Another Primal Dog Food Thread page 2

[drheather]

We have two German Shepherds we converted to a raw diet-a combination of meat from the store and grass fed chubs of pet food. They also get a raw egg on top. Even though we had them on a high quality dry food before, the change in their coat was amazing and waste product was decreased greatly.
One of the two does have "cannon butt" after changes in food so gradual changes are best.
There is a raw feeding group on Yahoo that has a lot of good information on this.

[carlh]

It's going okay - we are cutting her food about half and half with really just anything that's more meaty; raw or not. She'll get occasional bits of left over chicken, lots of scraps...that sort of thing. In addition to raw stuff. So, half a pound of "food" and half a pound of "dog food"? Ish.

[jackson44]

My beloved German Shepard lived close to 18 years. I put her on the raw diet when she was about ten.

My current lab/pit bull is all raw. Just found out that the whole food market in my town sells grassfed hearts and kidneys for 2 bucks a pound. He loves the organ meats and marrow bones.

[DinoHunter]

A good point to start from is 2% of the dogs adult body weight, you can then adjust as needed for the indivigual dogs needs.
My German Shepard (85lbs of high energy) eats pretty much the same amount as my Mastiff (170lbs of low energy)
(they both get around 2lbs a day each)

Also dont feed kibble and meat together, they digest at a difrent rate and can cause problems if fed together. If feeding both you want to split into 2 seperate meals but it might make transitioning to raw take longer for her to get used to.
You might be better of feeding smaller amounts, more often to ease her ono the raw.. Or just plan on dealing with a few accedents while her system adjust to real food.

[namelesswonder]

Just FYI there's a lot of into from primal pet owners (both owners and pets are primal hehe) in this thread
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread47636.html

[mindyst]

We've been feeding our animals %100 raw for about 5 years now (actually what gave me the courage to go "primal" for myself). The 2% of body weight is pretty accurate. One thing you'll notice is your animals will have a much better ability to turn food away. If you feed them to much they just won't eat it until they are hungry. You should see the meat goo that our animals have no problem eating after sitting out for 18 hrs. If our animals seem like they are devouring their food, we will just give them more. The bones are important as well as organ meat. We get a lot of our stuff from the butcher (our butcher seriously throws away their chicken necks and backs). For dogs, you should also try to incorporate some veggies for them we sometimes just chop them up finely and mix with ground beef. Our dog has just started eating chunky veggies on her own. Cats don't need the veggie component.

I have also noticed that our dog, that has always been raw fed can hardly eat any normal food/treats without throwing up... and her poop is just a tiny nugget of nothing. Makes clean up a snap

[Lily Marie]

A good point to start from is 2% of the dogs adult body weight, you can then adjust as needed for the individual dogs needs.

Just make sure it's the adult LEAN weight you're calculating. Most people have overweight dogs, many have obese dogs. Many vets think overweight is what the dog should look like.