[BluesMom]

Hope this hasn’t been posted previously and if I missed it please let me know… I am wondering what opinions are on feeding my dog kibble (acana, nature’s logic, merrick GF, orijen) and RMBs? I can’t afford premade at the moment and am not ready to make the leap to raw so I thought this might be a good place to start.

Is this OK? And when I do this, does the bone count as a meal? He is 45 pounds and active…
Thinking of starting with chicken backs. Would love any advice. Thanks in advanced.

[pugmomsandy]

If you want to incorporate some raw into the diet, then adding 20% of it is ok without worrying about added vitamins and such. If you’re dog eats 2 meals and day then 2.8 meals (or 3) can be a RMB and maybe some organs (heart/gizzard/a little bit of liver). More than that, you’d need to balance the raw meals better. Make them closer to 80% meat/10% bone/10% organs (5 of that liver) and added supplements or give a premade raw. There are some sample recipes in the Raw Food topic. Another option is to make sure he eats a whole chicken (with heart/gizzard/liver), not just the back.

[BluesMom]

Perfect! Thanks for the advice.

[SandyandMila]

I’m actually thinking of doing the same at the moment. I was doing just raw (commercial and RMBs) for awhile but because of availability or cost I am now back to canned and dry with a periodical commercial raw (Answers recently). My dog is about the same weight and activity level as the dog above. If I make a meal from the RMB (adding organ/muscle meat, chicken feet, green supplements, fish oil, eggs, etc. ) would I have to feed it for the same 3 meals a week as the person mentioned above or is that if it’s not balanced? If I use a bigger RMB like a turkey neck or chicken leg quarter and make a meal of it would that be a one meal day, with her eating about 1 1/2 lbs a day? Would that be enough to fill her up for the whole day? Since chicken is easily available and usually on sale I wanted to start feeding RMBs again and eventually feed her more homemade raw. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

[theBCnut]

Three meal a week is how many unbalanced meals you can feed if you feed twice a day. That keeps the unbalanced portion to under 20% of the diet.

Dogs do just fine on one meal a day or one meal every other day or one big meal one day and a small one the next, or whatever as long as they get the right number of calories. You can do whatever works for you and your dog.

I was talking to a prey model raw feeder a few months ago and he said that if he had a four lb chunk of meat for his dog, he gave it a four lb chunk of meat and then figured out how many days he should wait to feed it again. Same with an eight lb chunk of meat. It sounded like he was talking about wolf sized dogs, so maybe four or eight lbs of meat wouldn’t go quite as far with his dogs as it does with mine, but the idea is the same, dogs were made to gorge and fast, it’s people that have a problem with that.

[pugmomsandy]

SandyandMila,

The 3 meals a week is approximately 20% if your dog eats twice a day. That 20% could be anything unbalanced like just a RMB, a whole sardine, some leftover table food, etc. Or if you like, a RMB + muscle/organ/supplements, or 2.25 lbs or raw for one week split up however you like. You could even split up a 2.25 lb whole chicken with gizzards over the course of one week.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by pugmomsandy.

[SandyandMila]

Oh good. So it’s be better to break it up into several balanced meals during the week than having just the one day , like Sunday, with a big balanced meal (large turkey necks, large leg quarter, or even a whole prey) with organ/muscle/supplements.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by SandyandMila.

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