Could you post the link to your blog? Super lost on portion size and what to feed! I have five goldens. One suffers from pretty severe allergies that we still can’t figure out what it is. We are hoping getting him off kibble will help we have tried just about every Kibbke out there for him and nothing helps.
QUOTE="Ranger, post: 1244487, member: 11499"]
Make sure you do lots of research - more than just reading the threads on this forum, even though there is a TON of good info on here. Especially since you have a little puppy, you'll want to make sure you follow the guidelines/ratios just right.
Decide whether you want to go prey model or BARF and research both before making an informed decision on what's best for your puppy. As easy as feeding raw is, there's a lot of researching, weighing, feeding guidelines that takes awhile to get used to - before it becomes 'second nature'. Ranger's on his third month of raw and I'm just now getting to the point where I'm not weighing everything on the scale.
The general consensus is to feed a dog one protein source when you start so the dog has a chance to get used to it. So you feed chicken parts for a week and then start adding in a different protein. You eventually want to get to where there's a huge variety in diet (like Laurie mentioned above) but you don't want to start with a huge variety of protein. If you feed fish in the morning, beef and livers for lunch, and then duck in the evening and Bob gets the runs the next day - you won't know what caused it. Some dogs can't handle a certain protein or some can't handle it for too long. Ranger got the runs after 3 days of being on just pork (my bad).
You'll also have to check and see how much bone you need to feed a growing puppy. For prey model method for an adult dog, the ratio you aim for is 70% meant, 20% bone (edible bone ONLY - marrow bones, hock bones don't count), and 10% offal/organs - half of that needs to be liver. But that's for an adult dog - I have no idea what the ratio is for a growing puppy.
I aim to hit that on a weekly basis, NOT day to day and especially not meal to meal. This week, Ranger has had seperate meals of: chicken quarters, mackeral fish, beef liver, pork lung, sardines, green tripe, bison, and elk. Later today he's getting beef ribs and more beef liver - maybe duck gizzards. As long as you hit the correct ratios over a week's time, you're doing good! And some dogs can handle more liver, some dogs can't handle such a variety of meats...like Laurie, I haven't found anything that Ranger HASN'T been excited to eat.
For a puppy (or any dog, really), I'd say to make sure you keep the items LARGE, especially while Bob learns to chew properly. Even though you possibly could give her chicken wings or drumsticks, I'd stay FAR away from those since they are a choke hazard, especially when she gets bigger. Give her BIG pieces and then break them down into a smaller meal. For instance, instead of giving her 8 oz of chicken wings for a meal, give her a 15 oz chicken quarter and let her eat half of it, take it away and rinse it, then give it back to her for her next meal. You'll reduce the chance of choke if you give her items bigger than her head. Ranger's eating beef ribs today that my mom picked up for him...she cut them up and bagged them individually. While very thoughtful of her, it would have been safer for Ranger (and easier for her), if they'd been kept whole and the whole rack of ribs tossed to him. After he'd eaten half of it, I'd have taken it away and stored it for later. But, not a big deal for him since he knows how to chew at this point.
Hope some of this info helps - if you want to see how Ranger started, check out my blog. I started off with 50% kibble and 50% raw (fed in seperate meals) then went full raw - there's two blogs about it with Ranger's daily menu on there from August to September, and now September onwards.
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