Hunting old dogs

Williams,

I posted a little info about what I do for feeding raw in another thread a day or so ago. As far as worms, I will freeze anything from a wild animal for 72+ hours to kill whatever may be in the meat. My dogs are also on a monthly worming routine, and I have never had any issues. Right now I’m feeding a mix of stuff from the grocery store, but when I have wild meat to feed I will do that as well. My dogs have been fed catfish, bass, deer, beavers, ducks, pig, and squirrels.

The only part I will limit is how much of the hide they get. If it’s a hog I will give them a little tiny bit still attached to the meat if the pig was small, because I will occasionally freeze the entire pig and then chop it up with an axe or use a saw to cut it up once it’s a solid block of ice. If it is not a pig, they do not get the hide, as I don’t want them enjoying the scent of deer hair.

The BARF diet is really good, I do my own version. The standard raw meal is the following:

1 chicken quarter

1 whole egg, cracked egg with the shell crushed up and sprinkled in

3 slices of white bread (can also use white rice here)

1 scoop of plain yogurt

A few chunks of fat (grocery store butcher gives it away for free)

The last thing is some organs. I will feed them chicken gizzards and hearts, as well as chicken and beef livers. Liver has lots of vitamins and has good benefits when it makes up about 20% of the diet.

If I have a carcass, I will try to cut the meat in to good portions and feed big chunks, as well as some bone as well. So a few ribs, a leg, shoulder, etc.. I will feed the heart, liver, lungs, occasionally some other stuff. I think you can feed kidneys if I remember correctly, but I don’t typically do that. I know guys that will feed an animal without freezing first, and I have also thrown organ meat to dogs while in the middle of cleaning a hog, but I would not recommend it. It is best practice to freeze it for the minimum 72 hours.

You can also feed carrots and bell peppers (red is the healthiest) to dogs as part of the Barf diet. My experience is that my dogs don’t like to eat the carrots and will only eat the peppers if I dice them up small and mix them in with other food. Bones are really healthy, but they need to be raw. You CAN feed any bones as long as they are completely raw and have not been cooked or boiled, as that changes the characteristics of the bone and can cause it to splinter.

All but one of my grown dogs is back on kibble for convenience, but I would give them all raw if I had the time. My puppies are 100% raw fed. Their mom was on raw during the pregnancy and weaning, and I started them on high fat hamburger meat at 21 days old. I’m keeping them on raw food as an experiment to see if they have better mental or physical development due to the healthier diet. I kept 3, the other littermates are on kibble after they were picked up at 8 weeks old. They’re 19 weeks old now. So far my puppies I kept are growing nicely, very athletic already, and seem to be very intelligent. They have a calm “clean” kind of energy where they aren’t acting like spazzes and bouncing off the wall. I’m not sure if any of this is due to the diet, but once they begin hunting I am eager to see how they compare to the other littermates.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk