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Newbie to the raw diet

This is a dedicated place for all of your questions and answers about Raw Diets. There are also some really cool groups like "Raw Fed" on the topic you can join. This forum is for people who already know they like the raw diet or sincerely want to learn more. Please remember that you are receiving advice from peers and not professionals. If you have specific health-related questions about your dog's diet, please contact your vet!

  
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Barbaro

1286488		 
 
Barked: Tue Feb 19, '13 6:56am PST 
I just started my 2 year old Dalmatian on the raw diet. He has suffered from urinary crystals from birth which are every common of the breed. We have been on a number of prescription food that have done nothing to help. I have researched and decided to try the raw diet with an ok from my amazing vet. He doesn't normally recommend the diet just because he doesn't know enough about it. So I started the diet 5 days ago and he was doing great. He gets 1lbs. of chicken wings in the morning and a 1/2lbs. beef at night. He is about 60 65 pounds. Just this morning he started having diarrhea. I'm going to skip his dinner tonight to give his stomach a break. Any suggestions on changes I should make? And has anyone heard of the raw diet helping with crystals?
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Member Since
02/02/2013		 
 
Barked: Tue Feb 19, '13 7:50am PST 
PMR diet helps with struvite crystals because of its high moisture content. Did you start with both chicken and beef at the same time from day 1? It's usually recommended to stick with just one protein source for a week or two when first starting out on PMR to give the dog's body a simpler transition. Loose stools in the first week of transition to PMR is not too much of a problem but just something to watch.

My suggestion is to continue with the same food for a few more days. Chicken wings has a high bone content with little meat so you don't want to make 2/3 of the dog's food made up of chicken wings as his staple for the long term. But, for now while he's transitioning, it's fine and can aid in firming up his stool. If the loose stool continues, I would try removing the beef for now and feeding whole chicken - that is, just get a whole fryer chicken and feed the whole chicken to your dog 1.5 lbs at a time. Then when he's established, I will add the beef with the whole chicken. A whole chicken is about 30% bone, so if the whole chicken was 3 lbs all in all, I would mix it with 6 lbs of all meat to get 9 lbs worth of food spread out in the course of 6 days.

Then after he's been on that a while and his stools are consistently good, then I'd think about adding the organs then.
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Member Since
02/05/2013		 
 
Barked: Tue Feb 19, '13 9:25am PST 
I'd try a probiotic. When I first switched sandy over he had diarrhea but the probiotics helped.
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Cookie

the chi-weenie		 
 
Barked: Tue Feb 19, '13 4:31pm PST 
The first reply hit it on the nail!

that much chicken wings are too much bone for the long term diet, but use them to help from getting loose stool when you are transitioning.

the diet is 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% organ (with at least half being liver)

and probiotic can help, it just may take a while for the dogs system to transition.
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Barbaro

1286488		 
 
Barked: Tue Feb 19, '13 6:12pm PST 
Thank you so much for the advice. I actually had some ground chicken in the freezer that I bought only last week. I can add that in for now. Is that good? I definitely will be adding a probiotic, I think that is a great idea.
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Saya

I want to play!		 
 
Barked: Tue Feb 19, '13 7:51pm PST 
Good luck there is one other dalmatian raw feeder, but they don't post much probably busy with real life things.
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Member Since
02/02/2013		 
 
Barked: Tue Feb 19, '13 8:04pm PST 
Yep, ground chicken is just fine. I just bought whole chicken at the grocery (no gizzards, shucks!) for 99 cents a pound. This is quite cheap. The chicken was around 4 lbs, so I spent around $4. All I do for the whole chicken is get my kitchen shears and cut the legs off at the thigh, split the back from the breast, then split the breast down the middle - the breast would have a wing on it. I'd save the back for a bony meal (would be good for firming up stools in your case) and feed the thighs on one meal, one breast on the next meal, the other breast on the meal after that.

Super easy.
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Kolbe

Where can I run- today?		 
 
Barked: Tue Feb 19, '13 8:06pm PST 
You might want to do some research on dalmatians and raw diets, many dalmatians cannot have a strict PMR style because they can't have organ meats (exact medical reasons for this I can't remember). There is another dalmatian raw feeder who posts/used to post on this forum and they ended up doing a modified BARF diet instead. It might just be something to at least look into.
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Barbaro

1286488		 
 
Barked: Fri Feb 22, '13 5:32pm PST 
I tried researching as much as I could about the raw diet and Dalmatians as I could but I couldn't find much. I also am having a really hard time finding a local butcher in New Jersey. The diarrhea seems to be gone now so I'm hoping in a few days I can add a little beef again. Baby steps.
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Cookie

the chi-weenie		 
 
Barked: Sat Feb 23, '13 3:53pm PST 
gee I tried to find some into for you as well and ran into mixed info right away... something about purine levels, but one source said chicken was one of the highest purines and one said chicken was one of the lowest purine levels. dang! I don't know anything about Dalmatians, but I hope that you are able to make it work!

honestly, in my mind, I think that a Dalmatian would do great on prey model raw. The raw meat has a lot of water in it and I think the amount of water would counteract any high purine meats. As opposed to high purine meats used in kibble which can use meat 'meals' in which all the water has been removed and so it is so much more concentrated.

and organ meat is such a small part of the diet... but that's just my thoughts, I hope you find some really useful info soon
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