 Barked: Fri Jun 22, '12 1:04pm PST |
 | |  | | I do make sure Max gets his 10% organs every other day or so. He loves them best but they will cause soft poop. He gets them along with bony meat to be sure he doesn't have nasty poop. I fill in the rest of his meal with boneless red meat if it is smaller than he needs. The alternating days are boneless red meat. If the bony meat/organ/boneless meat meal wasn't bony enough I will give him a bit of bone on a normally boneless day, I keep chicken feet and heads for that. Small fatty fish work as well. Just this week a boneless meal still resulted in firm poop so he got 2 boneless meat meals in a row. Maybe he is getting shorted on organs but I am not going to worry about it. He loves organs so much I tend to overdo them anyway.
Max gets a mineral supplement, vitamin E, zinc and fish oil as supplements, partly because he is a senior getting less than 2% his body weight daily. If he ate vegetables he would be getting a mineral supplement, vitamin E, zinc and fish oil for supplements. Veggies bring nothing to the diet for him. Some dogs do need them as they do poorly with bone or need more stool firming than bone can provide. I haven't any problem letting him have some as a treat but do not regard them as essential parts of the diet. If you decide they are a must keep them to less than 20% of the diet and feed low calorie types.
Plan to feed through whole chickens for about a week. If poop is soft take off the skin or feed less. Don't proceed until you can feed all the skin however.
IF poop is good then start with another protein the following week by feeding a bit less chicken meat or skin and putting in just a bite of the new meat. Each day add another bite of the new meat and take away a bite of the chicken. If all goes well by the end of the week you will be feeding half bony chicken and half boneless new meat.
The next week feed bony chicken with just a bite of another meat. Each day substitute another bite of chicken with another bite of the next meat. By the end of the week you will be feeding half bony chicken and half the second meat.
Next, go for an organ. Chicken liver is probably better than pork or beef liver and easier to find than kidney. Figure what a daily portion of liver is for your dog. Max gets 1 ounce of organ a day so a daily portion of liver is .5 ounce. Cut your liver into daily bits, put on a cookie sheet and freeze. Pop them all off and bag save one. Take that one bit of liver and sliver it into about 10 slivers. Roll those slivers in a sheet of plastic wrap. Now feed ONE the first day. Then 2 the next and so on.
Repeat the organ intros for each organ and do try to feed at least 2 livers and 2 other organs.
After the dog has tried maybe 4-6 different meats and 4-6 different organs plus you are more relaxed about the whole thing you can just chuck new stuff and it will be fine. I didn't bother to feed an ounce of ostrich or llama to Max, he had tried half a dozen different meats and organs by that time.
No the diet isn't going to be complete until all the organs and meats are in it but it is fine to be short for a while.
A diet that is half bony chicken, half boneless red meat with a couple different organs is fine. Max doesn't much care to eat pork or lamb bones these days. In time you can feed less chicken and more red meat too. Max's chicken bone is very bony but in small amounts. He gets chicken ribs rather than whole breasts, backs rather than thighs so I can feed him more red meat. |  |  | |  |
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