A raw diet generally consists of organ meat, muscle meat, whole or ground bone, raw eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables, and dairy products such as yogurt.
You might be thinking about raw food diets for dogs for a few reasons.
- Pet parents think raw food is biologically appropriate for their dogs, so they feed them what their wild ancestors ate.
- Many people believe raw food will improve their dog's health, especially their coat.
- There are some pet parents who think raw is better since the nutrients in commercial dry kibble and canned dog food aren't as available after cooking.
If your dog needs a raw diet, it's wise to approach this decision with caution so that you can make the right choice. In order to ensure your pet's long-term health, you need to provide comprehensive, balanced, and adequate food.
Raw Food Diets for Dogs: Nutritional and Safety Considerations
Raw dog food is available commercially, usually in frozen logs that have to be thawed before feeding. You can also make a DIY raw food diet for your dog. Here are some key factors to remember regardless of which strategy you use.
Ensured Ingredient Quality
Raw frozen preparations contain a wide variety of components, and the ingredient list doesn't tell you much about them. If you want to know more about the ingredients, you'll have to contact the manufacturer.
Raw diets for dogs can also be made at home with ingredients from the grocery store or farmers' market. With homemade raw food diets, you can pick and choose what to include and how good the ingredients are. You also have to make sure you've got the right ingredients in the right amounts.
Obtaining Nutrient Balance
The risk with both homemade and commercial raw dog food diets is that they are not always well-balanced for a dog's nutritional needs. 1,2 Nutrient shortages and diseases can be produced by consuming a diet high in muscle meat and low in the other "parts" that contribute to nutritional balance.
A wolf, for example, would consume an entire animal carcass (e.g., a rat or rabbit) with muscular meat, bone, tendons, organs, skin, and hair, resulting in a nutritionally complete meal.
However, the sections of a chicken that we would pick to feed our dogs would most likely exclude the majority of the parts that provide much-needed fat, fiber, minerals, and vitamins.
Whether or not to include bones
If the bones can be digested and ingested, including them in a raw meal for dogs can provide the nutritional benefit of extra calcium and phosphorus. They also aid in the maintenance of oral health by preventing tartar formation.
However, bones in the diet can cause health problems such as esophageal blockage and constipation from having too many bone pieces in the intestines.
Keeping Bacterial Contamination at Bay
Is it safe for dogs to consume raw meat? When serving raw meat to individuals, there are some inherent concerns. Bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli can contaminate raw meat and raw meat-based items, causing disease.
Because processing plants have a significant possibility for cross-contamination, this danger is greater with professionally made raw meat diets and meat purchased from the grocery store rather than a corpse consumed by a wild dog.
Products like hamburgers and sausage pose additional contamination hazards due to the cutting and mixing that gets bacteria straight into the middle of the meat.
It is also crucial to remember that while freezing the meat reduces the quantity of bacteria present, and it does not eliminate all of them.
Concerns for Bacteria-Exposed Dogs
The risk of most of these bacteria causing sickness in your pet is low, but if it does happen, you should expect a quick onset of diarrhea. Because testing for these bacterial contaminants is expensive and infrequently performed, you will most likely never know the cause of your diarrhea, and your veterinarian will only treat it symptomatically.
Salmonella is an exception, as it rarely causes sickness in healthy animals, but the danger increases if the pet is young, old, pregnant, sickly, or agitated.
Problems for People Who Have Been Exposed to Bacteria
Overall, people who share their house with a dog given a raw food diet face a higher risk of sickness caused by food-borne dangerous germs, particularly those who are young, old, pregnant, or immunocompromised (e.g., undergoing chemotherapy or on steroid therapy).
You can be exposed to bacterial contaminants when preparing your pet's raw food diet and accidentally coming into contact with your dog's feces. Even if a pet appears to be healthy, these bacteria are constantly excreted in their feces, posing a risk to their two-legged family members.
Preventing Parasite Infection
Contamination from parasites is far more frequent in wild carcasses than in raw meat diets offered to pets, whether commercial or home-prepared. If parasites are present, freezing the meat prior to feeding may kill them.
Nonetheless, raw pork and raw fish from the Pacific Northwest pose the greatest parasite danger.
Talk to your veterinarian and a veterinary nutritionist about switching to a raw diet
After carefully evaluating each of these factors and consulting with your veterinarian and, ideally, a veterinary nutritionist, you should make the decision to feed your pet a raw food diet.
Your veterinarian can discuss the hazards of raw food diets for dogs with you, especially if your pet is young, old, or debilitated, to help you make an informed decision.
Consulting with a veterinary nutritionist ensures that the recipe you use provides your pet with adequate nutrients. These experts will take into account your dog's individual protein, lipid, mineral, and vitamin requirements.
Because dog mineral and vitamin requirements differ from those of humans, supplements will most likely be required to guarantee that the food is balanced for your pet's specific needs.
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