Starting Out with a Raw Diet

I call this the TARGET goal because you don't have run right out a buy a scale to weigh each and every meal. A heavier meal can be followed the next day by a lighter one or even occasionally by no meal at all. This seems strange to kibble users because pets on commercial foods need a constant intake to get enough nutrition to survive. This is NOT true with a RAW diet. Pups…Kittens and smaller animals can have their daily allotment broken up into smaller meals as necessary as long as the basic amount remains the same.

What sort of mix are you looking for? That's a lot easier than it sounds. What you're looking for is variety. Try to imagine that you're feeding an entire prey animal. (Hence the term…prey model RAW) keep the proportions of organs, muscle meat and bone as close to what would be found in nature as possible without obsessing over it. Another trick is to imagine that you're feeding your human family. If you serve the same thing too many times in a row someone's going to pipe up with “MOM….Not meatloaf AGAIN? Can't we have a burger?”

No your pets wont REALLY care what you give them but this trick helps to keep you on track. One handy way to keep track of the bone / meat ratio is to check the waste… OK it may not be the most glamorous part of RAW feeding but the best way to know what needs to be going INTO your animal is to see what's coming out. No you don't have to collect samples and buy a microscope. I told you this was easy. Dry chalky stools mean you have too much bone in the diet while loose runny ones are just the opposite.

Fish are normally fed whole so you don't have to worry about proportion. Just feed a fish meal once a week to start with and gauge the result. Dry itchy skin or dull coats need MORE fish in the mix along with extra meat and fat. Fish is usually the highest priced item on the RAW menu so it's OK to substitute Salmon oil dribbled over their regular meal.

Now then…where does all of this take place? Tile floors are best. You can use bowls if you like but Dog's like to drag messy meals to their favorite spots. This usually corresponds to rooms with white carpeting or the "good" sofa. Outside works well... The good news is that RAW meals are almost always eaten quickly. My wife and I found that training the monsters to use eating blankets (our term for old towels.) works in a most cases although we have a couple of hard heads who will drag food onto the bed if we're not paying attention.

I hope I've covered most of your questions in this article but there's no real substitute for experience. Just be assured and take comfort in the fact that the most common thing we hear from new RAW feeders after a couple of months is how much simpler it is than they thought…