# Non-Dairy ways to add fat to RAW diet?



## HolyMoses (Oct 21, 2014)

I am about 2 months into my RAW feeding experience and I cannot get my dog to gain weight. I am currently feeding chicken for the primary protein source, so I am wondering if anyone knows of any ways to add some healthy fat. I would prefer it to be non-dairy, since I am still trying to pinpoint his allergy, so my next batch of food is going to be dairy free. He is already getting a very small amount of flax seed oil. 

For reference, he is a 46-48 pound dog, that I would like to be closer to 50. I am currently feeding over 2 pounds of food per day, and no weight gain has been seen.


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## Celt (Dec 27, 2010)

Red meats put weight on better than white. And for the most part, any unprocessed animal fat is healthy for dogs.


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

Has he started on pork yet? Thats a naturally fatty meat. Id be careful with the flaxseed, a lot of dogs are allergic to it. Try a small amount of salmon or sardine oil, coconut oil and raw eggs instead.


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## naturalfeddogs (Jan 6, 2011)

What else is he eating besides chicken? Red meats are the fattiest, and put on weight the easiest. If you haven't already, you can start giving some pork. Then once you move on to beef, heart is great for putting on weight. It's real fatty. Adding some salmon oil and/or coconut oil is necessary anyway, and will help.

Fat is different for dogs than for people. Yes, they can gain too much weight, but a good bit of fat is a must, since that's also what they use to get their energy.


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## bett (Mar 15, 2012)

he should be eating different proteins, for starters.

is he very active because he may need the amount upped as well, tho it sounds like enough.

are you thinking him "skinny" or is he just a lean dog?


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## HolyMoses (Oct 21, 2014)

Celt said:


> Red meats put weight on better than white. And for the most part, any unprocessed animal fat is healthy for dogs.


I have plans to introduce beef and pork in a few weeks, maybe a couple weeks of that will do the trick. Really surprised though that considering the amount of food he is eating, coupled with the last two weeks of low activity that no weight has been gained...



MollyWoppy said:


> Has he started on pork yet? Thats a naturally fatty meat. Id be careful with the flaxseed, a lot of dogs are allergic to it. Try a small amount of salmon or sardine oil, coconut oil and raw eggs instead.


As mentioned above, he hasn't seen pork yet. On top of his allergies, he has a super sensitive stomach, so I have been waiting to introduce a new protein. Thanks for the info on flax seed oil. I think I will substitute the flax seed oil for a fish based oil. Also, coconut oil was on my "not sure about" list. Raw eggs are an ingredient of his frozen veggie cube that he gets, but maybe I need to increase the amount.



naturalfeddogs said:


> What else is he eating besides chicken? Red meats are the fattiest, and put on weight the easiest. If you haven't already, you can start giving some pork. Then once you move on to beef, heart is great for putting on weight. It's real fatty. Adding some salmon oil and/or coconut oil is necessary anyway, and will help.
> 
> Fat is different for dogs than for people. Yes, they can gain too much weight, but a good bit of fat is a must, since that's also what they use to get their energy.


Chicken is his primary food right now. He gets a ground up mix of chicken (breast, bone in quarters, livers,and gizzards), and then a frozen cube that is a mixture of vegetables and supplements. Was hoping that there would be something I could maybe add to the vegetable cube that could help. I read cottage cheese is good, but as mentioned, I want to keep that out of the next batch to remove dairy from the possible allergy.


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## HolyMoses (Oct 21, 2014)

bett said:


> he should be eating different proteins, for starters.
> 
> is he very active because he may need the amount upped as well, tho it sounds like enough.
> 
> are you thinking him "skinny" or is he just a lean dog?


I realize he needs different proteins, and will be introducing beef or pork in a couple weeks. The problem I am having is....how do I fulfill his bone requirement when doing pork or beef? My grinder should be capable of grinding pork rib bones, but I don't think there is any beef bones that I can do. Have been trying to find a straight up beef bone meal, but haven't had much luck. 

He is a super lean German Shorthaired Pointer. Putting weight on him has always been a problem, even when on kibble. I was feeding his 4-6 cups of food a day and nothing would stick. He isn't overly skinny, but his ribs, spinal vertebre and rear hip bones are protruding a little more than I would like. It is hunting season, so he is seeing a lot of activity, but the weather has had us out of the field for over 2 weeks, so I think he should have put on a little girth by now?


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## HolyMoses (Oct 21, 2014)

Regarding the red meat. I have fed ground beef in the past, but only when he was in need of a burger/rice combo to cure upset stomach....

What percentage of fat should I be looking to use. 80/20? Or should I go leaner?


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## HolyMoses (Oct 21, 2014)

UPDATE:

Just left the meat market and placed an order for some pork. Please let me know of what you think of what I got and if you think it will be a good recipe. I ordered:

20lbs of pork ribs (not sure what kind you would call them, but the standard type with the long curved bone)
30 pounds of pork trimmings (according to them, this has a fat content of around 30%)
8 pounds of pork liver

This should be a pretty fatty, hopefully not too fatty, combo. If my figuring is right, if the ribs are 30% bone, it works out to approximately 76% meat/fat, 10% bone, and 14% organ meat.

Thoughts? Think it would be a good idea to toss a butt roast or two in the mix to increase the actual meat percentage?


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

You are over thinking it. The percentages arent exact. Couple of questions. Is there a reason why you are grinding the bones? And why are you feeding vegetables and supplements, are you worried about the diet not being balanced? How are his poops? Thats what you watch, the poop, too hard, feed more meat, too soft, up the bone content a bit. If you feed one bone heavy meal, then cut back on the bone for the next meal. Its balance over time, not the exact percentages of meat/bone/organ for each meal.
To be honest, if he is handling liver ok, then hes fine to start adding in some pork. Give him slightly less than normal portion of boney chicken and add a bit of pork. If his poops are ok, increase the pork content for each meal. Those ribs you got are excellent to feed in a slab of 3 or so, depending on the size of course. Good work out for the jaw, teeth and brain.
If hes a bit underweight, id just feed a touch more food, thats all. FWIW, I dont give my dogs any beef bones, they eat every other type of bone though.


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## HolyMoses (Oct 21, 2014)

MollyWoppy said:


> You are over thinking it. The percentages arent exact. Couple of questions. Is there a reason why you are grinding the bones? And why are you feeding vegetables and supplements, are you worried about the diet not being balanced? How are his poops? Thats what you watch, the poop, too hard, feed more meat, too soft, up the bone content a bit. If you feed one bone heavy meal, then cut back on the bone for the next meal. Its balance over time, not the exact percentages of meat/bone/organ for each meal.
> To be honest, if he is handling liver ok, then hes fine to start adding in some pork. Give him slightly less than normal portion of boney chicken and add a bit of pork. If his poops are ok, increase the pork content for each meal. Those ribs you got are excellent to feed in a slab of 3 or so, depending on the size of course. Good work out for the jaw, teeth and brain.
> If hes a bit underweight, id just feed a touch more food, thats all. FWIW, I dont give my dogs any beef bones, they eat every other type of bone though.


I know I overthink it, just my personality when it comes to pretty much anything. 

I grind the bones for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that he is a super hyper, super fast eater. I think he would do ok with eating a whole bone, but anytime he gets anything to chew on, he does a bunch of full speed laps around the house thrashing his head back and forth. The thought of him doing that with a raw chicken leg quarter isn't ideal. I considered feeding him in his kennel to keep him there, but the thought of cleaning it constantly wasn't appealing. Also, one of the reasons behind the grinding is convenience. We are a pretty "out and about" family, and he either joins us, or goes to Grandmas house. Going to a raw diet had to fit into that lifestyle, and grinding and packaging the food makes that possible. I simply take a cooler along with the food already in tupperwares, or leave it in the meat bags that I stuff. Works rather well. 

I feed the veggie cubes just for peace of mind that he is getting the vitamins and minerals that the straight up meat lacks. I also give him a frozen pumpkin cube every day as well, as he is just used to it from when I was on kibble. I have battled soft stool since bringing him home at 7 weeks old. The pumpkin helped, so I stuck with it even when ditching the kibble.

His poops, for the first time in his life, are perfect IMO. The first batch of food that I made was a little bone heavy, as I read it should be, and that worked, but eventually he got constipated, so the next batch I added the boneless chicken breast to the mix. Seems to be doing much better. 

He seems to doing ok on the liver content that he is having now. I think it works out to roughly 11% of the recipe. Plus, there is gizzard in the mix as well. Even though technically not an organ as you know, it is pretty rich meat, and he seems to handle it just fine. 

Cutting down on the chicken and adding pork will be tough because everything is ground up. My plan was to simply make up a batch of pork based food and slowly substitute it in, eventually ending up with just the pork food. Feed that for a couple weeks, and then ultimately end back up on the chicken. Cost wise, the pork might actually be cheaper because I think I will be able to get away with feeding less. Right now he eats just slightly over 2 pounds of food a day. My stuffed bags usually end up around 17-18 ounces, and he gets two of them a day. That doesn't include the 2 tablespoons of veggie mix and the one or two tablespoons of pumpkin he gets. That to me seems rather excessive. If I could cut that down to 1.5 pounds with the more fatty pork food, cost wise it would even out. 

I think I will toss him a section of the rack and see how he handles chewing it. I did read somewhere that mixing proteins wasn't ideal...sounds like that isn't the case in your opinion? 

Thanks!


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

Just feed him his chicken mixture and chuck a bit of pork on top. Thats what i would do. And, for your peace of mind regarding the PMR diet being balanced, my older dog has only had meat, bone, organ, eggs, coconut oil and fish oil for over 7 years now. Yearly bloodwork and urinalysys come gack perfect. No carbs, veges, fruit, vitamin supplements ever. My younger dog eats the exact same diet since he was adopted at 12 weeks, no problems with his bloodwork either. No dentals, ever. You can train your dog to eat on a towel, thats easy, and to be honest, they dont make as much of a mess as you'd think.


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## HolyMoses (Oct 21, 2014)

MollyWoppy said:


> Just feed him his chicken mixture and chuck a bit of pork on top. Thats what i would do. And, for your peace of mind regarding the PMR diet being balanced, my older dog has only had meat, bone, organ, eggs, coconut oil and fish oil for over 7 years now. Yearly bloodwork and urinalysys come gack perfect. No carbs, veges, fruit, vitamin supplements ever. My younger dog eats the exact same diet since he was adopted at 12 weeks, no problems with his bloodwork either. No dentals, ever. You can train your dog to eat on a towel, thats easy, and to be honest, they dont make as much of a mess as you'd think.


Great info, as mentioned, I always thought it was a no-no to mix proteins, so that is why I guess I didn't consider that an option. 

That info regarding the PMR diet and your experience certainly offers some "peace of mind". I will probably stick with the veggie cubes simply because he considers them treats, but I will not worry so much in the future what they contain.


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## bett (Mar 15, 2012)

HolyMoses said:


> I realize he needs different proteins, and will be introducing beef or pork in a couple weeks. The problem I am having is....how do I fulfill his bone requirement when doing pork or beef? My grinder should be capable of grinding pork rib bones, but I don't think there is any beef bones that I can do. Have been trying to find a straight up beef bone meal, but haven't had much luck.
> 
> He is a super lean German Shorthaired Pointer. Putting weight on him has always been a problem, even when on kibble. I was feeding his 4-6 cups of food a day and nothing would stick. He isn't overly skinny, but his ribs, spinal vertebre and rear hip bones are protruding a little more than I would like. It is hunting season, so he is seeing a lot of activity, but the weather has had us out of the field for over 2 weeks, so I think he should have put on a little girth by now?


of my three, the frenchie is fed raw from pawhealer.com. they grind it all up with tripe and organs and bone. most home grinders can not handle bones other than foul. my husband is a butcher and his shop won't grind bones either.
I'm gonna get the link for ground eggshell , which when they don't get bone is the requirement for calcium. give me a second to get back.


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## bett (Mar 15, 2012)

EggShellent Calcium ? Calcium Supplement For Dogs and Cats


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## HolyMoses (Oct 21, 2014)

bett said:


> of my three, the frenchie is fed raw from pawhealer.com. they grind it all up with tripe and organs and bone. most home grinders can not handle bones other than foul. my husband is a butcher and his shop won't grind bones either.
> I'm gonna get the link for ground eggshell , which when they don't get bone is the requirement for calcium. give me a second to get back.





bett said:


> EggShellent Calcium ? Calcium Supplement For Dogs and Cats


Yeah, I had trouble finding a butcher that would put bones through their grinder. I only found one, but they would charge me $1 per pound to do it! I ended up buying a Weston #22 grinder. From reading reviews, it sounds like pork rib bones are as big as it can do. Will find out. 

That eggshell link is great! As soon as I burn through my current supply of supplements and whatnot, I will simply order some of that. Will make things a lot easier, and I like that it tells you how much to add.


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

Oh yeah, once he's fully transitioned over, you can mix and match proteins as you like. For example, tonight my dogs are getting pig tails, goat heart, a bit of ground turkey and beef liver. You'll find fun ways to feed them too, like cornish hens or gullets stuffed with tripe or ground beef. You can also feed frozen and that slows them down a bit, takes them longer to eat.


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## JayJayisme (Aug 2, 2009)

HolyMoses said:


> I have plans to introduce beef and pork in a few weeks, maybe a couple weeks of that will do the trick. Really surprised though that considering the amount of food he is eating, coupled with the last two weeks of low activity that no weight has been gained...


Google 'rabbit starvation'.


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## bett (Mar 15, 2012)

i meant haretoday for the raw food. the other is for the chinese herbs.

i had a "duh" moment.


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## bett (Mar 15, 2012)

most butchers will not grind those bones. my husband works as a butcher in a prime shop, and no grinding of bones .period. which is why i go to haretoday. you can get a fine blend, which i do for eli, the frenchie gulper, or a course blend. 

the grinders that would be able to grind more than the chicken bones are fortunes of money. like hundreds and hundreds of dollars. don't believe that any $200 grinder will work.


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## naturalfeddogs (Jan 6, 2011)

HolyMoses said:


> I know I overthink it, just my personality when it comes to pretty much anything.
> 
> I grind the bones for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that he is a super hyper, super fast eater. I think he would do ok with eating a whole bone, but anytime he gets anything to chew on, he does a bunch of full speed laps around the house thrashing his head back and forth. The thought of him doing that with a raw chicken leg quarter isn't ideal. I considered feeding him in his kennel to keep him there, but the thought of cleaning it constantly wasn't appealing. Also, one of the reasons behind the grinding is convenience. We are a pretty "out and about" family, and he either joins us, or goes to Grandmas house. Going to a raw diet had to fit into that lifestyle, and grinding and packaging the food makes that possible. I simply take a cooler along with the food already in tupperwares, or leave it in the meat bags that I stuff. Works rather well.
> 
> ...


Grinding is really much less convienent and quite time consuming compared to just tossing them a whole cut of something. You can go to turkey next, and feed necks, wings or legs. Then go on to pork, and you can give ribs. You can give a large enough section, with several ribs combined, which will slow him down. You will also have a hard time finding a grinder that will be able to grind the larger denser bones anyway, so I wouldn't even worry about it anymore.

Once a dog is transitioned through all the proteins, you can mix them and feed more than one at a time in a meal. I do it all the time.


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## sozzle (May 18, 2011)

When I first started my dog on raw I didn't know about transitioning onto various other proteins so I just dived in giving him various things, although I did start off after the kibble we were recommended in giving him K9 Naturals a very good quality pre-mix of raw food. Couldn't afford to keep feeding that to a large greyhound and even though it is made here in New Zealand, very expensive. Then it was just this and that and he was absolutely fine. Nowadays both dogs get varied things and a typical meal would be green tripe, small piece of liver, raw minced chicken (because it comes like that), chunk of beef, raw egg (whole chicken pieces are not that cheap here and I have a limit to what I will spend per kilo). Then an evening meal would be say a chicken frame and a piece of dogroll (I am not totally raw these days due to finances, but don't use kibble) which is lightly cooked. 

Once a week they get a large tin of mackerel shared between them with other proteins added and coconut oil maybe once a week. They also get brisket bones, the odd half a pig's head each, and anything else I can get hold of really. Sometimes they get horsemeat which one of my petfood suppliers always has. I'm a bit more relaxed on the 'grain and veges' thing and if they get a bit here and there I don't worry as they don't have sensitive stomachs and don't have skin issues and will eat our leftovers. One of my dogs likes fruit and yesterday ate a strawberry whereas the other one won't. At the end of the day I think dogs are primarily carnivores but can eat a varied diet, and it all depends on what they do well on and what you can afford and what you are prepared to do to manage that. 

One of my friends has cavoodles and she mixes a good quality (well for NZ) kibble with minced raw food. She can't handle touching chunks of raw meat or bones so would never do that and I think for her that is the best thing. Whereas I am prepared and willing to go hunt out meat and bone deals and will travel occasionally a fair distance to get stuff for my dogs but not if the petrol costs are more than I would be saving in buying the good deal if you see what I mean as that would defeat the purpose. 

I also don't have any problems cutting stuff up and bagging it to put in their freezer. Recently one of them found a freshly dead rabbit on one of our walks, so I took it home and gutted it, and skinned it with assistance from teen daughter (as she wanted the skin) and it is currently in the freezer awaiting a meal for them. I did overthink it initially as well worrying if I gave them enough bone or too much and sometimes I know I give them too much so the next meal won't have any bone in it. It does get easier in time and it's great to be able to just chuck them a chunk of something which I do outside as I don't really want mess in the house.

Another thing I do is to add variance to their diet it make up bone stock for them and add that to their meals and once one of my dogs got very sick and couldn't keep food down and wouldn't drink water so I fed him stock and he came right within a couple of days. I think that piece of advice came from Liz on here. (I'm pretty sure he got sick because it was the first time I fed lung and I didn't realise how rich it was and I gave him too much in one meal yikes!)


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