feeding 2 dogs on barf in my experience has been pretty darn easy. You just become a very good shopper. I never walk through the grocery store now without hitting the meat counter to see what has been marked down. The biggest factor in being able to do the diet is really freezer space.

To find out more about those lists search Yahoo groups under Barf and you should come up with plenty of reading.

Thanks Shepherdgirl! I'll do that yahoo thing.