We have pretty much switched to a BARF diet for the dogs. They have the occasional Nature Diet tray for breakfast, otherwise all BARF.

Since then, we haven't needed to give Buffy a single Piriton tablet. She hardly scratches at all.

I'm a skeptic. I like to see real evidence - not just anecdotes. But I can't deny our experience.

Have any other BARF feeders had similar experiences - a dog that has had to have steroids to stop her from ripping herself apart, at her best had a good scratch and a bit of a chew goes from that to 'normal' in a month? Are there any proper scientific studies?


From a dog enjoyment POV, I'll easily recommend BARF. But to recommend it for skin problems, I'd like more evidence than just my personal experience and internet/pet shop annecdotes.

Conversely - is there any good evidence that a BARF diet is detrimental? So far the only evidence I've seen isn't backed up by good evidence either way and seems to be BARF proponants v a certain dog food manufacturer.

I have been on a BARF diet with my new puppy since I got him a month ago and he is thriving on it. His canine Bernese pal is also on the same diet and at six months looks fantastic, gleaming teeth and perfect health.

I think the problem with getting hard and fast evidence is that people using BARF diets do not have the funding to do the research and are generally happy with what their own eyes tell them. It also "just makes sense" to them. Funding for the majority of pet health research ultimately generally comes from pet food manufacturers and obviously they are going to have their own agenda. Even your vet will be selling commercial dog food and much of their training will also be sponsored by the manufacturers so it's difficult to find unbiased views on either side.

As long as your dog is getting a good mix of bone, muscle and organ meat I would say he/she will be on a far better diet than ANY of the commercial foods.

Without being too crude, if you look at (and smell!) what comes out of your dog on commercial food compared to BARF, there is a huge difference! That alone tells me how much waste product is in the commercial stuff. Even the better ones seem to be packed with grain for no good reason (well, it's cheap for them i guess).

As an aside I can say that when I was looking after my sister's Lab and switched him onto BARF his dandruff pretty much cleared up and my sister has continued on the diet with him with no problems since.

I think you will struggle to find full blown evidence either way, but if you are happy yourself stick with it. Commercial dog food didn't exist till about the 50s and there were plenty of healthy, happy dogs before then. Dogs that probably got real food from the local butcher...

I also feed the BARF diet to my 2 labs but with Nature Diet for breakfast. They are both strong & healthy, gleaming white teeth & shiny coats. The only health problem that one of the dogs has is hip dysplasia & I don't think that can be reversed by a BARF diet! However even given the poor hips I don't notice any signs of limping or pain. It could be the hydrotherapy or Cosequin or diet or a mixture of all of them, but my dog's still very healthy & fit.

I would also love to see some proper scientific research on BARF but, as stevescotia pointed out, the funding for canine nutrition comes from the commercial pet food manufacturers who are hardly like to fund or publish any research that does not support their products.

The best we have at the moment is the anecdotal evidence from people like Ian Billinghurst & Tom Lonsdale & personally I find their evidence quite compelling as well as making perfect sense for feeding dogs.

Stressmonkey ~ your tale about Buffy is yet another success story to add to the many that I have heard first hand about. Many of my dog-owning friends have reported the disappearance of skin problems, itchiness & various other allergy-sounding type problems as well as huge improvements in teeth & smelly breath & upset stomachs.

I went to a talk by Tom Lonsdale a few years ago & the stories he told were quite compelling. He had a lot of detrimental things to say about the pet food manufacturers as well which I thought was a bit of a scaremongering tactic on his part but maybe that was the only way he thought he could convince people to try the BARF diet.

On BARFworld they are currently asking for people to sign up so that they can start some scientific research ~ perhaps we should all sign up?

we also feed out dogs on the BARF diet our first vet was really anti but since we've changed vets our new vet is great about it - our two eat all sorts and are both very healthy for it the only health problems we have had is with our staffie who's had ruptured Cruciate Ligaments on both knees and patella problems but that's more to do with her breed than anything else

i'd love to give BARF a try, the problem is only one of my pooches would eat it.

theres also trying to convince my mother on the matter as she doesn;t like the idea of giving them raw
i know our older dog's teeth couldn't cope with bones these days anyway
it sounds great though, would probably do the older dog a lot of good, going from general opinion, if she would eat it


Edit: actually, if anyone has any advice on trying to switch her, and what to feed her i'd be very grateful

xdow ~ if you want to try to switch to the BARF diet, most people say that it should be done gradually. (I didn't & both of my dogs took to bones & raw food immediately but there are many people who will say the opposite & therefore had to change gradually).

So just try mixing a bit of mixed raw mince with their normal food, or try hand feeding some raw mince just see if they like it. If they do, you may find it really easy to switch.

Most people start their dogs on raw chicken wings on the basis that they are relatively easy to get hold of & for the dogs to eat & digest. I started with huge marrow bones! But my dogs spend ages chewing & knawing & loved them. After that it was relatively easy to introduce other raw bones such as lamb, pork, & beef. At first they were less keen on the pork bones mostly, I think, because they had not had raw pork before. Now they love them. The only bones my dogs won't eat are chicken & rabbit bones, which is really annoying as they are the easiest to get hold of. I make up for this by making sure they get plenty of chicken & turkey in the raw meat & offal.

Introducing raw juiced up veggies (both pulp & juice) was slightly more difficult but again, by mixing the veggies with something palatable & then gradually increasing the amount of veggies means that they happily eat them now (although the female dogs expects a liberal grating of mature cheddar to make her veggies taste nice!!).

There's loads of info out there if you google BARF, including suggestions on how to introduce raw feeding. The best advice I can give is to make friends with a local butcher to ensure a good supply of bones.

Am I the only one who thinks it's a rather unfortunate name for any form of pet diet?

I have no advice about trying to convince your mother but the minces available from Durham Animal Feeds, Landywoods, etc have bone in them to varying degrees. You could also mince up chicken wings and other bits and pieces yourself. Although your dog won't get the teeth cleaning and muscle development from gnawing and crunching the bone they would certainly get the nutritional benefits this way.

I would always advise people to read up before starting though - a diet of chicken carcass alone is not going to be beneficial for example. There are several good books but I would also recommend the Yahoo Group BritBarf. Members there are always helpful and the introductory info on joining is very useful. It all looks daunting to start with but the key is not to panic about getting everything spot on and balanced straight away. Take your time and good luck if you try it!

ahh thankyou

my old girls teeth are totally wrecked, she broke one on a roasted knuckle bone a year or so ago, half of it's still in her mouth but she's too old now to do anything about it (and our vet agreed) so i don;t think anything with bones in would be a good idea for her unless it's minced.
i'm going to invest in a good quality blender though, if i do manage to try it, just so she can get some bone into her
she does take raw mince and beef when offered though, so it might be easier than pulling teeth with her


i spoke to my mother this morning about it before i left for college, she said i;m welcome to try it, but she's not having tripe in the house
she also made a comment about her being "always hungry" if i switched her, which is bull plop, just from a common sense point of view.

trying this would also provide me with something to research for my investigative project for college, so i'm really hoping she'll take to it

as such... could anyone recommend me any good links for information on what to feed and proportions?
also any success stories or other thoughts and advice anyone can give me would really help me out if i do this as a project

(i feel really cheeky now ) sorry for hijacking your thread, stress monkey!

No worries xdow!!

I'll agree with stevecotia though - you need to do a fair bit of research before switching to ensure the dog gets all it's nutritional requirements.

And don't try to grind bones in a blender - your mum won't thank you!!

Thanks for everyones input.

oh no, that's basically to throw everything in, bones would be well and truly bashed up & jumped on before adding, if anything it would only be smaller ones anyway

are there supplement powders or similar that could give her the same or near the same benefits without having to jump up & down on everything with steelies & rocks?
in fact, i;m starting my research next week, i guess i'll find out then

to be honest, anything different we start feeding her will be better than what she's on now, i'll not link to the tread, but it's all horribly bad for her

This might be stupid question, but is there any kind pf prepacked, ready to eat version of this diet? maybe frozen of something?

We are all veggie's here and I'm not sure how I'd cope with chopping up offal and stuff ...I know a nice organic butcher who would sort if out for me, but he's a bit far away and I can't get there very often,

I'd love to improve Danny and Rosies diets, as both eat commercial pet food's at the mo, and I'd like to give them something better

There's an American site on BARF called rawfed.com which is worth a look. There's a section on the many myths of raw feeding which is really interesting & covers the topic of why there's no scientific research on raw feeding & lots more.

http//www.dogsey.com/dog-articles.php?t=9616

Molliepops ~ if this link works it gives some info on alternatives to preparing your own BARF food.

xdow ~ there is a supplement caused Missing Link which is supposed to provide all the nutrients & I think the above site gives details of suppliers.

Thanks - I'm only a minute or so in and very very interesting.

The rawfed.com site seems primarily to be promoting the prey-model diet rather than the BARF diet. I'm happier with the BARF diet as I'm not convinced that just because wolves may not eat the stomach contents of their prey, that dogs don't either. I've seen plenty of dogs eat an entire rabbit, including organs, skin, fur & stomach contents. Also if dogs (or wolves & other canines) catch small prey like voles, mice, etc, they are more likely to eat them whole rather than try to just chew bits of them.

I've also seen dogs & other wild canines eat ripe fruit & vegetables out of choice (not just because they are starving & there's nothing else). I appreciate that they have difficulty digesting the cellulose in plant cells & that this is why fruit & veggies have to be juiced to a pulp so they can obtain the proper nutritional value from them. This is why thet generally prefer very ripe fruit such as berries & windfall fruit as they can access the vitamins etc when the fruit is ripe enough to fall apart. In the blackberry season we have about 6 or 7 dogs between us that are very proficient blackberry pickers, even being able to avoid the thorns & leaves to search out the ripe fruits! This all started with my friend picking berries for one of her dogs a couple of years ago, to that dog starting to pick fruit for itself & then the other dogs learning from the first dog ~ clever mutts!!

I have to be careful in Autumn, or Buffy would eat all the windfall apples!!! She eats the strawberries if the wildlife doesn't get them first. I've heard from more than one CC breeder that Cresties love fruit - including a raw feeder.

I worry about the sugars in fruit so make sure she doesn't have too much. She loves carrots too & pretty much any raw veg. Hansel is keen, but not like Buffy.

Murphy will try to eat around the veggies if I mix them in He will eat carrot if the Cresties are having some, but only so he doesn't miss out!!!

A LOT of reading to do!!!

is BARF much more expensive than packaged food?

My dogs love raw veg and steal it from the basket (no onions obviously -- they're stored separately as they're not for dogs) and as soon as they see me with a pile of carrots, potatoes and parsnips they like the peelings so I now wash the veg and peel it and the dogs catch the peelings and eat them so I hope it's good for them! They also love broccoli stalks and cauli leaves raw (or cooked)!

I've never known anything about the BARF diet but my dogs love big marrow bones from the butcher and the last ones they had they were actually eating and the bones had teeth shaped gouges out of them so I threw them away in case the hardness of the bone damaged their teeth!

Someone mentioned dogs eating raw chicken wings.... is it not dangerous to eat raw poultry? I give my dogs chicken scraps but would never think of giving them any of the bones and make sure I throw them away so does anyone have any more details of the BARF etc diets please?

raw poultry for dogs isn;t really a problem, their digestive juices kill most pathogens straight off
raw bones are digestible
and less inclined to splinter so no harm to them in raw wings

i'm really tempted to start finding out about this now but have essays to write >_<

Its all relative.

With a friendly butcher, I'm finding it less than a quality commercial food. But it is probably more than feeding big tins of say Butchers or Pedigree Chum or a bulk bag of a Pets at Home economy dry.

A top quality dry food and top quality wet probably worked out at about £18 a week for my three - total combined ideal weight of about 30kg.

I get some free bones and the odd free rabbit and trout (though we usually eat the rabbit and trout) which helps. But if I pay for every meal, I'd say it cost just under a tenner a week. At cheapest, I could probably do it for £7.

A mid range dry and wet food would cost you that - perhaps more.

A poor quality food, probably less.


I toyed with raw/BARF before. But when Hansel brought up less than half digested, supposedly quality, kibble NINE hours after eating (he gets travel sick - mostly cured/long story) I couldn't in good conscience feed kibble again. I know dog digestion is different to human - but NINE hours and barely digested? Three hours to next meal and less than half digested? How is that good?

So it was a choice of home cooked, commercial wet or BARF.

Home cooked is a kerfuffle, and cooking kills nutrients. Though some veg is better cooked as it makes vitamins more available.

Commercial is expensive, unless you go down the big tin cheap full of filler foods. Even most mid-quality and some 'top' quality food contain a high level of rice as a filler.

BARF or raw diets, medium cost but top quality and, after the initial research and sourcing, a lot easier than home cooked.

Raw, fresh, human grade chicken wings are fine for dogs (and cats) - they have a much higher tolerance than us to certain bugs. Raw chicken bones are chewy and soft. Dogs can scrunch them right down - the advice I have read is to be careful if your dog is a 'hoover' and hold the chicken wing in your hand or with plyers until s/he learns to chew.

Cooked chicken bones however are a definite no-no. They splinter and can perforate the gut.

wilhemina provided a link to a site I have found useful and informative, stevescotia suggested a Yahoo group (waiting for my application to be approved).

I found the Bregorry Glens site useful - http://www.bregorreyglens.co.uk/nutrition.html

Just a word on feeding raw veggies. Many dogs happily eat chunks of carrots, broccoli etc (one of mine loves red peppers) but dogs' digestive systems have difficulty in accessing the nutrients in veggies because they are not very good at breaking down the veg cells (cellulose). To make sure your dog can get the goodness from raw veggies they need to be thoroughly mashed down, not just chopped finely. This really means that you need to invest in a vegetable/fruit juicer. This really smashes the veggies to bits & breaks up the cells. You can then mix the pulp & juice together to produce what looks like baby food.

I tend to bulk buy organic veggies (especially green leafy veggies like spinach & kale) & I'm lucky in that my in-laws have fruit & veg wholesale business so I get them cheap. I'll spend a couple of hours every 3 months or so chopping & juicing veggies then freeze in portion sized bags. I know that freezing can destroy some nutrients but not as much as cooking the veggies (& I don't have the time to juice veggies several times a week!).

Our local Tesco has been selling juicers for £8.49 so it needn't cost a fortune & I've found a very good juicer from a charity shop for only £2.50 as well as a stand by.

Thanks for all the tips and info

This is something I am definitely going to be looking into for my two

Quick(lol) update:

We are now completely BARF/Raw. No more Nature Diet (though I still think it is a good food as commercial foods go)

Comments.

All dogs fit and healthy. Their stamina has seemed to improved, though with the longer evenings they are getting a longer evening walk - about the same as their afternoon walk now and their morning walk is a bit longer too.

Poop is often white, but firm and easily passed.

Happy, happy dogs - they seem happier and more contented BUT that could be the longer walks and/or 'observer bias'.

Weight - Hansel is still optimal weight and still muscular. Although he was recently castrated, he is still young so Raw may be nothing to do with this. Buffy has lost approx 0.5kg and her belly. She now has the classic 'feel but can't see the ribs' and defined tuck up. Her thigh muscles have regained definition. Murphy has also lost weight, though he has a little more to go. For a castrated 12 year old, he is pretty fine. While it isn't Raw per se, feeding Raw means weighing food and thinking about nutrition so no more over feeding. Though the extra exercise hasn't hurt

Downside - after a meal they look for more food. I don't think it is hunger as they are getting an appropriate amount for their (ideal) weight and fed 2xd with training snacks (baked liver, grilled bacon, dry fish skins, cheese) in between. I think they like the food so much, they just want more.

Though, this is less of a problem after RMB. Muscle meat, organs, fish - its like 'where is the rest of my dinner?'

Kidneys - Buffy struggles with organs and muscle meat unless it is minced. She just can't 'tear' her meat. Like Hansel, she has a 'primitive' mouth but unlike him, she can't bust into a lamb kidney. She weighs less than 3.5 kg (Han is nearly 5kg) so perhaps she just isn't strong enough?

RMBs for little dogs - Murphy could make short work of anything. But the Cresties are so tiny they are restricted to chicken wings, rabbit legs and short lamb ribs (lamb ribs aint cheap). They would probably manage a turkey neck, but any other suggestions for pint sized RMBs?

BIG plus - our diet. I realised I was feeding the dogs with more care and consideration than myself, OH and child. This last couple of weeks we have had meals I have never cooked before or haven't cooked in ages - lentil curry, kofta, sticky ribs, dolma, salmon parcels, stir fry with home made sauce.

Next move - the cats