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Originally Posted by Carmeow  No, I appreciate the long post! Sorry for hijacking your thread!  I don't think that price sounds too crazy knowing how much better it is for my dogs, and like you, I would be concerned as to where their meat is coming from. I don't think I'd have trouble finding a good farmer or butcher since I live in Texas and it's not too far of a drive to the more rural areas around me. I'd probably be able to find cheaper than chicken @ 4.99/lb in my area. Am I supposed to calculate 5% of Rosie's projected adult weight or 5% of her current weight? Big difference lol. I can't imagine her eating a chicken leg...she has trouble eating the puppy sized Wellness kibble. Tiny mouth, big personality  |
You know, I'm not positive how much to feed when it comes to a puppy. Most dogs eat 2-3% of their body weight. But small breed dogs need more than that. I feed Yoshi 6% and Momo eats 5%. You just have to take a few weeks to judge how much they need & see if they're getting thin or gaining weight. I think that puppies are typically pretty good judges of their food intake. So I would probably start with 5-6% of their projected body weight & go from there. I'm also not sure about the puppy meat/bone/organ ratio. Typically, it's 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, 5% other organs. But I'm assuming that puppies would need more bone for their calcium needs. Heather would def know. She REALLY helped me out when I transitioned. I'm also going to do more research on this myself. I'll PM you & keep in touch and let you know if I have any good info for you.
Just a heads up...I used to give Yoshi a quarter of a chicken & let him work on it...then take it away, rinse it off & save it for the next meal. But he choked on the cartilage part of the leg - the part at the end of the drumstick where I guess the ankle would be. I had to do the Heimlich to dislodge it & it scared me to death. Since then, I've only given him necks to work on. And I use kitchen shears to cut his bone into bite sized pieces. He still chews the bone, I can hear the crunch. But I never give him anything that could possibly get stuck in his throat. You really have to monitor these little ones when they eat.
I don't want to deter you from feeeding raw. I just wanted to let you know about my unfortunate experience. It may have been my inexperience at raw feeding that allowed something like that to happen. But you hear so many different things from so many different sources & sometimes it's really difficult to figure out what the best thing for your pup is. There's no "board" governing the whole PMR thing, unlike Federal standards that are set for commercial dog food. So you just kind of have to pick apart the good & the bad that you read online & hear from other people and figure out what works best for YOU.
Anyway...I've written a novel! I'll shoot you a PM. It'd be great to stay in touch about this & share experiences
