I’m new here and looking for some more information / guidance.
I’ve recently become a fur mummy to a beautiful GSD and I am interested in knowing how to even start with raw feeding as this isn’t something I’ve done before with previous family dogs. Family dogs were always fed on dry food.
I’ve been doing reading and I understand its down to 80/10/10, but I want to go down the route of 50/50 with dry and raw as I can’t commit to 100% raw ( at least for now, who knows later down the line ). I’ve read you would need to reduce dry food by 20% and then out of the 20% incorporate fresh food/raw. I would love to see some meal example based on this. I think I’m getting too bogged down with all the different toppers and supplements and different raw food, but no real examples of a meal. I’m also getting bogged by the calories as I’ve calculated but depending on the website, it spits out different calories so now I’m unsure what is correct. I’ve been getting a range 1700-2400 kcal. On top of that, he also gets treats as we are training him, so need to ensure that becomes part of his diet or counted. He gets dried sprats and chicken as really high value and low value just regular semi moist training treats. I’ve even resorted to making treats out of wholemeal flour eggs and tuna when I’ve ran out of training treats or use wet food in a squeezy bottle.
He is currently on Tails ( I took advantage of the £1 refer a friend ), but will be looking at other brands so recommendation is welcome. He isn’t fussy so I’m not concerned about switching parts of his diet.
All in all, I guess I learn more once I start implementing, but its taking that leap and ensuring I’m following the guidance to a T and maintaining his Kcal and nutrients and all that. I think this is something where I would need to jot down his daily meals and record it.
I’m actually working on a tool to help calculate feeding amounts when mixing two or more different foods plus treats but in the meantime I hope the following tips will help:
It’s best to start by using the manufacturers’ feeding guides (for complete foods you’ll find them on the packaging). If you want to do a 50/50 mix, then simply start with half of the recommended amount for your age and size of dog for the first food combined with half of the recommended amount of food for the second. That should provide roughly the correct amount of nutrition for your dog.
As you mentioned, treats also need to be weighed in. Dry treats, for example, can be substituted with the dry complete food on a roughly gram-for-gram basis (i.e. 1 gram of dry treats means 1 gram less of dry food at meal times) or you can substitute them with the raw complete food on a roughly 3-to-1 basis (i.e. 1 gram of dry treats means 3 less grams of raw complete food at meal times).
Of course, this is all very approximate and since every dog is different you will very likely need to do some fine-tuning to find the right balance for your boy. You can find a brief guide to getting feeding amounts right here.
Whatever changes you make to your dog’s diet, be sure to do them gradually - check out our guide to changing foods here.
What you are saying makes perfect sense. I am getting bogged down with all the details from different website/channels that I’m reading.
The one thing that I do want to ask is why do some people go by calories and others by grams. Would this make much difference?
I will also add that I will be switching his dry food from Tails to another brand. I have been thinking of going back to Waggs as family dogs have been fed on this, and with mixing raw/fresh food he would be getting all he need (I hope!) Would you say that Waggs is a decent brand and one to mix? I am looking at the comparing dog brands on this website and while the more premium brands looks decent, I can’t quite justify it unless I understand more about it.
