Organ meats
Organs are an important part of a raw diet. Liver and kidney in particular are nutrient-dense and provide a great deal of nutritional value. These foods should make up about 5 percent of the total diet. Note that they may cause loose stools if too much is fed at one time. It’s better to feed smaller amounts daily or every other day than to feed larger amounts once or twice a week. This also spreads out the nutritional value, allowing your dog to receive more benefit.
Heart is nutritionally more like muscle meat than organ meat, but it is rich in taurine and other nutrients. If possible, make heart another 5 to 10 percent of the diet. More can be fed; just remember that too much can lead to loose stools in some dogs.
Other organs, such as spleen, eyeballs, sweetbreads (pancreas and thymus glands), brain, etc. are nutritious and can be added to the diet in small amounts.
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Muscle meat, eggs, and more
The rest of the diet will be made up of muscle meat and eggs, along with dairy products and other healthy foods.
Muscle meat consists of all meat that is not considered organ meat. Feed muscle meat from a variety of sources, such as beef, lamb, pork, chicken, and turkey. Muscle meat can be fed ground or in chunks. If you have difficulty feeding much variety in your raw meaty bones, you can make up for it in this category. For example, if your raw meaty bones are mostly poultry, then you can feed beef, lamb, and pork muscle meat. Never feed more than half the total diet from a single protein source, such as chicken.
Eggs are an excellent source of nutrition. They can be fed raw or cooked; cooking actually makes the whites more digestible. You can feed as many eggs as you want, as long as you still feed lots of variety.
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Dairy products, such as yogurt, kefir, and cottage cheese, are well tolerated by most dogs and offer good nutritional value. Yogurt with added probiotics and kefir, another cultured milk product, have the added advantage of providing beneficial bacteria (probiotics). Dairy fat is a source of medium-chain triglycerides, a form of fat that is easier to digest for dogs with pancreatic disorders and other forms of fat intolerance.
Green tripe, which is the stomach lining from cows and other animals, is an excellent food for dogs, but be warned that it smells awful – at least to us; dogs love it. Nutritionally, it is similar to muscle meat. Green tripe can be purchased only from sources that sell food for dogs; it cannot be sold for human consumption. The tripe that you find in your grocery store has been bleached and treated, and does not provide the same nutritional value as green tripe.
It is also fine to feed healthy leftovers (food you would eat yourself, not the scraps you would throw away) to your dog as long as they are not too great a percentage of the diet – 10 to 20 percent of the diet should be okay
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Vegetables, fruits, and grains
Feeding vegetables, fruits, and grains is optional, as dogs do not require carbohydrates in their diet. Even though these foods would make up a tiny percentage of the natural diet, they provide some nutritional value, especially trace minerals and phytonutrients from leafy green vegetables.
If you feed veggies, they need to be either cooked or pureed in a food processor, juicer, or blender. Whole, raw veggies are not harmful, but their cell walls are not broken down during digestion so they provide little nutritional value to dogs. Most veggies have few calories, so they should be added on top of the amount of food you feed, rather than calculating them as a percentage of the diet.
Good veggies to feed include broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbage, all kinds of leafy greens, celery, cucumber, bell peppers, zucchini and other summer squashes, carrots, and more. You can mix up a large batch and then freeze them in ice cube trays or muffin tins for easy meal-sized portions.
Steaming is the best method to cook fresh or frozen veggies. You can add the water used to steam veggies to the meal, as it will contain the minerals that were leached out during cooking. Small amounts of leftover meat juices, drippings, sauces, and gravy will make this into a savory soup.
Some dogs enjoy vegetables, but others refuse to eat them no matter how they’re prepared. If your dog won’t eat vegetables, or if you prefer not to feed them, you may want to add a blend of kelp and alfalfa, or a green food supplement (more on this below).
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Fruits such as apples, bananas, papayas, mangoes, berries, and melon can be added to the diet in small amounts. Don’t feed grapes or raisins, which can cause kidney damage in some dogs.
Grains, legumes, and starchy veggies, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes and winter squashes, are a source of inexpensive calories, but don’t provide as much nutritional value to dogs as foods from animal sources do. These starchy foods need to be cooked in order to be properly digested by dogs.
Many health problems can be caused or exacerbated by grains and other starchy carbohydrates. If your dog is overweight or suffers from allergies, arthritis, seizures, chronic ear infections, incontinence, IBD, or other digestive disorders, you may want to try feeding a diet without these foods to see if your dog improves. If you decide to feed them, it’s best if they make up no more than 20 percent of the diet.
Potatoes (not sweet potatoes), tomatoes, peppers (all kinds), and eggplant may aggravate arthritis pain, but are otherwise fine to feed. Grains and starchy veggies may also aggravate arthritis and other forms of inflammation.
Fresh food supplements
Healthy dogs that are fed a wide variety of appropriate foods may have no need of supplements, but there are several fresh food supplements that may provide additional benefits when added in small amounts:- Fish body oil, such as salmon oil, provides beneficial omega-3 fatty acids that help to reduce inflammation and regulate the immune system. Sardines can also be fed to provide these omega-3 fatty acids. However, you must add vitamin E to the dog’s diet whenever you supplement with oils, to prevent the body from being depleted of this vitamin over time.
- Sea blend, green blend, or kelp/alfalfa mixture supplies trace minerals. These are especially good to add if you don’t feed green veggies.
- Organic (unpasteurized) apple cider vinegar provides some trace minerals and may possibly offer other benefits.
- Raw honey has antibacterial properties and offers a variety of nutritional benefits (see "Bee Products have a Special Meaning for Dogs," September 2007).
- Fresh crushed garlic has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, as well as other benefits, and may help to repel fleas. Give no more than one-half of a small clove (one small portion of the bulb) per 20 pounds of body weight daily, as high doses can cause anemia. See Garlic for Dogs - How Much and How Often? for more details.
- Ginger is good for digestion and may help with inflammation.
- Nutritional yeast is an excellent source of B vitamins, along with trace minerals.
- Dark molasses can also be used in small amounts as a source of trace minerals.
Even diets that contains a wide variety of foods in appropriate proportions may be short on certain nutrients, most commonly vitamins D and E, and the minerals zinc, magnesium, potassium, selenium, and possibly iodine. More information on supplements is provided in the article on cooked diets.
Source : http://www.healthypetjournal.
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