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Connie and Beth-thanks for the replies. My experience(last week in fact) with a basted large meat bone was excessive diarreaha (sp.?) followed by constipation for a few days-I thought we had a blockage and was terrified. False alarm-xray,shot, tests & $200 later it was not. She is better now. She loves raw wings but doesnt seem to chew them up well-almost inhales that was an earlier scare. Are htese concerns valid? I like the Innova Evo-No grain, human grade meats, very good feed. I think coupled w/table meat scraps/sardines we are doing quite well, but again always looking for an edge to be in top condition.
Curious about the noticeable differences between the Raw switch from Royal-which I mix and the dog loves. It is loaded in Vit E, Omegas, Gluc., even smells fishy in a good way.
thanks

I think you have made a good choice among the commercial foods. JMO.

Maybe even better (just a thought!) might be The Honest Kitchen with addins, like the raw wings you mentioned. It's dehydrated (not cooked) at a low temp, and you rehydrate it. It's balanced, and you can add the RMBs.

Dogs do tear and inhale. Kinda scary at first! But their enzyme-based system is designed to digest raw bones.

I don't feed weight-bearing bones, like poultry legs, without grinding. Just my preference......but also, my understanding is that those big hard bones can resist digestion enough so that the calcium-phosphorous ratio can be thrown off.

But wings, backs, necks --- they go in one end whole (with many dogs) and come out........... not. And other dogs will really enjoy the bone-crunching, teeth-cleaning activity of a good chew.

If you stick with your present plan, the one thing I'd say is to avoid feeding both raw and kibble at the same meal. Kibble takes about three times as long to digest, so it can force the raw food to remain in the system long enough to lose much of what makes them so resistant to e.Coli, salmonella, etc. -- the short fast system with no lingering! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The canned fish is a great addition, IMO, and of course can be included in the same meal as kibble.

JMO!

The diarrhea probably came from the big and fast intro to the basting stuff (sugar, salt, fat)...........but who knows? Dogs often have great efficiency with getting rid of something they ate too fast or too much of, at both ends.

Daniel, I wasn't impling you fed a poor quality food! Just stating that some do. Where I am in the sticks most do and alot of the dogs live long normal lives. I feed Nutro natural choice now but want to go raw as with what I gather from all the post and other research it is better. Again I wasn't tring to bash you as is done alot here.

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Daniel, I wasn't impling you fed a poor quality food! Just stating that some do. Where I am in the sticks most do and alot of the dogs live long normal lives. I feed Nutro natural choice now but want to go raw as with what I gather from all the post and other research it is better. Again I wasn't tring to bash you as is done alot here.

No no no, I understand <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />. I think I may stick with a kibble but I think I'm going to switch to Royal Canin Maxi large breed puppy. Any Comments on R.C.?

I am not to good at using the search function but believe that food has been discussed and is not that good. Connie would know about it.

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I am not to good at using the search function but believe that food has been discussed and is not that good. Connie would know about it.

From their own site, the first five ingredients of the formula "For Full-Grown and Older Dogs" (over the age of 8 months) are

"Chicken meal, rice, ground corn, brown rice, soy protein isolate."

There is an ingredents analysis at
http://www.feedmypet.com/dog-food-comparison.html

For me (or for my dogs) that ingredient list is terrible: grain-heavy and with corn in third place. JMO.

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.....For me (or for my dogs) that ingredient list is terrible: grain-heavy and with corn in third place. JMO.

That was blunt, I see. I was in a rush earlier.

Besides the general issues with many kibbles, this one is grain-heavy, and I believe that dogs, not having evolved eating grain-heavy diets, and not having the salivary enzyme we have (amylase) to break down grains, can have their systems (like their pancreas) stressed by a constant diet of grain-heavy foods.

All JMO.

So generally speaking, there is no such thing as a good kibble?

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So generally speaking, there is no such thing as a good kibble?

I didn't say that.

Generally speaking, there's no such thing as a good grain-heavy kibble. IMO.

Did you check out the comparison chart link? If you do that, and read Ed Frawley's article (below) about some of the better kibbles, and/or read the ingredient list on the side before purchasing, and ignore all TV ads, you'll be better off than probably 90% of dog-food-buyers.

http://www.leerburg.com/all-natural%20kibble.htm

We have MUCH better choices in dog foods than we had even 10-15 years ago, IMO. We can find grain-free (or light on the grains) commercial foods, we can get THK (sold here, too) and add RMBs (or not), we can buy frozen b.a.r.f. diets.........

I'm sticking with raw, with THK as backup, but there are alternatives a dog can thrive on, IMO.

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...OK I just started raw a week ago and he loves it. I was feeding kibble 3 times daily and have since switched to all once in the morning becuase of what i read about them eating once a day on raw. Now I'm finding more about feeding the meat one time and the veggies later. Why do this? The dogs I've seen eat till they are done on animals they have killed. Also I never eat chicken myself and found that it only lasts a little while in the fridge. How do you all take it from the freezer to the fridge and make it last? (10# bags of leg Qtrs) Do you refreze after you thaw and cut it into 10-16 oz portions? I'm really interested in doing 20 or so containers at a time and rotate from freezer to fridge to dog. I haven't used the search on the fish thing yet so I may have some more Q's later. Thanks in advance. .....Doug

You'll want a little variety in the meat, too, probably.....this thread alone, I think, covered variety. Leg quarters aren't the best choice for the main meat (IMO) because you're limiting the bones to heavy, harder-to-digest weight-bearing bones. See this:
http://www.njboxers.com/faqs.htm#rec

But anyway..........no, I don't feed the produce separately. I'm not feeding grains or raw husk-y produce that would slow down the digestion of the RMBs, etc. I'm feeding either ripe soft fruits (non-sugary, like blueberries) and/or my equivalent of partly-digested vegetation, which is (for me) cooked and/or blendered-up stuff. Dogs don't process the tough outside cell wall of greens well, and they have evolved eating them partly digested, from prey intestines (IMO). So I steam and/or squish them up, generally.

I use a little less produce than the traditional b.a.r.f. diet, but there's a big spectrum between Billinghurst and prey-model.

The chicken: I don't take it all from the freezer to the 'fridge. I package two days' worth in freezer baggies when I buy it, and freeze it that way. Take out one two-day package at a time.

This site has all the big Q and A.......really and truly all of them, including sample meals, fish, etc. Definitely all the questions you have mentioned!
http://www.njboxers.com/faqs.htm

I am a *strong* believer in salmon muscle oil. Even if you don't feed fish, you might want to search here and read about salmon oil (and Vitamin E, which is used in the dog's system to process oil supplements).

I do NOT feed once-per-day to deep-chested dogs. It might be a contributor to bloat (and it might not, but I'd rather not).

All JMO. Good luck! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> And others here will also have good advice, This is one of the great sources about raw. Check out the nutrition article here:
http://www.leerburg.com/feedingqa.htm