Our goal at Healthy Pets Northwest has always been to help you find the best nutritional options for your pet that work with your finances and lifestyle and your pet’s food preferences.
Our girl Meadow, for example, was never a fan of raw food, though we sure encouraged her. With a little effort and modified expectations, we found a combination of freeze-dried raw and canned food that she was happy to eat.
Adding just a little raw food
Interest in feeding raw food diets to dogs is growing, and we are delighted by that interest. On the other hand, a lot of people express concern about things like the cost and convenience of feeding an exclusively a raw food diet.
Again, our belief here at Healthy Pets Northwest has always been that even a little raw food can go a long way toward better health. But how much raw blended into the diet is enough to impact your dog’s health?
Research(1) from DogRisk in Helsinki gives a little indication of where the starting point for feeding a blended diet might land. According to their published poster:
“It seems that bone and raw food (BARF) at a young age has a positive influence on atopy/allergy incidence in dogs. Already when 20% (1/5) of the diet is BARF there starts to be more healthy dogs per group.”
BARF stands for bilogically appropriate raw food. The term was coined by veterinarian and nutritionist Dr. Ian Billinghurst of Australia. In essence, it means feeding a balance of raw muscle meat and bones, organ meat and a small amount of fruits and vegetables.
Realizing benefits from raw food
The DogRisk research showed that at the beginning of the study around 55% of the dogs suffered from atopic dermatitis. Increasing the amount of BARF in the diet to just 20% reduced the incidence of atopic dermatitis to less than 10% of the dogs. Increasing BARF in the diet to 30% or greater, reduced the incidence of atopic dermatitis to less than 5%.
Click here to earn more about the DogRisk project.
So, does that mean that feeding just 20% BARF is a magic health prescription for your dog? That is problably an over generalization. To us, their research simply indicates that 20% BARF in the diet does start to confer some health benefits, especially for dogs with atopic dermatitis.
How to get started with raw food
Today, adding 20% BARF to your dog’s diet is realatively easy. We carry a wide range of frozen raw options that come in easy-to-thaw patties and cubes that meet the BARF requirements with raw muscle meat, ground bone, organ meat and fruits and vegetables. (See our online stores: Multnomah Village or Woodstock.)
If that is not convenient enough, freeze-dried raw is the next best solution. Freeze-dried raw foods can be fed dry, but we encourage rehydrating them to help your dog get sufficient water.
To make calculations simple, we sugget bumping the amount of BARF up a bit to 25%. Then for a dog getting 2 cups of dry food per day, replace a ½ cup of dry with a ½ cup of raw food. Likewise, for a dog getting 4 cups, replace 1 cup of dry with 1 cup of raw.
Of course, you will want to monitor your dog over time for unwanted weight gain or weight loss. For weight gain, simply cut back a little on the kibble, and for weight loss increase the amount of raw.
For our dog Meadow, we fed her a diet with about 50% freeze-dried raw, finished off with canned. Her diet worked well for her and us, and it met the suggest amount of raw food for health benefits.
1. Anne Paasikangas BVMS, University of Helsinki; Shea Beasley PhD (Microbiology), Oy Vetcare Ltd.; Maritsa Palmunen DVM, University of Helsinki; Johanna Roine M Sci (Animal Breeding), University of Helsinki; Anna Hielm-Björkman DVM PhD, University of Helsinki