BARF

How To Make Raw Pet Food

Tabby cat holding a fish in its mouth.

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I’m Suzi McIntyre, a vet with over 35 year’s experience. I have realized that feeding a natural raw pet food diet is the best way to keep your pets healthy. You can choose to feed raw pet food!

This is the way I have been feeding my dogs and cats since 1996. Remember that what we are trying to do is emulate what they would naturally eat in the wild. So for dogs and cats, that’s mice, rabbits, fish, eggs and so on.

So we can give them raw meat, raw bone, raw offal, raw liquidized greens and Pet Plus which together provide those same nutrients and micronutrients.

Do Pets Actually Like Raw Pet Food?

Your dogs and cats will be very excited about eating real food, so if you started with a whole carcase, they may well try to gobble it down without chewing, which could cause problems.

Minced Meat And Bone

Therefore I always recommend starting with minced meat and bone mixes. You can buy frozen raw minced meat and bone, like Prize Choice, from the pet shop, or order online. Let it thaw naturally, in a bowl, overnight. Do not use microwaves as they completely denature food and make it virtually indigestible!

Liquidised Greens

Liquidize or pulverize some green vegetables and mix with the raw meat and bone mince. Dogs do well on about half and half liquidized greens to meat and bone mince.

Cats need barely a teaspoon of greens mixed with their meat and bone mince.

A High Quality Supplement

I have created a powdered whole food supplement called PET Plus to add to this mixture providing all the micronutrients your dog or cat would get from eating the whole animals, guts and all!

Pet Chews

Dogs usually love to chew carrots, broccoli stalks and other tough vegetables. Cats often enjoy chewing melon skins. You can give them meaty chunks to gnaw too, but remember that if there is no bone in the meaty chunks, use in addition to the minced meat and bone mixes.

After about a month, you could start offering raw chicken wings for them to chew. The next week, you could give raw meaty chicken drumsticks to dogs and big cats.

Then, when they’re used to all that, you can give them raw chicken carcasses too. Always remember to add PET Plus to make sure they’re getting all those vital antioxidants, minerals, vitamins, essential fatty acids, probiotics, probiotics and enzymes