Böhm Raw Food Diet for Dogs

Feeding fresh meat made easy!
2011
ISBN: 978-0-85788-652-1
Verlag: Cadmos Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 96 Seiten

Reihe: Dogs

Feeding raw meat is healthier and more appropriate to your dog's needs A practical introduction to the trend towards feeding dogs in a natural and species-appropriate way. With the debate about the most appropriate way to feed 'man's best friend', more and more dog owners are realising that feeding raw meat, combined with fresh vegetables and oils, is a cheaper and more importantly healthier alternative to dry dog food and tinned meat. Some of the positive effects can be seen in healthy skin, a glossy coat, less body and mouth odour and a strong immune system. The author explains the raw food diet for dogs in a clear and practical way, demonstrating a daily routine, describing the ingredients and dispelling the prejudices. Silke Böhm compiles shopping lists, describes meats that are especially benefi cial for dogs and keeps at the ready negative lists of harmful substances. Suitability for daily use and practical relevance are in the foreground, making the raw food diet easy for anybody to manage.

Silke Böhm is closely involved with the BARF diet, not least because her own dog suffers from an allergy. She very quickly gained control over this problem with the help of Dr Monika Linek, a vet specialising in skin diseases, who gives detailed information on this topic in the 'Allergies' chapter.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Böhm, Silke

Leseproben

Fresh food – crisp and fresh into the food bowl!

The feeding of fresh food to dogs is getting ever more popular. Those of us taking a closer look at the subject of dog food will soon realise that the tinned and dried foods on the market do not necessarily contain ingredients that we’re happy to feed to our dogs. Grain usually tops the list of ingredients, which means that grain makes up the highest proportion of the contents. Sometimes the various types of grain are listed separately, making them move to the bottom of the list. This means that grain is not listed as a collective item, but, for example, as corn flour, wheat flour, rice flour or oats. In terms of percentages these amounts now appear smaller, and at first sight proportionally less – a little trick deployed by the pet food industry. When you add the separate types of grain together again, they once again make up the largest amount. What’s wrong with that? It’s simple: dogs don’t need grain as part of a balanced diet. Moreover, grain is often the number one trigger for allergies.

What yummy things will be put in my bowl today?

A virtual firework of vitamins and nutrients: fresh meat and vegetables.

Sure, feeding dried and tinned dog food is a simple affair; a handful or spoonful into the bowl, and all the dog’s needs are seemingly catered for. In addition many dogs are able to tolerate the ready-made food quite well.

But if you’re dealing with a fussy eater, who doesn’t accept the ready-made food, or a dog suffering from allergies, you may be at a loss what to do next. A desperate search begins, trawling the world of commercial ready-made dog food, whilst opened food sachets pile up in the larder, and rejected tins make their way from the fridge into the rubbish bin. There comes a point when the human ‘tin opener’ is able to recite the list of ingredients on the food containers by heart, like the poems once memorised in his or her schooldays, and on top of that there’s the worry about your dog’s health. When things have got to this stage, the idea of feeding fresh meat comes to you almost automatically.

A big obstacle to feeding fresh foods is the seemingly large effort required. But once you have settled into a routine, the extra effort is actually not that extreme. And seeing a happy dog who is licking their bowl clean until it’s shiny is ample compensation in any case. Of course feeding fresh food takes up a little more of your time. But bearing in mind the overwhelming advantages of producing your own dog food, you will be happy to make the effort for your best friend, for incidentally to have a dog is the nicest hobby in the world.

Cost is also an important factor in favour of feeding fresh food. Once you have worked out how to source the food locally, and you feed seasonal fruit and vegetables grown locally or nationally, in due course the cost of feeding your dog will fall drastically. Go forth and lobby your friends and neighbours! If you order collectively via the internet or from your local abattoir, you can reduce the cost further.

In order to set up a routine as soon as possible, it makes sense to acquire some good equipment.

Vegetables have to be cooked or pureed in order to enable your dog’s digestive system to break them down. However, raw pureed vegetables contain more vitamins, and are therefore the preferred option. You can also grate the vegetables by hand on a daily basis. But the shavings achieved by grating are still relatively large, which means that the cells are not opened up completely – which they would have to be, if you want your dog to be able to break them down and absorb the nutrients. Because of this all vegetables should be made into a proper puree.

My everyday tip

Freeze a few daily portions of pureed vegetables. This provides you with some emergency rations for hectic moments, when you can defrost them in the microwave. Meat, on the other hand, should never be warmed in the microwave.

The acquisition of a good vegetable blender makes the daily feeding routine considerably easier. There is a huge range of food processors on the market – with regard to the price, have a think which household appliances might also be useful for the family’s food preparation. Do you bake a lot of cakes? Then perhaps you ought to think about buying a kitchen machine that can also mix pastry and sponge mixtures. Make a note of all the applications you need and ask your electrical appliances retailer for advice. Make sure that the food processor has enough power to puree even raw carrots. Because you are expecting to use the food processor on a daily basis, it should be as easy to clean as possible. For lesser requirements an upright blender can be used. It fits into even the smallest of kitchens, has a pleasing design, and can be cleaned quickly and easily.

With good equipment feeding fresh food is much easier.

Once bought, meat should be frozen immediately to make sure that the dog gets fresh food every day.

My everyday tip

After giving it a quick swill, fill the appliance with a bit of water and turn it on for a short moment. This helps to wash any leftover bits of vegetable puree out of hard to reach corners.

To avoid a loss of quality the meat, once bought, should be frozen on the same day. It is best to divide it into daily rations. This way you can take the portion for the next day out of the freezer the night before and let it defrost slowly in the fridge over night. This leaves only the vegetables to be prepared on a daily basis. In case you forget to take the meat out of the fridge, you can warm it up relatively gently by immersing it in warm water.

Plastic containers are useful for freezing food in portions.

I find that dishwasher-proof plastic containers are very useful for this. In contrast to freezer bags they are not only more ecologically sound, but it also makes making portions less time-consuming. In addition you can ‘theme’ the containers in the freezer, i.e. stack them according to their contents, and thus create a certain order inside your freezer. After feeding the dog the containers can disappear in the dishwasher, to be re-used on a future occasion. Freezer bags, on the other hand, take up less space in the deep-freeze.

My everyday tip

If you want to freeze meat in freezer bags, it might be worthwhile to buy a welding device for plastic bags. The device sucks out the air, making the meat take up less space.

You can save yourself the bother of laboriously writing out the content on the label by using a points system. For this purpose adhesive dots available from a stationer’s can be helpful. Assign a colour to each type of meat, write it down and attach the list to the fridge door with a magnet. Stick the respective dots on the containers and bags, depending on their content. After a very short time you will no longer have to consult the list, because you’ll know it by heart. The big advantage is that the other family members will also find it easy to follow the instructions for feeding the dog.

An example:

Red: Beef

Green: Lamb

Yellow: Poultry

Blue: Fish

Black: Game

White: Innards or offal (rumen/omasum)

It’s a good idea to have some wall-mounted scales near the sink. When buying scales please make sure that they have a sufficient maximum capacity, depending on the size and weight of the dog. Most kitchen scales available in the high street tend to have a maximum capacity of only two kilograms.

Mark the containers using sticky dots.

Adapting equipment: a liquid soap dispenser for oil and a sugar dispenser for coconut shavings.

If you don’t want to touch the meat, you can use a pair of barbeque tongs for making the meat portions. Latex gloves available from the chemist have also been found to be useful. Any unease regarding the handling of raw meat tends to wear off quite quickly, however.

A liquid soap dispenser (without the soap, of course) is a good device for getting the right amounts of the necessary oils into the food. The soap dispenser should be opaque or kept in a dark cupboard. Many oils lose their beneficial properties due to exposure to sunlight and daylight. Gift labels from the stationers can tell us what’s inside. They are decorative and easily changeable when switching to a different type of oil. A sugar dispenser can be used for...