Pet food raw diet vs bagged food

[dubc80]

My Labrador is on raw. Has been for about 6 years now since I got him.
We buy the whole meal dinner ones, so meat and veggies all mixed together into a 1/2 pound puck.

Definitely less poop.

Regarding germs/salmonella, I have kids that are 4 and 2 and haven't had any problems. You just treat it the same as you would ground beef or any other raw meat and wash the dishes properly.

The only pain is when you go camping, or to other peoples houses for a weekend and you have to keep the food frozen while in transit. Some kennels might charge extra to feed raw, or have limited freezer space.

I haven't done a cost analysis, but it's more expensive than the normal kibble. Not sure about the premium kibbles which are out there.

[Canehdianman]

Raw is awesome.

When we had our yellow lab, he was on Mountain Dog Food his entire life (from breeder through to us).

Great stuff, highly recommend it.

When we get another dog, we will definitely be feeding it raw again.

[OMG!WTF!]

I don't have an opinion other than raw chicken feet are the best treats on the planet. I used to give them one after meals. Now they won't even touch their food until they get a chicken foot. They're even better and easier to deal with frozen. I used to give them raw fish but they started smelling like seals.

[ken0042]

Has anybody tried the raw, and then switched back to bagged?

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Has anybody tried the raw, and then switched back to bagged?

Not me specifically. But my friends had a Great Dane and Aussie Shepard. When the dane passed away the Shepard stopped eating the raw food for whatever reason and they had to move her back to bagged food so she would eat.

[foshizzle11]

We have experience with using many types of foods. We foster dogs from the humane society as well. They use some of the vet foods mentioned above. It is smart business too by those food companies. If the vets get a cut of the profits to sell their food in their vet offices, why wouldn't the vets push that food?

The humane society uses this same food as the vets because I believe it is all donated, in the hopes that anyone who adopts a dog will continue with the same diet/food after adoption, great business plan! Well, we feed our fosters, who can tolerate it the vet food mentioned in this thread and majority of the time the fosters snuff their noses at it (unless they are food hounds and don't care what they eat).

The foster dogs have much larger bowel movements than our dogs who get a great quality kibble, but not super high in protein or fat. You really only need high protein if your dog is extremely active (like hard/fast runs 1-2 hours a day, every day).

Then we also feed our dogs veggie scraps daily from dinner. Any veggie but like onions and a couple others that aren't great for them. Our cockerpoo eats everything, he loves veggies. Our shepherd/border collie mix is a meat lover but has started to eat things like carrots, celery, apples, bananas, etc.

The brand we use is Horizon Pulsars. They have turkey, chicken, fish, pork and lamb options. The first 5 or 6 ingredients are foods we would eat (minus the chicken meal, but I am sure all dogs would love that!).

Here are the first few ingredients in the chicken dog food.

CHICKEN MEAL, RED LENTILS, PEAS, PEA STARCH, CHICKEN, CHICKEN FAT (PRESERVED WITH MIXED TOCOPHEROLS, SOURCE OF VITAMIN E), FLAXSEED, LIQUID EGG PRODUCT, CARROTS, APPLES, BROCCOLI, BOK CHOY, CABBAGE, BLUEBERRIES,

The 13kg bag is like $50. Our shepherd mix is about 65lbs and eats 2.5 cups a day, sometimes less if she isn't as active. Doesn't have bad gas, has normal/averaged sized bowel movements, always regular. We haven't had to move to a raw diet because they do well on this food and the ingredients are high quality. Not to mention the company is based in Saskatchewan and they source local food sources, all Canadian made food. Horizon has other foods as well, but for the price and quality, we are very happy with this food.