Diet
BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food or Bones & Raw Food) Diet
Logically dogs have eaten raw meats, bones and vegetable for thousands of years. Many do not like kibble based diets and prefer a BARF diet believing it to be healthier – I personally use a mixture kibble with cooked meats, whole fresh vegetables and whole fresh fruit such as apples but thought I would give some background about what a BARF diet is.
Many believe that a BARF diet will reduce vet bills due to a healthier diet of ground bones, raw meat, ground raw vegetable and ground raw fruit. I have read on the internet that BARF diets resolve skin problems, arthritis, allergies etc, use your own judgement and do your own research as we use kibble, fresh vegetables and fruit because Bailey is allergic to chicken, tomatoes and strawberries, items that a BARF diet recommend, so as said do your own research and keep an open mind as dog food companies spend millions every year on research ensuring their foods have everything in them that a BARF diet can supply in an easier form.
BARF diets are also meant to control weight however any diet can control weight if fed in the correct quantities and is balanced without too many treats and not a lot of fatty foods mixed with plenty of exercise.
Yes many Dalmatians have allergies, some of these are to food items, as we know from keeping food diaries for a couple of months (testing costs many hundreds of pounds and can give false positive and false negative results, food diaries cost about £2 for a plain book to list food items, when a reaction occurred and a pen write with), however there is nothing to say a raw food diet will cure these allergies, there is no cure for allergies but there are ways of avoiding the causes. A raw diet will not guarantee a cure for all. A kibble diet will not guarantee a healthy dog. A balanced diet for your dog that they like will resolve most problems. As with humans what suits your dog may not suit someone else’s, do the research and keep a diary of what works for you.
BARF Pros.
BARF diets contain no processed or cooked pulses, pasta’s, rice, meats or vegetables. It is meant to reduce tartar build up on teeth, stomach problems and blocked anal glands due to the meat bones and raw fruit and vegetables (feeding as nature intended).
All dogs and cats can be weaned on to a BARF diet for life.
You can buy raw meat cheap and chicken carcasses from your butcher or recommended source (check your source as you do not want contaminated meat), and boxes of cheap vegetables from farm shops and the market.
There are no cooked cereals or grains to affect your dog’s immune systems.
There are no cooked meats, which many believe means the meat is more digestible.
There is no reading lists of ingredients to ensure your Dal is getting a balanced diet as they are only getting the raw roods you give them.
All items are natural as nature intended (if you ignore the sprays put on the crops and the antibiotics etc feed to the animals for mass production)
BARF Cons
Naturally you will need separate chopping boards for your Dalmatians food as you do not want to risk contracting either salmonella or E. Coli from cross contamination of their raw foods with your cooked foods (remember the bleach advert with the ice lolly being left in chicken juices, yuk! And then being licked by a child, double yuk!).
You need to spend time processing all that fruit and veg – why can’t you feed it to your Dal whole and let them chew it up, cleaning their teeth at the same time? BARF diets recommend grounding up fruit and veg first? (Dr Billinghurst says that raw vegetables are indigestible and that grinding mimics the churning action of the stomach and intestines of the dog's prey).
Advocates of a BARF diet claim that raw bones do not splinter like cooked bones which is why dogs can have raw chicken bones, sorry but I have seen more than one Dal shatter a bone they are chewing.
You need a freezer just for your BARF meats and frozen vegetables as you cannot mix your pups raw foods with your cooked foods, plus you do not one of the kids to accidently give the dog your expensive steak you bought for that special dinner.
With kibble you know the protein and fat content, you do not know this with raw meat, and if you are feeding raw chicken there is a load of fat in that chicken skin, and raw lamb is about 70% fat.
Dogs have been bred to human standards, they are no longer wild animals (well not if they are loved and trained correctly) as such a historically wild animal diet is not always digestible for modern dogs. Kibble is made with refined sugars and grains that dogs can process and digest with ease.
Lastly it is the thought of giving your darling Dal raw chicken, whole chicks, raw lamb, offal, whole rabbits, raw eggs etc, and would you want raw chicken, or half a dead bunny all over your kitchen floor when you have a toddler playing in the same room? At least Kibble can be swept up.
What do I feed my dogs? Easy hypoallergenic kibble, roasted bones, whole raw fruit and vegetables, cooked mince and beef, tuna and salmon, and the occasional dog treat. Favourite treats? Ice cubes, low in fat and keeps dogs occupied for minutes, cheap frozen low fat yoghurt lasts for nearly five minutes or carrot sticks.
In the late 70s and early 80s Dr Billinghurst was encountering health problems in his own dogs when he fed them on what he considered at the time to be the best commercial foods. When he changed to feeding raw foods Dr Billinghurst found that the illnesses in his dogs disappeared, from this he developed his BARF diet
(1) Most of the health problems which affect pet dogs are due to the fact that they are being fed on commercially prepared pet foods.
(2) The BARF or "Evolutionary" Diet is based on the principle that domestic dogs should be fed on a diet which replicates as closely as possible the diet of the wild dog. According to Dr Billinghurst domestic dogs have been fed on processed (cooked) foods for only approximately 70 years and this is not a long enough time to adapt to cooked foods.
To replicate the diet of the wild dog he recommends that pet dogs be fed on a diet based on raw meaty bones & raw vegetables. Dr Billinghurst insists that because of this evolutionary history the BARF DIET is the ONLY correct way to feed the modern domestic pet dog
(i) The wild dog is a hunter, scavenger and opportunist which has evolved to be capable of thriving on all types of raw food including meat, vegetables, fruit, rotting food, faeces, garbage. The only food type on which dogs will not do well long-term is cooked carbohydrate. Because the dog is not suited to carbohydrate this causes numerous health problems from acute inflammatory disease to chronic degenerative disease.
(ii) Commercially prepared pet foods are based on cooked cereal grains which are mainly carbohydrate and which the dog is not adapted to digest and utilise.
(iii) Cooking kills enzymes in the raw food and this makes cooked food less digestible
(iv) Cooking also destroys some of the nutrients especially vitamins and fats which are present in raw food. When cooked, fats become toxic