A Few Questions on Feeding Raw.

**bckrazy** · 06-12-2006, 08:42 PM

For Lily, I would recommend about 5% of her body weight, because she is still young. You want to decrease the amount based on her body weight/shape, and her age. 5% of 4.5 lbs equates to about .15-.2 lbs of raw per day. That is pennies a day!! Consider that, if you'll be feeding mostly chicken wings/leg quarters, those RMB's cost $0.50/lb on average... you can find it for more or for less depending on the butcher you go to. Some butchers will give away a huge (10 lb) bag of chicken pieces for a dollar or two.

Now, I'm guessing that Roxy weighs 30-40? lbs. She will need at least 3% of her body weight, preferably 5% since it sounds like she needs to pack on a few pounds. She should do well on 1.5 lbs per day, until her weight is ideal.

The cheapest RMB's that I get are whole chickens that I divide on my own (VERY cheap at our butcher, equates to about $.25/lb) OR a 10 lb bag of chicken leg quarters for $3 OR a little less than 10 lb bag of chicken wings for $3. A whole turkey and turkey wings/legs are just a bit more expensive, but bigger. A 5 lb package of beef ribs costs $2, lamb ribs of the same weight are just a bit more. Beef femur costs almost nothing, and can be split into 1/3 or 1/4 by the butcher, so that will provide 4 recreational chewing bones to clean teeth. Lamb shanks are also very cheap, as are pork bones/cuts.

I also feel that veggies help with a well-rounded diet. I spend about $2/month on each kind of veggie, and I use about 5 basic veggies which means $10 per month with that. If you just want to use a couple veggies, you can get them for cheaper. I buy a bag of Tomatoes, cuccumbers, broccolli, spinache, & carrots; puree them all together at home; then seperate the "veggie mush" into a about 10 sandwich bags, which means each dog will get 5 servings a month. It serves as a meal in itself. I give this once or twice a week, and mix in flax seed oil & a crushed multi-vitamin. Additives such as multi-vitamins, fish/salmon oil, flax seed, etc, is up to you. I also give them a few raw or hard-boiled eggs per week (including the shell), a few meals of oatmeal & honey per month, and a few meals of goats milk per month. I basically follow Dr. Ian Billinghurts RMB plan ;0) I reccomend the book "Give Your Dog A Bone"... you can actually borrow mine if you want. It has a lot of good, common sense information!

Also, the benefits of feeding raw are HUGE! And it is not rocket science, although plenty of research should be done before jumping into it. I keep ALL of my dogs' raw meals in one shelf in our freezer! And I even buy in bulk! It not only has a way of maintaining a perfect weight (which goes totally back & fourth with kibble, I know), it cleans teeth, produces poops that are firm, do not smell and actually crumble up in a couple days, promotes great coat, balanced energy (unlike the hyper, carb-driven energy from kibble), and will save you a LOT of money in the future. By the sound of your dogs' teeth, they will need professional teeth cleaning yearly, or they'll end up needing teeth pulled. This costs $100-200 per cleaning/pulling! It also sounds like the kibble that you feed Roxy is going right through her, which means she really does need a higher quality food or perhaps that she has an allergy, and raw will improve that.

**Roxyluvsme13** · 06-12-2006, 08:51 PM

I'm not exactly sure on Roxy's weight at the moment, but that sounds about right. I don't know if we have a butcher though.. o_O. We used to get our meat from the Grocery store (until I went Vegetarian).. Would they give us meat, maybe? I have a $10 budget a month for myself, and I say we normally spend.. $30 on Roxy's food, and since Lily eats hardly anything she gets a new jug of food for $10 about every 6 months. So, it does sound like this would be cheaper.. if only we had the freezer space.. Maybe I could start Roxy on just the bones and feed Lily the meat. I'd love to borrow the book if you don't mind lending it to me!

Yeah, her teeth are pretty bad, and Lily's are just getting started.. I feel like a horrible mom, but I've done everything under my control to try to get her on a better food, but my mom keeps insisting no.

**bckrazy** · 06-12-2006, 08:55 PM

Here are price estimations for feeding both of your dogs raw, based on RMB's that are less than $1 per lb. I have no clue what Roxy weighs, I'm guessing 30-40 lbs?

Feeding Lily for 30 days = 6 lbs = $4 per month

Feeding Roxy for 30 days = 30-45 lbs = $26 per month

So, that is $30 per month, and $360 per year, for a RMB diet. You can easily make $30 per month babysitting or whatever! =) And, it depends heavily on how much of a bargain hunter you are. That $30 could be cut in half, depending on your own local butchers and the deals you find.

**bckrazy** · 06-12-2006, 09:00 PM

Ok, just PM or e-mail me your address

my e-mail is [email protected]

Have you tried brushing their teeth? Doggy toothpaste doesn't cost much at all, and just use an old toothbrush or buy 2 childrens brushes. It can help a lot if done daily. However, to get rid of the existing plaque, they either need a pricey cleaning from the vet (where they are put under anesthesia) or RMB's. Lily needs to get the meat and the bones, feeding her all muscle meat is not balanced & will not do much for her teeth. She is a small dog and as long as she chews well, she'd do fine with chicken & turkey bones.

**Roxyluvsme13** · 06-12-2006, 09:01 PM

Originally Posted by bckrazy

Here are price estimations for feeding both of your dogs raw, based on RMB's that are less than $1 per lb. I have no clue what Roxy weighs, I'm guessing 30-40 lbs?

Feeding Lily for 30 days = 6 lbs = $4 per month

Feeding Roxy for 30 days = 30-45 lbs = $26 per month

So, that is $30 per month, and $360 per year, for a RMB diet. You can easily make $30 per month babysitting or whatever! =) And, it depends heavily on how much of a bargain hunter you are. That $30 could be cut in half, depending on your own local butchers and the deals you find.

Wow, I just asked my mom and she said on Roxy's food alone we spend $40 a month.

Now I just need to get a job or something, hehe. Do you have any idea of what kind of weekly schedule type thing I could do for them? Like.. a meal chart or something. I'm still a little bit clueless on WHAT exactly I'd feed them

.

ETA: I could start brushing their teeth.. I'll have that PM in just a sec..I really need to do something.. Roxy's teeth will be gone by the time she's 6 if I don't start doing something.

**bckrazy** · 06-12-2006, 09:15 PM

HM... check out the thread in Dog Health, What Did Your Dogs Eat Today?. It can give you an idea if you look through all of Sarah's posts in a week (she posts the most in that thread

). My schedule for Gonzo is usually something like (for a 40 lb active dog)...

Monday: 2 Chicken wings for breakfast, .3 lb beef brisket meat for dinner
Tuesday: Lamb shank for breakfast, beef rib for dinner
Wednsday: Chicken leg quarter for breakfast, veggie mush for dinner
Thursday: 2 Chicken wings for breakfast, chicken leg quarter for dinner
ETC!

They get supplements almost every day, but that is up to you. I occasionally give them some yogurt, milk, cottage cheese, etc. I almost never give starchy biscuits & such, except one cookie before they go to bed. I use tiny bits of cheese, cooked chicken, liver, and pieces of carrot for training treats. The book explains basically everything you would want to know... and more! hehe. Grocery store meat is fine, as long as it isn't over-priced! A common rule of thumb is, for your main meats, don't ever pay more than $1/lb. I occasionally pay a bit more for special treats, like rabbit. His Farmore raw costs $2/lb, but that includes veggies and supps in it, and I feed it much less often. If your grocery store has no good deals, check out a different grocery store (Costco can be a God-send sometimes) or local butchers.

I recommend, next time you got to the store, ask the butcher for a beef femur bone cut in 1/4ths or a pack of soup bones (really, really cheap). Give it to Roxy to chew on, and watch her. Just rec bones regularly will help a lot, and prove to your Mom that it will improve her teeth.

**Roxyluvsme13** · 06-12-2006, 09:22 PM

Okay! I'm going to have to know my math for this, aren't I?

I'm going to wait till I get the book from you and read on it a little more before I actually start trying to take some action. I just talked to my mom a few minutes ago about this, and she seemed interested. She asked me what kind of meat, mentioned Hamburger is so expensive. Told her you don't feed hamburger, then she mentioned about the bones, and the splitting of them. Told her when it's raw you can feed them. At least she *seems* interested. I know she would love to save on dog food. I'm reading some stuff from http://rawlearning.com and I plan to do some more research. Will be anxiously waiting for the book, and thank you so much for all the help!

Btw, we don't have a Costco... I've actually never heard of them. We have Food Lion, Krogers, Food City, and White's. I really am interested in switching them, and hope to convince my mom that it's better for them, too.

**cyber-sibes** · 06-12-2006, 09:36 PM

Ths is very timely! I bought two whole chickens yesterday, and cut them up myself. I split the chicken back between my two dogs, just to see how they'd like it. not many minutes later, they were completly gone.

Will a meat & bone diet help for a dog that has plaque? Our new vet suggested I bring Star in for a cleaning - he said she has a broken molar that is building up tarter. The catch is that she would have to go under anesthesia, and because of her age (9), she'd need pre-test blood work, and it's more risky for an older dog. (I can see the $$$$ adding up, too!) i don't want to put her through that unless absolutely necessary. And if they put her under, they may as well pull the tooth rather than have to do this every year.
So I'm wondering if the raw diet would help reduce her plaque problem?

**animal_rescue** · 06-12-2006, 09:40 PM

Originally Posted by cyber-sibes

Ths is very timely! I bought two whole chickens yesterday, and cut them up myself. I split the chicken back between my two dogs, just to see how they'd like it. not many minutes later, they were completly gone.

Will a meat & bone diet help for a dog that has plaque? Our new vet suggested I bring Star in for a cleaning - he said she has a broken molar that is building up tarter. The catch is that she would have to go under anesthesia, and because of her age (9), she'd need pre-test blood work, and it's more risky for an older dog. (I can see the $$$$ adding up, too!) i don't want to put her through that unless absolutely necessary. And if they put her under, they may as well pull the tooth rather than have to do this every year.
So I'm wondering if the raw diet would help reduce her plaque problem?

Yes! It was definitely help, they'll have very healthy teeth on a raw diet.

**bckrazy** · 06-12-2006, 09:48 PM

Gonzo, before I started him on 100% raw, was given a Greenie almost every day... which is $20+ a month, JUST for Greenies!

His teeth still had light plaque, especially the molars where his kibble stuck to after eating. Now, I spend the same amount as I did on Greenies for his WHOLE monthly meal, and he has zero plaque with raw. Like, not a trace of it, and his teeth are very white and not worn at all. He's almost 5, too ^_^

Ok, so I guess the answer is yes, raw bones do help immensely with cleaning teeth. I find that chicken bones help a lot, but because they are smaller and easy to bend and break into small pieces, they aren't as efficient with cleaning teeth. Beef femur & soup bones literally scrub away plaque! However, you have to keep a close eye with these because they are so hard and an overly-vigorous chewer can chip a tooth.