I MAY have asked this question before, please bear with me, I am old at times.

What are the benefits of raw vs cooked food, especially carrots and chicken?

I pulverize the carrots when they are raw so she can digest them. I shredd the chicken either raw or cooked. I throw the eggs in the mix raw and the shells in when I pulverize the carrots.

Anna loves frozen green beans and will eat them out of the package. I think they give her a crunch she needs, plus they might be good for her teeth. She also gets them as treats, sometimes with a benedryl or baby aspirin hiding inside.

Thanks, and have a great day.

We also give our 7 month old Lilly some carrot hunks, broccoli, cauliflour, and green beans. Its usually in the kitchen when I am preparing dinner when she asks. Make sure they are clean and small.
Oh she Loves asparagus too. I dont give her more than 4 small hunks of whatever veggie I am preparing. But any of these 4 she has never choked or had a problem with.
They love the crunchiness.
Now that she has her permanent teeth, we no longer let her have ice cubes. She used to love them, skid them all over the dining room like a kitten playing with a golf ball. But now she wants to eat them and crunches them up with her teeth. I am afraid that she could crack a tooth.
So I figure that what is pretty much OK for a toddler, than its OK for a puppy within reason. No chocolate of course.
Jane

I'm curious about this. I have told my husband before about the raw diet, but he just doesn't like the sound of it. Plus I worry about the bones since my one dog has a sensitive stomach where anything can make her sick. A homecooked diet though he would probably consider.

I think both raw and cooked fresh foods provide additional benefits to our dogs' diets. Most raw feeders (for humans as well as dogs) believe that cooking removes most of the nutritional value from food, but I think both have their place.

Cooking speeds up the digestibility. There are some forms of cooking that are less "destructive" to nutrients, like steaming.

For larger or regularly-given amounts of vegetables, I would puree them in a juicer, blender or food processor; for occasional treats, I think they are fine in their natural form. For dogs with challenged health, or those recuperating from illness, I think cooking their meat is safer, and most often recommended by veterinarians (i.e. lightly cooked chicken or hamburger & well-cooked rice for dogs with diarrhea or other digestive upsets).

Some raw meat meals are easy to give to your dog, even if you don't choose to convert to an all-raw diet. Raw chicken wings, chicken backs & necks, turkey necks, pork ribs are among the softest, easiest raw meats to try for occasional meals.

A good book for anyone interested in home cooking for their dogs would be Dr. Richard Pitcairn's book Complete Guide To Natural Health for Dogs and Cats:
http://www.drpitcairn.com/books/pitcairn_book.html

You can also find recommended books for researching raw and homecooked diets in a thread stickied in the Natural Diets section of this board.

Thank you Everyone. ZEN cat - I don't really think I lose a lot of vitamins when cooking Anna's food because I use the same bowl and water and everything gets put in the same food chopper (small cheap one) before being put in her dish.

The only thing that is actually processed is the soy yogurt. Do you think she gets enough calcium since I give her two eggs with the shells daily? If so, I can eliminate the soy yogurt.

She only gets boneless chicken breasts. Should I be giving her the chicken bone if it is cooked and run through the food chopper?

We are seeing a new vet on Monday, and then possibly an allergy vet or a specialist to have her ear canal removed.

Have a great weekend everyone - my 'allowed' computer time is running out!


Thank, and have a great weekend.

Cooking speeds up the digestibilityI thought it was the opposite?
I Learn some thing new everyday.

Boneless Chicken Breasts are what our grand-dog was brought up on and she is in the peak of health at almost 13. She gets Eukanuba kibble for breakfast too. And various small pieces of raw and clean veggies like our Yellow Lab gets.
But please no chicken bones! If you have ever taken a splintered bone out of your dogs throat, you will know why. Hope that you never have to do that.
Jane

Now that she has her permanent teeth, we no longer let her have ice cubes. ... I am afraid that she could crack a tooth.
I really don't think you have to worry about this.

Thank you Everyone. ZEN cat - I don't really think I lose a lot of vitamins when cooking Anna's food because I use the same bowl and water and everything gets put in the same food chopper (small cheap one) before being put in her dish.

The only thing that is actually processed is the soy yogurt. Do you think she gets enough calcium since I give her two eggs with the shells daily? If so, I can eliminate the soy yogurt.

She only gets boneless chicken breasts. Should I be giving her the chicken bone if it is cooked and run through the food chopper?



Do you feed these things in addition to kibble or canned food, because I'm a little concerned; the foods you've described in this post absolutely won't provide a balanced diet for Anna. I think you can skip the soy yogurt for her completely. Soy is commonly found to be an allergen/intolerance for many dogs. And two eggs per day sounds like a bit much, as well.

I'd be very interested to hear about Anna's full diet.

Hi Charlie's Dad,
This will be so nice to start giving her an ice cube once in a while again. I heard that its bad for old humanoids like my husband and me, as we could crack a tooth, but now that I think about it,,,,,,a young dogs teeth are pointed and strong. So they would be more likely to enter the ice cube rather than crush it.
This will be nice in summer too, as we kayak with our food and drinks in a cooler with ice, and she can pick one out of the cooler if she wants to drink out of it, like all our other dogs did.
Thank you,
Jane

Do you feed these things in addition to kibble or canned food, because I'm a little concerned; the foods you've described in this post absolutely won't provide a balanced diet for Anna. I think you can skip the soy yogurt for her completely. Soy is commonly found to be an allergen/intolerance for many dogs. And two eggs per day sounds like a bit much, as well.

I'd be very interested to hear about Anna's full diet.

One boneless, skinless, chicken breast nuked in water for about 10 minutes, along with 2 carrots. Then 1/2 cup rice is nuked for 10 minutes in same water; while 2 carrots, chicken, 2 raw eggs with shells are chopped in food chopper. Rice sits for another 10 minutes, everything mixed together with 1 1/3 cup frozen green beans (I've deleted the soy yogurt).
She still has ear problems, but her urine does not burn the grass!

Anna is going to a new vet today. I will see what he says about the diet.

Gee, that sounds a lot like my own dinners! Except for the eggs being raw.
Our granddog grew up on boneless skinless chicken breasts too.
And a diet very close to your puppy.
Delicious.
Though she does get some supplimentary kibble.
Jane

One boneless, skinless, chicken breast nuked in water for about 10 minutes, along with 2 carrots. Then 1/2 cup rice is nuked for 10 minutes in same water; while 2 carrots, chicken, 2 raw eggs with shells are chopped in food chopper. Rice sits for another 10 minutes, everything mixed together with 1 1/3 cup frozen green beans (I've deleted the soy yogurt).
She still has ear problems, but her urine does not burn the grass!

Anna is going to a new vet today. I will see what he says about the diet.

eduimp, I would strongly encourage you to buy a reputable book on natural nutrition (like Dr. Pitcairn's, above) that includes diet plans, to ensure your dog's diet includes the correct calcium to phosphorus ratio, and otherwise meets all of her nutritional requirements. I don't think the diet above can provide those, long term. Alternatively, your vet may have guidelines for home cooked diets they can provide you with :thumb4:

That is why our grand-dogs diet always is supplimented with a good reputible brand of kibble. It would have the necessary ingredients in it for dogs.
Jane

Vitamins are destroyed by cooking. The longer something is cooked, the more vitamins are destroyed. If you cook something in the same water twice, any vitamins that end up in the water will be cooked twice, so you'll destroy twice as many vitamins.

I'd amend that slightly by saying that different methods of cooking can deplete more nutrients than others, i.e. steaming vegetables preserves more nutrients than boiling would. However, the real question in this thread is not so much the preparation but the components of the meal, and whether or not this diet will meet the dog's nutritional requirements in the long term.

For a dog being fed exclusively on home prepared meals (i.e. not a kibble diet supplemented with fresh foods), we need to understand the dog's nutritional needs first, and then provide him/her with a variety of foods that can fill provide those nutrients.

Variety means feeding lots of different foods, such as beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, pork, fish, eggs and dairy. Vegetables, fruits and grains can also be added in limited quantities. Variety also means feeding different parts, such as muscle meat, heart, liver and other organs. Different types of meat and different cuts of meat all have different nutrient profiles, so you provide a wider nutritional range by varying what you feed. It's fine to have a few staples but you should not feed just one or two foods to the exclusion of everything else.

Balance over time: When you feed a homemade diet, it is not necessary that every meal be “complete and balanced,” as the commercial dog foods are. Just as with our own diets, it’s only important that the diet be balanced over time, with nutritional needs being met over a period of days to weeks. It is only when you feed the same food every day that you need to be concerned about that food alone supplying everything that your dog needs.

It is imperative that all homemade diets provide the right amount of calcium. The bones in most raw diets will supply all the calcium needed. If you feed a diet that does not include edible bones, you will need to add specific amounts of calcium supplements.
http://www.dogaware.com/wdjhomemade1.html

I think I might not be expressing myself well enough on the topic of home cooked diets for dogs. Again, if the question is regarding addition of fresh foods to a kibble-fed dog's diet, that's one thing. For an entirely home cooked diet, there needs to be more planning.

Following is one of my favorite articles on the topic:

Natural Diet:
Don't "Just Do It"
By Christie Keith

Natural diet is a feeding plan formulated to mimic or reproduce the diet on which a species evolved. There are many recipes and feeding plans that are based on this approach to feeding pet dogs and cats, and several, including those by vets Richard Pitcairn and Ian Billinghurst, are extremely popular among holistically oriented pet owners.

But many people have adopted a diet that is considerably more casual than that - a diet I call the "whatever" diet.

The "whatever" diet is a thrown-together diet loosely based on a recipe or feeding plan that someone else came up with, with whatever variations appeal to the pet owner. The justification for this diet is usually something like, "Dogs and cats thrived for centuries on the leftovers of their owners' diets and what they could hunt up or scavenge on the farm. We don't need a degree in nutrition to feed ourselves; why have we let the pet food companies scare us into thinking you need one to feed your pets?"

There is of course some truth in that. But there are also some misconceptions.

In today's world, it's not safe to let your dogs and cats hunt and scavenge for themselves. What we feed them is what they get, and unlike us, they can't satisfy a sudden craving for some broccoli with a quick trip to the market. Day after day, for their entire lives, they make do on what we put in their bowls. Those dogs and cats in the "good old days" caught rodents, raided henhouses, ate dead animals in the forest, raided compost heaps, gardens, and grain stores, and in general, had many opportunities to fill the nutritional gaps left by their owners.

Dogs have a somewhat less specific need for certain nutrients, but felines have a very narrow range of nutritional need. In both cases, the most crucial balance is the calcium/phosphorus ratio, with accompanying levels of certain vitamins and minerals that allow the body to utilize those nutrients. If that ratio is not right, the dog and cat will leech calcium from their very bones, in a condition that can be fatal and irreversible.

The common practice of feeding meat without bones (or bone meal) is nutritionally disastrous for dogs and cats. The correct proportion of meat to bones or bone meal is also poorly understood by many people, and their reliance on recommendations made by people who themselves don't know what they are doing makes the problem worse.

A homemade diet can be the best or the worst thing you can feed your pet. If you are going to feed homemade, do it right. Use a recipe or feeding plan based on sound nutritional principles, which has been used by many people over a long period of time. I faithfully weighed and measured every bite I gave my dogs and cats for over ten years before I felt comfortable enough modifying their diets. For cats I still feel best feeding a very precise recipe.

Most feeding plans, whether Wendy Volhard's or Billinghurst's or Pitcairn's, are designed with a certain amount of variety and flexibility in them. It's best to adhere to the diet as written, rather than using it as a loose guide, as so many folks do. This way, you will cover the bases nutritionally.

I got an email some time ago from someone whose had one kitten die and another who was near death, from feeding a diet based on a recipe she had picked up off someone's web site. She couldn't find the bone meal the recipe called for in the store, so she left it out. When I looked at the diet, I saw that it said "optional" before listing the supplements. "Supplements" can indeed be "optional," but bone meal in a recipe is NOT a supplement; it is part of the diet itself.

There are far too many people giving eggs and meat to their pets without providing a balance to all the phosphorus they contain. Meat contains no calcium, and lots of phosphorus; bones contain lots of calcium. Eggs contain lots of phosphorus; the shells contain calcium. That is nature's balance. If we feed meat without bones or eggs without shells, or aren't sure of the correct ratios of those things to feed, we must use something to replace them. It is a common and tragic mistake to give a diet far too high in phosphorus to cats and dogs. (This is also common in human diets in the developed world, and a virtual epidemic of bone disease is the result, particularly in women, whose requirements for calcium are both greater and more specific than for men.)

Another common mistake is adding dairy to the food to provide calcium. While dairy products can be a good source of calcium, in general they contain phosphorus also. While they themselves are usually balanced (excluding cottage cheese, which is high in phosphorus), this means they don't have enough calcium in them to balance the phosphorus in the meat, too. Even an animal (or human) getting abundant calcium in their diet cannot use it if the phosphorus and other ratios are incorrect. This is not something your pet can fix for themselves; it is the owner's responsibility to know what they are doing.

If you cannot follow a tested recipe, it would be better to use a commercial diet. Don't make your dog or cat the victim of your own ignorance or carelessness. It's one thing to make that mistake on yourself; you, after all, can be overwhelmed with a need for a big green salad and go out and get one. Your cat and dog can't do that. There are some raw commercial diets to which you can add your own fresh, raw foods, such as Grandad's Pet Foods or Natural Diet Foundation from Wendy Volhard, or prepared raw foods diets such as Aunt Jeni's Home Made 4 Life. These are alternatives for those who don't with to prepare foods themselves, but would like the benefits of a fresh, home-prepared diet. There are also freeze-dried diets such as Archetype from Wysong, made with raw ingredients but packaged like a kibble. (I have no commercial interest in any of these companies, and am just mentioning them as a resource.)

I have fed homemade since 1986, and I know that sometimes it can be difficult. Pitcairn has several simple recipes in his book Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, including some that are quick and basic, for occasional feeding. He has others that are meant to supplement a commercial diet, and some very simple recipes that can be fed every day. Take your responsibilities seriously, and follow the recipes. If you adopt a feeding plan such as Billinghurst's Give Your Dog a Bone, READ THE WHOLE BOOK, not just someone's summary of it on an email list, message board, or the web. Understand the details of what he is advocating, not just the general idea.

Canine and feline diets, like those of all predatory carnivores, are among nature's most precise and specific diets. Big cats and canids die and become ill in captivity all over the world, because their keepers cannot get their diets right. Don't make your cats and dogs the victims of the same problem. Unlike those trying to raise an endangered rare wild cat in captivity, we DO know what comprises a balanced diet for our cats and dogs. Don't turn your back on that information. Use it.

http://www.caberfeidh.com/NaturalDiet.htm

Vitamins are destroyed by cooking. The longer something is cooked, the more vitamins are destroyed. If you cook something in the same water twice, any vitamins that end up in the water will be cooked twice, so you'll destroy twice as many vitamins.
Holy smokes, it's Tom! :cheers2:

Sorry for the hijack... carry on! ;)

Biggest problem - her allergies. I don't give her anything she hasnt been tested for. I just added lima beans and barley. She also needs to gain weight. I've looked up the ratio of meat to veggies to starch. She gets tired very quickly. Between her and me I think I am running a medical clinic!!