Meat to veg. ratio

[Haus]

Hi. Could anyone please tell me a good meat/bone to vegetable ratio in a packaged raw diet? Our local pet store has started selling Healthy Paws, which comes in patties, which we prefer over the Paws for Life we feed now, which comes in cartons. The meat-bone ratio to veg. ratio of the former is 60:40.

[gmacleod]

IMO 40% vegetable matter is far too high. Unless you're only feeding it for a few meals per week, of course, and vegetable-less food the rest of the time.

In mainstream raw feeding, it is probably the Billinghurst-style barfers who feed the highest amount of vegetable matter - but even they only give about 20%. Most others are somewhere that and zero (a lot of people feed zero vegetables). Personally, I feed around 5%, or perhaps a little less.

Bear in mind that most vegetable matter is indigestible by dogs - and the only way they'd have consumed vegetable matter during their evolution (meaning up until about 30 years ago when kibble became popular) would be that amount of the stomach contents of prey animals that didn't spill. There's no way in the world that would amount to anything like 40% of the diet ;) Well, raw feeding is still based on mimicking, to the extent possible, the diet dogs evolved to eat. Vegetables, if they're a part of that at all, are a minimal part.

It seems that there is an increasing incidence of pre-made raw food suppliers padding out their foods with vegetables (most likely because it's cheaper ;)).

[Chris&Eti]

I think 40% vegetables is too high. Take a look at the percentages of a couple of popular brands here Oma's (http://www.omaspride.com/products.htm) and Nature's Variety (http://www.naturesvariety.com/content.lasso?page=1308&-session=naturesvariety:48E1EC0513e62175AAqpy30E4E7 5)- that's where you should be, somewhere between 5-20%. Even better-try and find a meat and bone only product and add a little pulped vegetable-around 10%.

[Chris&Eti]

Oops, looks like I posted at the same exact second as Gwyneth and repeated the info-anyways I just remembered a link I had with an extensive list (http://lepusreg.tripod.com/NRS1a.html) of raw product suppliers/retailers-scroll down to the list for Ontario.

[BecksDad]

Our pre-packaged raw food contains 20% vegetables. From what I have learned here, 40% would be too much....as already mentioned by the experienced members. :)

[Haus]

Becksdad, what do you feed your little guy? It's hard to find packaged raw food around here - let alone good stuff.

[BecksDad]

Where are you located?

We're using Paws-itively Raw Foods. Beckham loves it! And we've had no problems so far with making the switch to raw.

Here is the website, hopefully there is a distributor near you:

http://paws-itivelyrawfoods.com/html/contacts.html

[BecksDad]

Oh, and it got the thumbs up from the pros on the board so I know its a good choice.

Good luck!

[phoebesmom]

I don't feed any vegetable with raw - only dirty green tripe as a veggie-like addition.

[imogene]

I don't feed any vegetable with raw - only dirty green tripe as a veggie-like addition.

I think you forgot icky and smelly :) It really is "offal" stuff but my dogs go crazy for it :)

[Haus]

Thanks for the replies. We're going to stick with the product we're currently using. It is 80% meat/bone to 20% vegetable/egg/seeds etc.