As I’m fairly new to raw feeding and I will be mixing it in with dry food, I’m needing to track what I’m feeding my dog and make sure its balanced. I will be looking at reducing dry food up to 20% and incorporate raw/fresh.
While I know it won’t be a 100% accurate, but where can I find data breakdown for kcal, Moisture, Protein, Fat, Carbs, Ash, amino acids etc for any raw/fresh.
For example, I’ve got chicken 80/10/10, how would you find the nutrition breakdown for this as per above.
This is on the packet, but I can’t work out if its per 100gram, plus it doesn’t give the kcal.
Percent is always the same as grams per 100g. So 17.9% protein is the same as 17.9g of protein per 100g.
All pet foods have their protein, fat, fibre and ash levels printed on the packaging. Unfortunately, manufacturers are not required to declare (or even test) the calorific levels of their foods but if you ask them directly they might be able to help.
Failing that, this site has a pretty comprehensive breakdown of just about any food ingredient you can imagine.
That sounds a bit overcomplicated to me. However much maths you do in advance, finding the right amount for your individual dog will almost certainly require some trial and error so all you really need is a rough figure to get you started.
If you were feeding only raw meat and bones, you would probably want to start by feeding roughly 2-3% of the dog’s body weight per day.
I would therefore suggest using that as your basis - 20% of the amount suggested above with 80% of the manufacturer’s suggested fooding amount for your dog. And then get ready for the inevitable fine-tuning. You can find our guide on the subject here.