# Raw Food Plan..need tips!



## Stefan Mallory (Jun 14, 2014)

From everything I've read and what not I want to feed my GSD a raw diet... He is 8 weeks old.
I know only to introduce a new food source every week or 2 but in the gist of things how would this diet workout.
For Non- Meats:
-pureed sweet potato
-pureed kale
-pureed apple slices
-pureed blueberries
-1 egg
-1 TBS plain yogurt (with live bacteria)
- 1 TBS grizzly salmon oil or olive oil

As far as meats:
-chicken quarters
-venison and venison organs (hunter)
-beef tongues

Thanks for any opinions and tips!


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## Pax8 (Apr 8, 2014)

Plain yogurt is awesome. Grizzly oil is good, but if you have trouble getting it or want to vary the oil type, I would try cold-pressed coconut oil. It's worked very well for me with puppies since they tend to have more sensitive stomachs. I would do egg only two or three times a week. In my experience, and egg every day can cause some stomach upset.

For veggies, I would consider keeping it a bit looser. 

Sweet potato is a good base for the veggies. I would try to make sure you switch some things out every so often


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## Pax8 (Apr 8, 2014)

Plain yogurt is awesome. Grizzly oil is good, but if you have trouble getting it or want to vary the oil type, I would try cold-pressed coconut oil. It's worked very well for me with puppies since they tend to have more sensitive stomachs. I would do egg only two or three times a week. In my experience, and egg every day can cause some stomach upset.

For veggies, I would consider keeping it a bit looser. Instead of specifically sweet potato/ kale etc, think one part fibrous veggie (sweet potato, pumpkin), one part dark leafy green (kale, chard, spinach etc), one part fruit (blueberries, blackberries, apples, cantaloupe, etc), one part misc veggie (broccoli, green beans, bell peppers, etc).

The key to any homemade diet is variety in everything they consume. That doesn't mean that it needs to have all those things every day, but it gives you the opportunity to create variation. Maybe sweet potato with kale, blueberries, apples, and carrots one week then pumpkin with cantaloupe, chard, bell peppers, blackberries, and green beans the next week.

Meats you also want to vary as much as possible. Over the course of a week, I like to build Frankenchicken.

How Did It Get So Complicated? | Dogs Naturally Magazine

Towards the bottom, they talk about keeping in mind the entire structure of a chicken: skin, bones, stomach, liver, kidneys, the works. When you feed raw, you vary the source of the meat, but ultimately you use those meats to build what could be a properly proportioned prey animal. Over the course of a week, I'll use calf liver, chicken quarters, pork kidney, lamb trachea, and green tripe to build that imaginary prey animal.

Hopefully that makes sense. Just post more questions if any of that is confusing!

(Sorry, there was an issue with my previous post)


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## A girl and her dog (Jan 25, 2014)

I wouldn't think that pureeing the fruits and veggies is necessary. I gave mine raw sweet potato and he was fine chewing it up. Same with whole raw green beans. I've never given mine blueberries, but I know what they do to babies- they come flying out of the back end. And kale produces a lot of gas. I'm not saying don't give them, just my experience with them. I also give carrots from time to time and they love those too. Most vegetables are fibrous in their make up so you shouldn't have much problems there  Good luck!


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## Pax8 (Apr 8, 2014)

The advantage of pureeing veggies and fruits is that dogs are able to more fully absorb nutrients from them. A dog's short digestive tract is not designed to pull much nutrition from plant sources, so if you want them to absorb as much as possible, it is helpful to physically break down the food so digestion is quicker and more nutrients can be pulled.

Sort of how we don't have a strong enough digestive tract to fully process corn simply as is, so if you swallow a bunch of whole corn kernels, you might know what comes out the other end.  But if you chew it thoroughly you absorb more from it as a food. Same idea with dogs, except they are even less efficient at digesting plant matter.

Now whether or not to feed veggies and fruits at all is an entirely different matter and largely up to the individual. I feed prey model which really does not include any fruits or veggies except some occasionally as treats (Kaiju loves his blueberries!). But ultimately it depends on what the OP is most comfortable with and what their dog does well on.


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## A girl and her dog (Jan 25, 2014)

Since when do Snickers bars have corn in 'em?

Thanks, I didn't know about the absorption. I don't feed much vegetables or fruit either. I just found out yesterday that mine like cantaloupe and watermelon.


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