Hello everyone,
I have a five and half month old Siberian Husky. Currently he weighs in at 37.1lbs. I made the quick jump over to raw yesterday after what seems to have been a horrible spell of diarrhea that was caused by allergies in his commercial dog food, Merrick's.
I've informed myself a little bit about dog nutrition and what is good and bad for them over the past 6 or 7 months, reading up what I can. Hence, going with Merrick's, higher quality brand that he seemed to enjoy but one day just started to have a really bad reaction to it. After a few days of his stool still being loose, I started researching about other means of feeding (I've read up on the BARF diet before, I was considering it when we first got him but the price tag had me worried). However, after seeing him have loose stools for 4-5 days, I figured any amount of money was worth it to see him healthy again (I know dogs have random fits of diarrhea from time to time, he has had those, but this time it was completely different. It seemed like the more he ate, the sicker he got).
I decided that I would fast him for 24 hours to get all the toxins out of his body before going ahead with BARF. Once it hit 24 hours I gave him a raw chicken leg (something that I thought would be plenty big for him), but to my surprise he swallowed the whole thing! I didn't even have time to grab the end of it to make sure he chewed it. I'm not sure if this is normal for dogs of his size? I know a lot of bigger dogs tend to do that, but is that something I should be worried about? He had no trouble downing it, but it scared the crap out of me. I'm just worried that if he keeps at it like that he'll have gastric problems when he gets bigger. So does anyone have any suggestions for that? I've read up that some people hold the bone so that the dog has no choice but to chew on it. Anyways, so that was that nightmare over with, I'm tempted to grind up the bones after witnessing such an event. I gave him another chicken leg a little later on, just the meat (no bone). I read that the ratio for bones to meet should be somewhere around 10% to 75%-85%, is that correct? Later on that night I gave him his 40% of body intake of steamed vegetables (I know a lot of people say they aren't needed but he goes crazy for them and devours them like crazy).
So that's all that I've given him so far. I know it's not the right amount but everywhere I seemed to read said to start them off slowly on the raw diet, not to overload them. Plenty of places said to just feed them chicken necks/turkey necks for the first few days before introducing anything else. I'm just wondering if anyone had any simple recipes or tips? I've gathered a few of them here and there but I'm new at this so I'd like some other people's inputs that are experienced in raw diets. How much bones should be fed in the run of a week? I know some people mention that they only feed one bone to their dog once every three days. I'm also wondering about supplements as well. I read that a lot of people add in supplements to their dogs food. I'm unsure of what the ratios are and I wouldn't want to under-do it or over-do it. That's pretty well all I wanted to know, thanks for reading!
P.S. - After just one day on the diet, there's already an IMMENSE improvement in his stool. I'm shocked at how fast it works, I know I read that it sometimes clears it up instantly, but I'm still really shocked that it worked that fast. Glad that I switched over, he seems a lot happier now to, ha.