When I came to Yorkietalk, raw was a new concept to me. I eventually read enough about it to think it was an excellent food choice, but the long term safety issue always bothered me. For me, it was more important to choose a food that had a proven record of being safe, it might not be cutting edge, but it was safe. I've been here 8 years and you and many others who have used premade raw have convinced me it's a safe choice. I would love to find a nutritionist who could give me a complete and balanced recipe using raw and grinding my own. My biggest problem is that I don't want to add synthetic vitamins, that's the main reason I choose my kibble because no synthetic vitamins are used.

I think I do have some diy raw recipes developed by nutritionists...I think one of them was by a vet who works for Natures Farmacy...I can't recall where the others were from, but they're out there. The hard part, from what I understand, can be finding good prices on the meat itself...some people go to actual butchers (not the grocery store butcher). I wonder what Deb does for vitamins.

I think she said she was adding vegetables and fruits.

Dr Remillard does not recommend raw diets but she will make a raw diet. She once told me she has clients in Colorado who are hunters and she's balanced their diets for them. In addition, her home cooked diets can be served up raw. Of course this is an issue if the diet calls for cooked grains. I think people believe vet nutritionists write only one script for everyone but that isn't true. Just this morning she replied to my plea for help with little Winston who all of a sudden seems intolerant to his chicken. She gave me a suggestion to change to salmon and monitor his response. So far, he loved it, but I don't know what tonight will bring.

I once ground my own meat AND bone and after burning through two higher end meat grinders, I added calcium supplementation. It takes me several hours to prep home made food and I take a lot of short cuts with cooked rotisserie chickens, canned peas, microwave sweet potatoes, and chop up four veggies. Back when I added organ meat and bone and more natural supplements like egg shells and kelp, it was an all weekend event and that was just for two dogs. I think that's why I like the petdiets recipes - very simple, practical, and more of a convenience than what I used to do.

Yes everyone thinks i'm crazy also. My motto is when Mac is happy i'm happy lol

The problem w/ making your own raw food, IMO, is that it would not be exposed to High Pressure Process (HPP+ which AT LEAST destroys some pathogens present. Ideally, I think if you're not doing HPP, then I would feed a dog raw meat and bone obtained from outside the food system which would be safest but likely very expensive. I would definitely want the diet balanced by a veterinary nutritionist. My friend is feeding Stella and Chewy's and the dogs are doing well. I don't see a difference between dogs fed raw and dogs fed home cooked or quality commercial food.

Yeah...this is part of why I hesitate to do my own, bc it seems like SO much work, to be honest. And I do prefer to keep things as simple/easy as possible, if possible.

Good points on the HPP etcetera bc, yes, fresh fresh sources would be the very best. Although so many prey model etc feeders use grocery and/or butcher meats. Some of them do go to farmers too.

He got his veterinary degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign, so he can't be that bad :D. If I look out the window of the building I'm in right now, I can see the vet college--it's right across the fence from my corn fields.

Now that we are discussing I did post this once before, one at least in Toronto Ontario Canada dis-advantages of feeding raw - is that your dog will get special handling procedures if they need to be hospitalized. Gloved hands and isolated.... Which is why I started to homecook for the crew.

Thank you for posting!