We recently rescued a puppy and for a variety of reasons, I want to mainly cook for her and avoid regular dog food. I am looking for some good resources to help me make sure I am feeding her a healthy diet. Can you guys help me out with some good apps/webistes and forums? TIA!!!
She is 3 months old today and weighs about 18 lbs. She gets about 1/2 cup of cooked oatmeal, 1/2 banana and a hard boiled egg in the morning, lunch and dinner is 1 cup of mixed white rice and boiled ground turkey and about 1/2 cup of steamed or raw veggies.
Sorry I did not have time to give you some links before, but now I have time. First of all, congratulations for wanting to feed raw/BARF. It is a ton of work to balance all the nutrients and ingredients, but it really is the best way to feed your dog. I commend you for wanting to give it a try.
Next, stop the grains immediately. That is not a good idea for growing puppies or even adult dogs. You will end up with a fat dog with health problems. Grains are carbs and convert to sugars. Sugar is not needed in a dogs diet. As mentioned by a previous poster, wolves do not eat grains so your dog should not either. And stop cooking. If you are going to feed naturally, you need to feed raw. And no fruit unless it is a small treat and is a safe fruit, for instance grape skins are toxic to dogs.
Here is a
great article for starting puppies on Raw. Notice it is 100% meat, which is necessary, especially for growing puppies. 65% of a puppy's food needs to be in the form of raw, meaty bones like turkey necks and chicken backs. They need the bones for the calcium so that their bones can mature properly. Cooked bones splinter and can pierce a gut, so make sure you feed RAW. I regularly feed my dogs chicken backs. The crunching of the bones makes you cringe at first but you get used to it.
Many BARFers also feed a veggie meal a few times a week, but do some research on what the right veggies are.
You should make a calendar that has a schedule of 10 days where you balance your RMB meals (Raw Meaty Bones), your offal (organ meats) meals and your veggie meals. The majority of your meals should be RMBs, followed by offal (but take it easy with puppies on this,) followed by veggie meals.
Here are
50 Tips for BARF Beginners
The best tip I can give you is to find a BARF mentor. It is confusing at first to balance all the nutrient requirements, especially for puppies, but it is well worth it.
In dogforums.com you can find a bunch of threads on raw and BARF feeding.
And as they say in the Raw feeding world: Happy Crunching!
I agree with research the raw or BARF diet. Additionally, if you are going to do that, ensure that the meat you provide your pet is healthy, grass fed. No sense trying to go healthy with your dog and then you end up using feedlot animals.
