Prey Model Raw

We scored a whole hog for free this week. Decided to feed it all in one sitting as a gorge meal. The dogs are all fat, happy and passed out.

Why feed a whole hog at once? Gorge meals are a normal thing for wolves, dogs. Their lives revolve around finding food. Either they find a carcass or they make a fresh meal but either way they eat as much as they can in one sitting because they have no idea when their next meal will come. Obviously our dogs at home know when their next meal is coming, and so do we. So, why do a gorge meals? For several reasons.

First, feeding a meal like this gives our dogs the opportunity to really get a mentally stimulating experience. It takes a lot more mental work for a dog to rip and tear meat off, crunch through bones of this kind of source. The enjoyment alone we watch from our dogs eating is reinforcing enough to do it again.

Second, it allows us to feed large meals to our big dogs. It saves us a lot of work with breaking down a whole hog, just let the dogs do the work!

Third, it may or may not provide any health benefits. There is no research, anecdotal or scientific, stating one way or the other. Many raw feeders do this and it works well for their dogs.

Gorging and fasting should not be attempted by the novice raw feeder. I highly suggest that only dogs who have been raw feeding for a few years do this. It takes some time and conditioning to get a dog’s system capable of handling such a large meal. This can be achieved by gradually increasing the size of a meal once every 2 weeks, and then increasing the space between the larger meal and their next meal. Puppies weaned to or switched to raw feeding early are better equipped to handle gorging and fasting sooner, but I don’t suggest doing it until the puppy is at least 6 months old, unless its a toy/small breed who may never be able to handle a true gorge/fast meal even as an adult. Toy or small breeds who are prone to hypoglycemia should never be fasted for long periods of time, so true gorge/fast meals may never be done with these dogs. Just proceed with caution and always supervise any feeding of any kind with a scrupulous eye!

Our dogs pictured below have been raw feeding for at least 2 years, the exceptions being two Great Dane puppies, 8 and 10 months old. All of them have been conditioned to gorge meals and handle them well!

Picture time….enjoy!

We apologize for the problem with the pictures in this post. The owner of the pics has removed them. We will try to get the pics back up shortly.

Here’s a small “study” done by one of the resident raw feeders on the DogFoodChat forum, Autumn Morandin, her dog Lincoln and a friends dog Atlas. I thought it was worthy of a blog post here because it really shows that the proof that raw really is what a dog should be eating just because the sheer decrease in the amount of waste produced. I know that a lot of dog owners really don’t enjoy cleaning up after their dogs, so this benefit is maybe not just for the dogs but a blessing for us people too! If this isn’t enough reason to switch I don’t know what is!

Enjoy  NOTE: this shows how the poop degrades over the course of a week.  Notice how the raw poop dries up and easily crumbles.  This would easily disintegrate into the yard…

Okay I decided to try another round of this. I used two dogs of the same weight

The poop on the left is Lincolns poop (65lb Belgian Malinois)

The poop on the right is Atlas’ poop (60lb Dalmatian)

This is a full days worth of poop. Lincoln only pooped once that day but sometimes he will poop out another piece half the size of the one in the cup.

Day two:

Day three:

Here is Day Four, to show how it crumbles I just squished it with my fingers (with a glove on of course). I could of done this day one but I wanted to leave it to allow people to compare with other poop. I was thinking about doing this to the other poop to show its still wet and gross etc..but I thought I better not LOL

Day five:

Day six:

Day seven:

There you have it! I don’t think I need anymore proof than that. I do not miss picking up sloppy, stinky, disgusting “kibble poo” at all….

Pork liver and scrap meat

Turkey necks (an all time favorite at our house)

Beef hearts

Beef ribs; our recreation chew bone of choice, the girls love em!

We check back about once a day and package up any meat that’s already thawed and can be separated from the meat blocks. This can take up to 3 days for everything to completely thaw.

After everything has been thawed we’ll usually have a lot of “blood” left in the containers (mostly water). We will usually let the girls drink as much of it as they’d like. Good for the kidneys and liver. Get as much moisture in their diet as possible!

The meat ends up in 12 quart Sterlite containers we buy from WalMart, which hold 10-15 pounds of meat which lasts about 1-2 days at our house!

Turkey is an easy way to add a cheap alternative protein source to your feeding schedule. Hit up the after Thanksgiving sales and stock up! We’ve seen them as cheap at $0.25/lb after Thanksgiving.

The biggest problem is breaking down that whole turkey into smaller meals. We’ve put together a simple video demonstrating an easy method for breaking down a turkey in under 10 minutes.

We recommend having at least 1 VERY sharp knife to use for this. We prefer Shun knives. They ARE expensive but you’ll only need to sharpen them about once a year due to their high quality construction.
http://www.5vido.com/ShunKnives

….awesome racks of elk ribs for the girls! I was rudely awakened early this morning by 7 crazy, bouncy dogs. So the good girlfriend that I am, went out into the living room to give Jon his beauty sleep. Received an email from one of the local raw feeding groups about two whole racks and the neck of an elk available from a local game processor. I jumped on it like an early bird on a worm! And we got em! WOOHOO! Over 100 pounds of all natural goodness, best part was it was ALL FREE!!! We also went and picked up 5 large turkeys from another lady for free too, so not to bad of a score today. If we factor in the cost of gas we only spent about $20 on it all!

We decided to let all the girls eat from it together like a wild pack of dogs and it went great! A few growls here and there, but they handled it like a real pack. It was one of the greatest things to watch…I LOVE feeding raw to my girls.

The looks we got from people driving by were priceless! Even one of the local dogs (a lot of stray dogs in our neighborhood…) came up to the fence looking for some meat, so I cut some off and tossed it out, probably one of the best meals of that dogs life!

Comparison shot of Bailey next to the ribs. She probably weighs only 10 pounds more than both chunks put together:

The left overs…we decided to take them off of it and save it for another day. They were all “puffy” anyways:

And here’s some video footage we took…sorry for the lame commentary!

Elk Rib Dinner from YouTube

Now they are all passed out in a food coma. Life is good!

We are getting more and more people that have had wonderful success with switching their dogs (and cats) to Prey Model Raw feeding! We’ve updated our Success Stories page with more wonderful first hand accounts. They keep on coming in which is fabulous! Keep up the good work and spread the word.

If you haven’t yet made the commitment to change, please read through them to help inspire you to make it ASAP!

Here’s one of my favorites:

Our Success Story starts with my girl Casey. Casey is the main reason why I decided to take the time and read up on RAW feeding. I knew she had to have an allergy to kibble. The vet was always saying, FLEA ALLERGY! I didn’t buy it, not when she didn’t have a flea on her.

This is my girl Casey before reaping the benefits of RAW.

As you can see, she is an absolute mess. The poor girl dug herself raw every day, all day. It was horrible to watch her suffer as I continually fed her kibble.

Then one day, I got sick of it and thought, there has to be a better way to feed this dog. I found this place and broke google trying to read everything I could. About 3 weeks later, I decided that I would go for it and feed Casey and her sis Ava a whole chicken fryer cut in two. Poor DH was devistated thinking he was going to get a stuffed chicken for dinner and here I am, feeding it to the dogs! lol

I waited, and waited and waited for her skin to heal. It was a long, slow recovery but well worth it! In the last few months, she has finally healed and now she looks healthy. She doesn’t stink and her hair is so soft! I love touching her butt now and her energy level is through the roof! I love telling her what a pretty girl she is!

She loves RAW and is patiently waiting for me to open her swimming pool so she can go swimming!

-BGBY

A year ago we had to have one of Shiloh’s main chewing teeth removed. Natalie noticed that Shiloh was getting tartar built up on the left side and upon further investigation we found her upper carnasial tooth was horizontally fractured. We had to have the entire tooth removed.

I think seeing it makes it a little more realistic

Fortunately Natalie works as a vet tech and we get our services at a discount. I would have hated to have had to pay full price to have this tooth extracted. Marrow bones are NOT worth the risk to me, EVER. Without even taking the cost into account, Shiloh now has to suffer the rest of her life not being able to chew as well on one side of her mouth.

CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION

Three gorgeous dogs doing what they do best!

Here’s a perfect example of raw feeding at its finest. Three very different kinds of dogs of different ages, but all similar enough to know what to do with a hunk of meat and bone. Why more people don’t do this is beyond me…these dogs are perfectly happy and content!!!

Our Kitah went outside to play with the dogs in the snow and apparently got rolled around in the snow a bit.  I just rescued her looking like this…  :D

One of the most popular comments we get when we explain we feed raw to our dogs is “that must cost you a LOT”.  If you’re resourceful and smart about how you feed raw it can be done MUCH cheaper than any quality kibble.  We pay, on average, about $0.60/pound for all of the meat we feed our dogs (and cats).  This include the more exotic meats like Elk, Deer, Anetlope, and other game meat.

If getting started on RAW, breaking down your cost of meat and freezer space is VERY important especially if you have big dogs or multiple dogs.
Here is our breakdown for our dogs (we don’t include the cost of the cat…she gets the scraps LOL)

Finding a freezer is easier than you think, free ones are posted on craigslist all the time so I would say that cost is neglegible.

Here is a guide for determining how much freezer space you will need:

28 cu. ft. of freezer space for ~500 lbs. of meat
14 cu. ft. of freezer space for ~250 lbs. of meat
7 c u. ft. of freezer space for ~125 lbs. of meat

We have an upright freezer that is about 24 cu. ft. and we routinely buy ~300# of meat at a time. We could fit much more considering we package our meat into containers that hold 2-3 days worth of meat.

300# of meat usually will last about a month and a half or two.

We have 4 dogs that weigh:

Shiloh: 65
Emmy: 65
Akasha (currently growing): 65
Bailey: 115

We buy meat that is on average (adding up all the costs of the different meats we buy and dividing by the # of meats) 60-75 cents per pound

Shiloh, Emmy and Akasha all cost us ~ $1 per day to feed

Bailey costs us ~$2 per day to feed

The meats we buy on a regular basis:

chicken backs, turkey necks, beef heart, pork ribs, pork roasts, whole tilapia, pollock fillets, lamb ribs, beef liver, chicken liver, beef kidneys, etc.

This breakdown does not include all the free meat that we have found to come in contact with (trust me its out there, ya just gotta know where and how to look for it

So, looking at the breakdown, is RAW worth it???