Introduction
I hope the following information helps explain what the BARF diet is. It may sound fairly complicated, but is actually really simple, and easy. I find that, these days, I only take a half hour or so per week preparing food (on the weekends), and the only other inconvenience I have is to make sure I put food out to thaw for the dogs’ dinner each day….
If you have never heard of BARF before – it stands for Bones and Raw Food (or Biologically Appropriate Raw Food), and started to become popular about the turn of the millennium. It was initiated by a number of vets around the world who expressed concerns over the health problems they saw in many pet dogs and cats who had only ever been fed on cheap commercial pet foods. A vet from Bathurst, Dr Ian Billingworth, published a series of books, starting with “Give your Dog a Bone” in which he explained his recommended raw food diet and called it BARF. Over the last few years, a number of different raw feeding groups have sprung up on social media, and whilst some of them are quite good, others seem to be populated by internet trolls and other self-appointed experts with little or no experience and lots of high opinions of themselves.
I do not proclaim to know all there is to know about raw feeding, but I have done a fair bit of research, read books from several vets and other raw feeding advocates, read lots and lots of information on the internet, and have learnt from feeding a raw diet to my Mastiffs for almost 20 years now. I have come to the conclusion that there is no perfect formula to feeding a raw diet. It is perfectly valid to vary your dogs’ diet according to individual dog’s needs, and that what one person feeds is not necessarily the way everyone must feed their dogs. However, there are a few fairly simple, basic principles that you should follow in order to ensure your dogs are receiving a very healthy diet.
Personally, I feed the gang a diet that is very similar to what is written in Dr Billinghurst’s books, but I have slightly modified it, to suit my needs and my dogs’ needs and honestly couldn’t be happier… Our Mastiffs have all thrived on it. Before we started feeding Raw, none of our dogs lived to the age of seven. This was heartbreaking to me and the rest of the family. It is really awful to see your beloved pet die of sickness when only middle aged. Since feeding raw, Rosie and Charlie both lived to eight years of age, and then Honey our rescue girl (who came to us with a number of health issues – including a dodgy heart) made it to nine and a half. Molly is still going strong at ten years of age, and Penny behaves like a puppy still at seven, with no signs of slowing down yet. I regularly talk to other Mastiff breeders and have noticed that those who feed raw tend to have significantly better health and longevity in their dogs. We have raised several litters of pups on raw food and I truly believe that a balanced raw diet is the best way to feed dogs, and Mastiffs in particular tend to thrive on it.
Starting out
We initially started out on the BARF diet with our bullmastiff, Rosie, after the concerns we’d had with the numerous health problems we’d had with our dogs up to that time. I came to the conclusion, after talking to a number of breeders and other “doggy folks”, that much of it was due to feeding commercial foods, and thus I started looking for a better way to feed my dogs. Before we got Rosie, I read a lot of books, and did a fair bit of research on the internet, until I was happy to start a BARF diet.
When we first started feeding BARF to Rosie, I was worried that I was doing the wrong thing, and that she’d end up crippled, or sick or who knows what. However, once we’d been feeding her BARF for a short while, I realised how good it was, how she was thriving on it and all my fears were allayed.
What is a balanced raw diet?
The three most important elements of a balanced diet are bone, meat and offal. Bone is essential as it contains not just calcium, but the correct ratio of calcium to phosphorous to provide healthy bone and joint growth and development and maintenance in dogs of all ages. It also contains other minerals and vitamins in the marrow which are essential for healthy dogs. Without bone in the diet a dog will quickly develop a range of problems. Meat contains necessary proteins and fats, as well as calories for energy. Offal has a large number of vitamins (esp Vit A, B, D, E and K) which are not present in significant quantities in meat or bone. You don’t need to feed offal every day, but they do need it regularly
Do Not feed a meat only diet to your dog! This is a sure way to cause significant health problems for your dog. You must give them Bone and some offal – and the extras that I feed the gang all improve their condition, and are cheap and easy to feed.
So, what do I feed the gang?
Bottom line up front – The gang gets fed twice per day. In the morning, they get Raw Meaty Bones (RMB) and in the evening, they get raw meat, and any “extras” are given with their night time meal. In terms of weight of food per day, about 1/3 of the weight comes from the RMB and 2/3 from their dinner. This means that about 25 % of their daily weight of food comes purely from the bone part of the RMB, about 75 % from meat and the rest is made up of “extras” – which I will get into later. So, to use Teddy as an example, he weighs 101 kgm and this morning he got about 4 small to medium sized chicken frames (about 750g) for breakfast, and tonight he will get about 800 g of red meat (Roo/Beef/Offal) for dinner, with a tin of sardines and an egg added.
Having said that, on a couple of occasions I have gone away for a few days and there have only been chicken frames (carcasses) in the freezer. Consequently, that’s all the dogs were fed while I was away, and they did just fine. The reason is that, just like humans, adult dogs do not need a perfectly balanced diet every day! I try to balance the elements of their diet over a week to ten days, and that is perfectly acceptable. With young pups, they get exactly the same elements of the diet as adults, but as they are growing so fast, I ensure I balance their diet over two days, which means that I have got be a bit more organised with puppies around J
RMBs
As far as the RMB goes – mine get mostly chicken carcasses (obtained in bulk from Steggles). This is what is left of the chook after the leg, wing and breast fillets are removed. They also regularly get chicken drumsticks, wings, necks and turkey necks. I know a lot of people say don’t give chicken bones to your dog – that is correct – for cooked bones! Cooked bones of all kinds are difficult to digest, very brittle and splinter easily, whereas raw bones are soft, easily digested and full of goodness. For variety, the dogs also get beef ribs, roo tails, ox tail, lamb flaps and brisket bones. Occasionally they even get whole rabbits, if I can get them from friends that go hunting. Molly is an inveterate hunter, and as we live in a rural area, she has “supplemented” her diet on the odd occasion with possum, rabbit, magpie, lizard and even snake (yikes!!)
I do not feed the gang the big cattle leg bones, not because they are not good for them, but because they will fight over them if left lying around! If you only have one dog, or two dogs that get along very well together, you could try these femurs, sawn lengthwise so they can easily get at the marrow – as they are very good for keeping the dogs occupied if they are left alone for a long period of time. Do be aware though, that some dogs have been known to chip teeth on these big leg bones, so if your dog has small or weak teeth, it’s probably best to avoid these large weight-bearing bones and stay with the softer bones.
Dinner
Basically the elements of dinner are usually roo meat and beef mince, but if I can get other meat, for example mutton, horse, deer, pork (for human consumption only) then I will feed them that as well. Any raw meat that is at a reasonable price, with no bone, makes up the bulk of their dinner. Sometimes they get lean meat, other times meat with a fair bit of fat. As long as it’s not always just one or the other, it should be fine. Heart, lungs, tongue and tripe are considered to be muscle meats, not offal, so can be fed as part of the main meal for your dog.
Offal is also an important element of the diet and must not be missed, but I do not feed offal every night, I include it with the extras. However, it is probably the only “extra” that is an essential to a balanced diet. Offal generally included Liver (eg chicken livers, beef liver, lamb’s fry), kidneys, brain, pancreas, testicles etc. I only feed offal that has been cleared for feeding to humans (as there are no parasites in this offal). If you can’t get this, make sure you freeze the offal for a couple of weeks first to kill any parasites.
But my dog won’t eat liver!
Sometimes dogs raised on kibble will turn their nose up at raw offal. In this case, I find the simplest way to get them to eat offal is to lightly cook the offal at first, as they all seem to LOVE cooked offal. Then, over time, cook it less until they will eat it raw. Normally we have a BBQ once or twice a week at home, so I throw some liver and kidney etc) on for the dogs and put it aside to give them as I’m cooking our food. As I quite like lambs fry, but no-one else in my household does, I pinch a couple of small bits for myself too!
Extras
Added to their dinner are a few extras. Over a period of a week or so, I add a different extra to their bowl of meat every night. One night I might add 200g of offal. The next night they will get a whole raw egg (incl shell). Next night, a tin of sardines or other cheap fish I have used frozen bait fish (no salt or preservatives added) such as pilchards. A friend of mine who regularly beach fishes sometimes gives me some Australian salmon (not good for much more than fish cakes for people) which the dogs love – fed whole and raw J. Another night I will give them some fruit and vege mash (see below). I try to add the offal at least twice per week, other than that, the extras are just given ad-hoc.
Vege mash
A lot of the BARF diet proponents insist that raw, mashed, fruit and veg are fed every day. Other raw diet proponents don’t add it at all…My opinion (for what it’s worth) is that fruit and veg are not 100% essential for a dog, but they do add some elements to their diet which is definitely of health value, so I do try to feed the gang fruit and veg on a regular basis – although not as much now as I used to. They generally get the fruit and veg about once a week mixed in with their meat at night..
Because it is readily available and cheap, I tend to base my veggie mix around carrots, spinach, pumpkin, sweet potato and apples. All of this is processed together (using either a blender or a juicer) into a big vegetable “mush”. Sometimes, I add in bananas (not in the blender – they’ll clog it up), berries (frozen is fine), or other fruit if it is cheap and available. I also stir in other stuff like yoghurt, brewer’s yeast, kelp powder and garlic to the veg slop – basically whatever I have in the fridge at the time that needs to be used up. I’ll normally add some cold pressed flaxseed oil to the veggie mix when I feed the dogs.
Recently I have managed to source a lot of my fruit and veg mash from a couple of local juice shops – I use their “mulch” which they give me for nothing. I will then blend up some spinach and then add in the other stuff (garlic, oil etc). Doing it that way is significantly better than mashing it up myself!
Depending on how much I have, I will usually mix up a large batch (enough to last a couple of months) then freeze it into containers – a Chinese take-away container is a good size for one meal of extras for five dogs.
They also get any healthy table scraps – but NOT Onions!!
How much to feed?
As far as amount to feed goes, most books recommend about 2 percent of bodyweight per day for adult dogs and around 4 to 5 percent for growing pups. This is to be used as a starting point only. For example Ruby weighs about 85kg and gets about 1 kg (2.2 lbs) per day total. Coco, on the other hand, weighs just over 80 kg (at 20 months old) and gets about1.5 kg (3 lbs) per day (she’s a growing girl!). I then check their condition – if they are looking a bit tubby, I feed them a little less for a few days, and if they are looking a bit thin, they get a little more for a few days. To check their condition – if I can feel their ribs, but not see them, through their coat – then they are about right. It’s obviously not an exact science and will vary from dog to dog.
What about adding some kibble?
A lot of the full-on RAW feeding folks can get pretty zealous and will not give their dogs any commercial food at all – dried or otherwise. I don’t get too stressed about it myself, as long as the majority of the diet is natural food, then I think that’s good enough. Our dogs occasionally get a handful or so of good quality dried food – but only once every blue moon (or if we have run out of raw food for some reason – usually poor planning on my part!) There are decent quality dry foods out there that you don’t need to spend a fortune on if you (like me) are a bit cynical of the expensive dog foods that are often sold out of vet clinics.
What is the Prey model diet?
Some of you may have heard of the prey model diet. This is just another method of raw feeding – different to BARF, different to what I do, but in essence, it is just a raw food diet. It originated from one person’s opinion that wild canids (ie dingos, wolves, foxes etc) in the wild only eat certain types of prey animals, therefore that is what our domestic dogs must eat every day. They also advocate that the “average” prey animal is something very similar to a wild hare, which consists of about 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% offal by weight. Thus, the prey model diet states that dogs must be fed exactly 80/10/10% meat/bone offal every day, and that fruit and veges are not part of a dogs diet and should not be fed. The prey model devotees can often be very dogmatic about their opinions, and insist that exact percentages of each element must always be followed. Frankly, I think many of them are seriously over the top in their beliefs and try to avoid prey model zealots if I come across them J
Transitioning a dog to RAW from Kibble
When transitioning a kibble fed dog to a raw diet, please be aware that their stools will be significantly different. Often, you may notice that their stools are normal initially but then after a week or so they seem to be very soft and “mucousy”. This is actually quite normal, especially if you have gone straight from 100% kibble to 100% raw when changing over. This happens because your dog’s digestive system has adapted to eating a starch based diet, rather than a meat based diet, and soft, mucousy stools are the most typical result. Basically, their gut flora is not yet fully capable of perfectly digesting a completely raw diet. Think of it this way…if you had been raised on a diet of McDonalds, ice cream and biscuits, then suddenly changed to steak, fruit and vegetables for a week, you’d probably be alright for a few days, and then you’d be needing to visit the bathroom a lot more often. This used to happen to me every time I went to SE Asia and started eating lots and lots of curries LOL…That’s basically what’s happening to your pups.
To avoid the mucousy stools, and help your dog’s gut to cope with the change, I’d recommend that you transition slowly to raw by giving them one feed of kibble, then one of raw each day for a while. Then, as long as their poo remains relatively normal, over time, you can increase the number of raw meals
Remember, raw-fed dogs can have black, brown, tan, grey, and white stools, along with every colour in between. They can be hard, firm, soft, mushy or even liquid. Variation in stool colour and consistency is perfectly normal and to be expected, unless the dog is eating the exact same thing, day in and day out. Unless a dog cannot control their bowel movements, has several liquid stools, or is passing bright red blood, try not to over think or over-complicate things.
No fatty boombahs!!
Probably the single most important factor in canine health is to keep them lean – both whilst they are growing, and then again as adults. A fat dog is an unhealthy dog. This is even more important for the giant breeds like Mastiffs, Great Danes, St Bernards etc. Some of them really love their tucker, so it can be hard, but you need to be firm – it is better to have a dog that is slightly skinny than an overweight dog, as this can lead to all sorts of problems. Obviously, I’m not talking about starving your pup – but they should not be fed too much! Don’t forget to include any table scraps or treats in the weight of food fed each day.
Lastly – DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES:
- Feed your Mastiff puppy calcium supplementation. Don’t listen to your vet or friend who recommends this. Just don’t do it – for any reason. Seriously, this is one of the worst things you can do for a giant breed dog, unless you want to produce skeletal disease in your pup.
- Feed cooked bones of any kind to your pup. Cooked bones cannot be digested properly by dogs. They may splinter and get stuck in either the throat, stomach or bowel. Raw bones should be fine – and for Mastiffs, the more the merrier J
- Feed onions or chocolate – both are poisonous to your dog…the worst type of chocolate is dark cooking chocolate – as it has a higher amount of cocoa in it. Please don’t listen to folks who will tell you it’s just an old-wives tale, or that their dog ate a whole block of chocolate and was fine – they may be lucky and have a dog that doesn’t react to chocolate – so congratulations to them. Personally, I believe it’s not worth the risk that you may have a dog that has the opposite reaction and dies from eating that Easter egg you left lying around! Besides, there are plenty of dog treats that they much prefer to chocolate – so if you want to spoil your pup – give it some cheese, cooked chicken or dehydrated liver….yummy!!
Summary
The three essential elements of a balanced diet are meat, bone and offal and these should be fed in roughly correct proportions over a period of a week or two for adults and a day or two for growing pups. Add a few healthy extras and keep your dog lean.
I personally don’t believe that there is an absolute “right” way to feed our dogs, or a perfect formula that you need to follow. Some of us feed our dogs slightly differently to others, for example some feed veggies every day, others only once a week or so, others not at all. Some give vitamin supplements, and some don’t, some feed dried food , some never let processed food touch their dogs lips. I think that, realistically, each owner finds the best way to feed their own dogs, and sometimes it takes a bit of “experimenting” to find the way/amount to feed them that suits both you and your dogs.
I hope I haven’t made this sound too complicated, because it isn’t. The most difficult thing I find is remembering to take the next day’s food out of the freezer to thaw LOL.