Ole has been a fussy eater since we got him so we decided to try the BARF diet with just meat.
He has been on the diet now of over a month and it has done wonders for him. No bad breath, clean teeth, less poo waste, clean eyes, more energy and litle or no doggy smell which is great.
The switch
We switched Ole to the BARF straight away and stopped giving him dried food. At first he didn't know what to do with it and looked at the raw chicken. Eventually after a few days he finally eat the chicken and seemed to really enjoy it. We know when Ole enjoys his food as he howls after a good feed, and boy did he howl!!!
We used chicken as the base of the diet before we introduced other rich foods such as liver or lamb. He only gets a small portion of lambs liver as it is very rich. The liver contains alot of essential vitamins to a dogs diet.
We freeze the large majority of Oles food in portions as we buy in bulk.
The Food List
We only feed Ole meat and have decided not to include the vegetables. You can feed Vegetables if you wish, but these have to be liquidised or finely grated for the dog to get any benifit from it.
The base of his diet is made up of
Chicken Thighs
Chicken Wings
Chicken Drumsticks
Full Chicken
Mince
Stewing Beef
Lambs Liver
Eggs
Kidney
Fish (only on a few occassions)
Steak (also on a few rare occassions)
Here is a photograph of what Ole can eat in a few days
Supplements can be added in over time, if you are just starting out. Remember, start bland then introduce other things, which also applies to the supplements. I don't add supplements to Oles feed.
Costs of RAW vs Dried Food
Depending on where you get your supplies, it can work out to cost the same or much much less than dried food. If you feed a high quality dried dog food, which costs above €50, then it may work out cheaper to feed raw. If you feed the cheaper supermarket brands then it will probably work out dearer than dried food.
We started buying ours in Tesco and a weeks worth of RAW was costing €30.00. Compared to a 15kg dried bag of dog food costing €60.00 which would last 5-6 weeks.
We now buy our chicken and mince from Lidl and it works out cheaper than Tescos. We get the lambs liver and kidneys from our local butcher.
If you require further information on the costs and would like some questions asked please visit www.topdog.ie for more details. There is a few Irish Barf users on the board.
I will update this post with more photographs and FAQ' later.
