The Nitty Gritty: Content and clarity

Edited for Clarity:
I really wanted to first clarify that I said in the last post on this topic that we don't do a lot of veggies. We've increased the variety of organ meat that we use, and decreased the amount of veggies. However, we've also increased the amount of green tripe that they get. Tripe is just the contents and lining of the stomach of ruminants, like cattle. Lots of mid-digestion grass and all the good digestive assisting qualities that the fermentation process adds. This is not the same as tripe that you find in the grocery store, which has been washed and bleached, and essentially stripped of most of its beneficial qualities. And this also makes it harder to find. But if you find it, you're lucky. It smells like shit, literally, but it's good for them, and they love it.

This is a boneless meal of cut up chicken thighs, perhaps
some liver that I see in there, canned pumpkin, and kelp.

How much?

The rule of thumb-- and this was pretty standard across resources-- was to begin by feeding 2-3% of their ideal body weight per day, for an adult dog, and then adjust as needed. We just watched for weight gain and loss and went from there. We started River off at 2%, but she's older and less active; she now eats more like 1.5%. Luna, on the other hand, has a metabolism I'd ill for. When she is very active, she eats 4% or more. Because she stays very lean, and has a very short coat, it's easy to see when she's losing and gaining. So although River weighs the most, she eats the least. It all depends on the dog.

The RMBs

As I mentioned, we felt comfortable with the 10/10/80 formula. But how to achieve that? Oh, just do ~60% RMBs and you're good, right?

...But what counts as an RMB? And aren't some bonier than others? And are you sure they can eat bones? And what kind of bones?

See? Overwhelming.

Through the Yahoo raw feeders' group, I found out about this website. The USDA has a database that you can use to determine the percentage of bone in the RMBs that you feed. To find that information, you'll find your cut, and then click on the "full report" link. You'll see a percentage listed as "refuse" and a description of what that "refuse" is (ie, bone).

It seems that most people feed chicken RMBs, at least to start with. Some also feed rib bones, necks bones-- other non-weight bearing bones of larger animals. Chicken bones are all pretty soft. But the weight bearing bones of large livestock are too hard and dense for most dogs to be edible. They can still be used as recreational bones, but they certainly weren't going to go through my consumer model grinder. Chicken and rabbit will go through a mid-range home grinder well, depending on the model, and they are easy for the dogs to crunch and to digest.

Chicken leg quarters are a favorite starter, and they are listed as 27% bone on the USDA site. This isn't a foolproof number, so don't get bogged down by that. But by making them approximately half of the dogs' meals, we're giving them a roughly 13% bone content. This is technically a bit high, but I just watched their stool for signs of white, too-dry stool or mild constipation. The leg quarters we were using were pretty meaty, so they may have been less bony than the USDA would suggest.

So depending on what RMB you choose, you can visit the USDA site, find it's % and do a little algebra to find out how much you need per day.

The heart and tongue are muscles; the kidney and
sweetbreads are secreting organs. Kidneys have a good
deal of fat around and inside them. The fat on the outside
is what's known as suet. 

Muscle or Organ??

Which one is it?? The heart is an organ right? Not when you're talking about raw feeding. It's a muscle-- a rich muscle, and one that you'll want to ease most dogs into (though mine can eat whole meals of heart now), but it's a muscle. Gizzards-- muscle. Tongue-- muscle. Lung-- eh. Kinda both? It's best if you can find a secreting organ to make up the organ portion of the meals. Don't get me wrong; all the things listed above are great for variety, and certainly better than nothing in my opinion. But ideally, you want things like kidney, sweetbreads (thymus), spleen, liver, etc. Secreting organs.

The Rest

For the boneless portion, we fed as wide a variety as possible. At first, this was what we could get at the store, and on sale. Pork (I freeze pork for 2-3 weeks to be on the safe side), loins, sirloins, center cuts, picnic roasts, all mostly on sale; whole cuts of beef from the grocery store (roasts, steaks, etc.) and ground beef from our local abattoir where I had a better idea of the quality and age of the meat; and other cuts of chicken like boneless thighs, breasts, tenders, gizzards and hearts; turkey breasts. Eventually we added beef and pork hearts and tongues and trim from butchers.

For the organ portion, we began with liver (beef and chicken) and some eggs. We were eventually able to start adding kidneys, sweetbreads, along with the liver, spleen, pancreas, etc.

Because liver deals with nutrients that are delicately balanced and that are important not to get in too high quantities (like zinc and copper), my understanding is that liver should be kept at roughly half of the organ allotment (ie, 5%). We have done this by giving it daily with other organs or by alternating days and weeks.

As for the fish, because we were feeding whole body fish, bones included, we did not supplement these days with organ or extra calcium. And because we added cottage cheese, veggies, and eggs to those meals, even though they had bones I didn't really worry about throwing my numbers off.

-------

This has changed over the years because of a change in our supplier, but it's a way to get started with what you can find at the grocery store without it costing a fortune.

Moving to home-cooked foods

As I mentioned before, there were several main tipping points for the move away from commercial foods...

Simon
Simon was our old man. He was extremely fearful, and due to some poor training and socialization (or rather lack of), he lashed out when he was afraid. Meaning he snapped. Or he just bit. We had inadvertently trained the growl out of him (a very bad thing. Please research clicker training if you have a fearful dog and APPRECIATE a growling dog) so his warning signs were subtle, at best.

He had become intolerant of handling by us as well-- primarily due to painful arthritis and neurological problems-- and he had some moments where we weren't sure he fully recognized us. The vet was fairly certain he had canine cognitive dysfunction (CCD), ie, doggie alzheimers.

I had read a study about "aggression" in dogs being related to high protein. The study dealt with the use of tryptophan, and studied the effects on dominance and territorial aggression. I knew that Simon's problems weren't really those things, but I thought it couldn't hurt.

One of Simon's symptoms from his neurological problems was also urinary incontinence. Grain-free foods had been touted to help, at least anecdotally.

So I put him on grain-free, low protein foods. We started with a formula from Pinnacle. We also went through a variety of the Natural Balance foods.

Several things happened.

Learning about dog behavior, canine communication, and becoming more hands-off with Simon took us much further in terms of his "aggression." Helping him feel safe in our home did much more than low protein ever would. His aggression was fear-based. Not "dominance." Not "territorial," though he had become a resource guarder (again, more than likely due to a history of having things unceremoniously taken away from him).

We noticed muscle-wasting from the low-protein. And several herbs for incontinence did more for that than grain-free had.

He also hated the food. Hated it.

I picked up a copy of Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health.

First and foremost, it is an invaluable resource for basic health and diet information for our pets. The recipes have been analyzed, so you can rest assured that your home-prepped food is supplying everything they need.

I started cooking some of the simpler recipes for Simon and mixing them with his kibble. The recipes here are much more grain-heavy than I was comfortable with (not for the incontinence, but simply because dogs don't need quite that much grain). So I leaned toward things like quinoa and whole grains like oats brown rice. We used turkey and ground beef and eggs; green beans, carrots, peas, sweet potatoes. And he got a spoon of canned pumpkin, because just like any other little old man, he needed his fiber to keep him regular. :)

As old as he was, and as green as I was at all of this, I was uncomfortable with raw. But he was immediately thrilled with his meals again. Happy to see his bowl, great appetite, and no more loss of muscle mass.

A note on protein:
This is my understanding; I will try to come back with some links to the research I did on this (again, why I should have been documenting all this from the start)...

A raw or cooked diet is very high moisture content-- I want to say 70% or more. Plus there's bone and there's fat. It's not a massively high protein diet, in terms of the base %.

However, when you get kibble, it does not tell you where that protein comes from, plant or animal; plant protein is certainly cheaper. It's also very low moisture. A higher percentage of protein that comes directly from an animal source with a higher moisture content is going to be more bioavailable to the dog. So even though it might seem like a lower-protein food %-wise, it might be higher than even a high protein kibble. It's not totally clear in most cases, given the information we have about the commercial kibble.