pet food raw or cooked?

[pastelsummer]

If you were going to raise rabbits not only for your own food but for your pets as well. Cats Dogs Ferrets would you cook it first or feed it raw? I know ferrets do better with raw. but i am unsure weather to give the dogs and cats raw or cooked.

 

[HendricksHearth]

Raw would be ideal if possible. Feeding cooked pieces could be potentially dangerous because the bones can splinter where as the raw bones are completely digestable.

Best of luck,

Lauren

 

[Shara]

I feed my dog raw, and he doesnt even poop bones!

 

[Lacomo]

I would also say feed it raw. After all the animals in the wild don't have it cooked and they do just fine. It's natural for animals to eat raw food. My cats would prefer raw deer scraps over any other kind of food so when I kill a deer I always save the scraps, grind them up and freeze for cat food.

 

[ladysown]

there are people in both camps.

Me...when I had dogs I fed both.

leftover cooked meat....fed it to the dog.
raw meat...fed it to the dog.

many dogs won't eat liver unless it is cooked first.

just remember...NO COOKED BONES! (ever)

 

[pastelsummer]

ok thank you guys!! I would prefer raw just because i don't wanna have to cook it. Now for the stupid question how much do i feed them? i have a st bernard pyrenese cross, med size mutt a long haired dachsund, and a 15 week min pin

 

[ladysown]

enough to stay healthy.

normally 10% of their body weight when they are puppies.
and then it's down to 7% or so (going from memory about a year ago) thereafter.

Some dogs will need more, some less.
Depends too on ...dogs' activity level, your method of feeding etc.

for instance: some raw feeders feed a daily set amount.
Others try to mimic the wild model... feast and famine (as in today you get a whole rabbit, but the next two days you get nothing).

and then there are the people who mix and match and do everything inbetween.

My suggestion would be to do a bit of research. there are some GOOD groups out there, also some... less than stellar ones. Time will tell which is which.

 

[Shara]

On HT, I was suggested to start off feeding 2-3% body weight, which for my hundred pound dog works well. I keep an eye on him and will give him more if that turns out to be not enough, but it has been good so far.

I agree about the liver, Koda wont touch it raw, and by the time it gets cooked, I want it, lol.<br /><br />__________ Sat Dec 04, 2010 8:31 pm __________<br /><br />Oh, and I wanted to say, some peoples dogs do eat more, that was just what was suggested to me and it is working well at this point. They did say smaller dogs would need a higher percentage of food perweight.

 

[ladysown]

there yah go, that 2-3 % sounds better. thought my numbers sounded off.

thanks for updating my memory there Shara.

 

[pastelsummer]

ok so for my 100lb dog a 10 lb rabbit would be fine? (i am not math person here i mess up when i use a calculator!) and for the 30ish lbd dog about 2-4 lbs? my dachsund is 10ish lbs MAX probably less and the min pin will be small so i figure just feed them at will. my cats can catch mice!! LoL thats what they are supposed to do with some rabbit and chicken thrown out occasionally.

 

[ladysown]

your 100 lb dog should eat about 2-3 lb/day. (so basically a smallish fryer a day) OR one 10-12 lb rabbit a week.

the 30 lb dog 1.5-2 lb

the 10 lb about 1/2 lb same with the mini pin. IF that. smaller dogs often need a bit more as they are often higher energy and use it.

SOME dogs cannot handle a lot of fur so sometimes you need to skin them. They can get bunged up like a cat does unfortunately.
I never had a problem just giving them the heads fully furred, but a lot of the furs I simply tossed.
Don't know if feeding them whole would be an issue if you also fed beef and pork roasts as well. Which is a good idea anyways as some rabbit can be pretty lean.

 

[Shara]

I would suggest that some extra meat goes in, I started by feeding Koda whole chicken, and he got backed up from there being too high of a bone content. Added some exrta meat, and he has been great since. Something else I was suggested, make sure your dogs chew, since some dont when they have been fed kibble before.

 

[Anntann]

We have a good friend who feeds his Rottweiler raw. 1/4 of a chicken (he buys leg/thigh quarters for 69cents a lb) a day. when the dog was growing, he got 2 quarters...1 in the morning, 1 at night. He's found that the dog's poops are very small, and don't smell since he went on the RAW diet. He's going to try some rabbit as soon as I get it to him...give the dog some variety. If he LIKES it, we'll probably start bringing him cottontails from the farm (we have hundreds out there) since $3.00 a lb would be...pricey. Although, once a week is something he'd do for the dog, easily.

Quite a few people grind chicken or rabbit whole and toss 1 or 2lb "sausages" or packages in the freezer.

My husky/aussie cattle dog cross used to hunt rabbit and squirrel and she'd just chow them down whole. Never had a problem

 

[Brody]

be careful feeding a puppy raw or cooked meat only ... most home preped diets aren't entirely balanced which isn't as much of a problem for adults as young ones but the phosporus clacium balance can really cause problems in growth for one thing ...