Protein in BARF

[NOOK/ANNA 96]

Alright guys was just having browse through net and came across this site that gave nutrional information of there barf food. http://www.naturalin...l-Instinct.html And was supprised to see how low the protein content was compared to commercial greyhound foods on market. An wondered do running dogs need a 25+ protein dog food as i've always been led to believe?

[skycat 6,174]

A lot of people are surprised at this. Don't forget that when dry food is measured for protein content, there is no water in that weight, which is why, when raw meat is measured for protein levels it will be a lot less due to the amount of water found in meat, even bone. If you dried the meat right out it would appear to have a very high protein content.

 

But I also think that because the food is fresh, the dog eating as nature intended, it actually doesn't need that mega high protein. Don't forget that a certain percentage of the protein found in dry food will be cereals. Dogs don't process cereals as well as they do meat products, so need more to achieve a similar level of nutrition. This is one reason why you find that they crap more when eating dry food: there is much more unprocessed waste coming out of the rear end. Beet pulp, soya etc are used as fillers in dry food, and aren't an enormous amount of use to the dog.

 

I could feed a dog with a bowl full of dried food and the quantity/volume (not necessarily the weight) would be far greater than the amount I need to feed a dog if it is on raw meat and bone etc.

[dodger 2,765]

A lot of people are surprised at this. Don't forget that when dry food is measured for protein content, there is no water in that weight, which is why, when raw meat is measured for protein levels it will be a lot less due to the amount of water found in meat, even bone. If you dried the meat right out it would appear to have a very high protein content.

 

But I also think that because the food is fresh, the dog eating as nature intended, it actually doesn't need that mega high protein. Don't forget that a certain percentage of the protein found in dry food will be cereals. Dogs don't process cereals as well as they do meat products, so need more to achieve a similar level of nutrition. This is one reason why you find that they crap more when eating dry food: there is much more unprocessed waste coming out of the rear end. Beet pulp, soya etc are used as fillers in dry food, and aren't an enormous amount of use to the dog.

 

I could feed a dog with a bowl full of dried food and the quantity/volume (not necessarily the weight) would be far greater than the amount I need to feed a dog if it is on raw meat and bone etc.

Just out of interest s c and i dont feed them this diet all the time just twice a week or so and i feed by eye but on average how much 'weight' of raw meat would you add to a cup of rice and half a cup of veg to a 25kg dog cheers

[gnipper 6,543]

A lot of people are surprised at this. Don't forget that when dry food is measured for protein content, there is no water in that weight, which is why, when raw meat is measured for protein levels it will be a lot less due to the amount of water found in meat, even bone. If you dried the meat right out it would appear to have a very high protein content.

 

But I also think that because the food is fresh, the dog eating as nature intended, it actually doesn't need that mega high protein. Don't forget that a certain percentage of the protein found in dry food will be cereals. Dogs don't process cereals as well as they do meat products, so need more to achieve a similar level of nutrition. This is one reason why you find that they crap more when eating dry food: there is much more unprocessed waste coming out of the rear end. Beet pulp, soya etc are used as fillers in dry food, and aren't an enormous amount of use to the dog.

 

I could feed a dog with a bowl full of dried food and the quantity/volume (not necessarily the weight) would be far greater than the amount I need to feed a dog if it is on raw meat and bone etc.

Just out of interest s c and i dont feed them this diet all the time just twice a week or so and i feed by eye but on average how much 'weight' of raw meat would you add to a cup of rice and half a cup of veg to a 25kg dog cheers

It depends, minced or on the bone, what type of meat etc. As a starting point they say the meal should be about the size of the dogs head, if it looks lean give more if it gets fat give less.

[dodger 2,765]

A lot of people are surprised at this. Don't forget that when dry food is measured for protein content, there is no water in that weight, which is why, when raw meat is measured for protein levels it will be a lot less due to the amount of water found in meat, even bone. If you dried the meat right out it would appear to have a very high protein content.

 

But I also think that because the food is fresh, the dog eating as nature intended, it actually doesn't need that mega high protein. Don't forget that a certain percentage of the protein found in dry food will be cereals. Dogs don't process cereals as well as they do meat products, so need more to achieve a similar level of nutrition. This is one reason why you find that they crap more when eating dry food: there is much more unprocessed waste coming out of the rear end. Beet pulp, soya etc are used as fillers in dry food, and aren't an enormous amount of use to the dog.

 

I could feed a dog with a bowl full of dried food and the quantity/volume (not necessarily the weight) would be far greater than the amount I need to feed a dog if it is on raw meat and bone etc.

Just out of interest s c and i dont feed them this diet all the time just twice a week or so and i feed by eye but on average how much 'weight' of raw meat would you add to a cup of rice and half a cup of veg to a 25kg dog cheers

It depends, minced or on the bone, what type of meat etc. As a starting point they say the meal should be about the size of the dogs head, if it looks lean give more if it gets fat give less.

[sandymere 8,263]

Dogs certainly don’t need high protein diets, a study on puppies showed that 17% was all that they needed for normal growth, I use around 22% along with meat, bones, veg, table scraps etc and the dogs do well, as long as the dogs gets all the essential amino acids that are required for growth/repair then it will do ok if they be from fresh meat or complete. What is central is feeding to lifestyle orientated energy needs ie a racing husky will require a different diet, more protein and fat, than say a sprinter like a racing greyhound, greater dependence on glucose from carbs..

 

Ps dogs process cereals very well, almost as well as ourselves, much of the increased waste is spent bacteria, the good bacteria, that has been part of the digestive process, via fibre, in producing the free fatty acids that play an important part in maintaining long term bowel health.

 

[skycat 6,174]

OK Sandy: whilst I agree with what your'e saying about cereals to a certain extent: answer me this one..............dogs fed on just dry food, cereal based dry food that is, how come they crap ten times more than a dog which is fed on a mainly raw diet with just a handful of pasta, rice, brown bread or what ever. I see dogs fed on cereal based dry food doing endless 'porridge': sloppy faeces which do look like orange porridge. IMO it ain't natural or normal for a dog to crap like that.

[sandymere 8,263]

I feed a complete and don't get excessive amounts. Likely problems, over feeding completes will lead to excessive sh8te or perhaps a food that doesn’t suit, or sudden changes of diet. A classic is someone feeding a barf type diet and running out so giving a complete out of the blue, not good lol. With an increase in non soluble fibres there is an increased bacterial activity and so an increased volume due to spent bacteria and of courses the undigested fibre that has aided the process. Basically if a dog craps ten times more then there is a problem beyond the particular type of feed. Mine pass about two thirds as much on a solely complete meal than if they’re had solely meat/bone one, both cases twice a day, and this is what i would expect and don't see it as a problem. There are some not so good completes on the market as there are some rubbish pet minces etc as usual comes down to common sense.

[Mac 30]

Baffles me how a complete/kibble can have a fraction of the goodness raw meat can. Im no scientist but im sure kibble is put under sevre cooking temperatures which alters what (natural, if any) protein there is . Common sense really.

[skycat 6,174]

Baffles me how a complete/kibble can have a fraction of the goodness raw meat can. Im no scientist but im sure kibble is put under sevre cooking temperatures which alters what (natural, if any) protein there is . Common sense really.

 

It is obvious isn't it: a dog needs to eat far less in volume if it is eating meat/bone etc than if it is eating complete food: although when feeding the top end of the market, meat based foods such as Purina and Iams (there are others) they don't need as much. Anything under £30 per 15 kilo bag is going to be cereal based: wheat, beet pulp, soya: and as Sandymere said, there is increased bacterial activity when digesting this sort of stuff. IMO, all that increased effort to digest cereals is not what dogs evolved to do. Actually, that's not just my opinion at all, is it! More and more people are feeding naturally.

 

A very nice lad brought his dog down to see me the other day for a bit of one to one training etc. The dog never stopped crapping porridgy shits, and that was being fed on a cereal based complete food. See it all the time: you can tell by what a dog craps what it is being fed on.

[Mac 30]

Dont get me wrong i have fed kibble feeds in the past (the best money could buy), that was when i was uneducated and inexperienced in the fact real meat based wins everytime, logically or other. What goes in must come out, i never did like kibble based stools no matter how little i fed, loose and rank.

[sandymere 8,263]

I love the idea that natural is good, bit like distemper is natural therefore we shouldn’t inoculated lol. On a more serious note the bacteria I alluded to is what one may term natural. It is part of the normal gut flora and digestion would be difficult without it, I hate the term but think on the lines of the good bacteria that people take live yogurts for. So the increased bacterial activity is very ‘natural’. The bacteria are there naturally and a dog wouldn’t ‘naturally have the bacteria as part of its natural gut flora if it was not designed by nature to utilise it. There’s no increased effort, the bacteria do the work and the dog gets the benefit in a perfectly natural way that’s it has evolved to utilise naturally.

(perhaps a little heavy on natural lol.)

 

Ps If you had a dog producing large amount of porridge type stools then that is not good but hardly leads to the conclusion that cereals are part of the diet is bad, I’ve come across dogs that have a very bad reaction to high meat diets but wouldn’t use them to suggest that that means meat is bad rather an individual dietary problem..

 

[rob190364 2,594]

I love the idea that natural is good, bit like distemper is natural therefore we shouldn’t inoculated lol. On a more serious note the bacteria I alluded to is what one may term natural. It is part of the normal gut flora and digestion would be difficult without it, I hate the term but think on the lines of the good bacteria that people take live yogurts for. So the increased bacterial activity is very ‘natural’. The bacteria are there naturally and a dog wouldn’t ‘naturally have the bacteria as part of its natural gut flora if it was not designed by nature to utilise it. There’s no increased effort, the bacteria do the work and the dog gets the benefit in a perfectly natural way that’s it has evolved to utilise naturally.

(perhaps a little heavy on natural lol.)

 

Ps If you had a dog producing large amount of porridge type stools then that is not good but hardly leads to the conclusion that cereals are part of the diet is bad, I’ve come across dogs that have a very bad reaction to high meat diets but wouldn’t use them to suggest that that means meat is bad rather an individual dietary problem..

Bit surprised at you coming out with that sentence to be honest Sandymere! are you saying natural (diet) isn't good then???

Edited August 3, 2011 by rob190364

[rob190364 2,594]

Just on the subject or barf v's dried....when I first got my mastiff 3 years ago he was on just dried, I tried him on all different types and the result was the same, if I took him for a walk he would literally have four big sloppy dumps within 15 minutes of leaving the house. I put it down to the size of the dog and the amount he was eating. It wasn't til I got my lurcher pup and had her on raw that I also switched him to raw and the problem disappeared over night. Completely dry healthy looking stools. Admittidely it could be just that individual dog and that type of food disagreeing with him but I personally think it's just all the unnecessary additional ingredients that are in dried food just to bulk it out so people think they're getting value.

 

When you look how much BARF they eat in one sitting it really isn't that much in weight, if you took out all the moisture it would be such a fiddling little amount people would think it's very expensive if the equivalent food was dried out and sold commercially (if that makes sense?). They have to eat much more dried food to actually get the quantity of the ingredients that they need.....which means they're eat loads of the ingredients they don't need.....hence the shite (excuse my French!).

[Born Hunter 17,812]

I love the idea that natural is good, bit like distemper is natural therefore we shouldn’t inoculated lol.

 

You use this as an example alot sandy and heres my opinion.

 

Disease and sickness is good for a population, it strengthens it by carying out a natural cull of the weak and inferior. Using inoculations, medicine etc prevents nature from doing this and so generations down the line the population is full of weak individuals only alive because of their dependance on modern medicine. If we wanted dogs to be as tough and healthy as naturally possible then we wouldnt inoculate, we would let nature take its course of culling out the weak. The same applies to humans! But being emotional creatures we choose to live for the moment and use our advancements in medicine and physiology to prevent natures evils, even if those evils are for the greater good of the species.

 

So there, inoculations arnt natural and arnt for the best in the long term. They are good for the individual but bad for the species. They make us dependant on scientific advancements, which is fine as long as those advancements keep coming!

 

However this is completely off topic.

Edited August 4, 2011 by Born Hunter