We feed our Red-Dawn dogs a fresh meat diet. We started adding fresh food to our dogs’ diet starting in the 1980’s. Since the 1990’s we have fed our dogs a raw meat and bone diet. Getting a Red-Dawn puppy means you are getting a dog from multi generations of healthy eating.
I want to feed my dog meat, but what if my dog has digestive problems or never ate raw meat?
To improve your dog’s health by addressing gut microbiome issues and ensuring proper nutrition, consider the following guidelines:
Fecal Transplant Pills: Look into Doggie Biome fecal transplant pills, which contain healthy dog feces in a pill form. This can help restore your dog’s gut microbiome balance. There is a gut restore product for raw fed dogs and a second gut restore for kibble fed dogs.
Avoid Starch Completely: Do not feed your dog any starch, including rice, corn, wheat, potato, legumes, peas, or grains. Most kibble contains 30%-70% starch, so it’s best to stop feeding kibble to your dog. Starch can negatively impact your dog’s health. Dogs should eat a majority meat diet.
Diet Transition:
- Cooked Meat: Start with low-fat cooked meat if your dog is currently ill or sensitive.
- Raw Meat: Once your ill/sensitive dog shows improvement or if they are not sick to begin with, transition to a raw meat diet. Approximately 90% of dogs on raw meat can handle higher fat content as a portion of their diet, considering meat with 20%-30% fat as high fat. Dogs need 10%-20% overall fat in their diet.
Bone Consumption: Ensure your dog gets plenty of bone in their diet. For smaller or older dogs, soft RAW bones like chicken feet or wings are ideal. Alternatively, use bone meal if your dog has difficulty chewing bones. Avoid feeding cooked bones as they can be harmful.
Main Diet Components:
- Beef / Lamb / Turkey / Pork / Chicken / any meat (cooked or raw)
- Chicken Feet/Wings (raw) or, any soft bone that your dog is capable of chewing up. We also give whole sheep bones to our Goldens. The alternative is Ground Bone added to the food.
- Eggs: (Raw or cooked)
- Liver & Other Organs: (Raw or cooked)
- Sardines or any fatty oily fish: feed fresh cooked or raw is ideal. Or for convenience, do canned, low sodium fish in water. Feed 1 Oz per 20 lbs dog weight, 3-7 days a week.
- These foods should be fed in order of volume, with beef or other red meat being the primary component. Red meat is the most nutrient dense. Also, rotate your meats over the course of the week to ensure your dog is getting a variety of nutrients.
Don’t want to feed raw meat & raw bone?
Yes, you may cook the meat. But, bone cannot ever be cooked. You can feed raw soft edible bones, ground raw bone, dry bone meal or veggies. Veggies are for fiber and stool consistency and not for nutrition. The veggies should be ground, purée or soft cooked. If you choose to do cooked meat with veggies, please do research on how to feed a healthy balanced diet. We highly suggest you feed raw bone and not veggies. An alternative for veggies is Dr Harvey’s dried fruit/veggie blend. To feed your dog: Hydrate Dr Harvey’s with hot water, add meat (cooked or raw), then add fish oil or oily fish.
Do not fear feeding raw meat. As long as the meat is fresh and not rancid your dog’s gut can handle any normal bacteria on the meat. We have fed a lot of dogs raw meat for over 40 years and zero issues.
Pre-Made Raw Food Diets for Dogs
Many pre-made raw meat dog diets are available at pet stores and online. Our favorite pre-made raw meat diet is Texas Tripe. If you live in Texas you can meet the freezer truck when they are in your town for Free. This puts the price of their food at $2-$4 per pound. Rotating the meat source per day or per meal is best. Also to have a complete diet a dog needs: Meat, Organs, ground bone OR veggies for fiber, Egg, Fatty Fish. The key to good nutrition is variety. A dog does not need a complete diet for every meal. But he does need his food to rotate through his nutritional needs over the course of a week. Please use a vitamin each day like NuVet Plus or Missing Link. Our favorite options for getting started at Texas Tripe are listed here:
- Tex’s Raw Beef PMP- this is a beef and veggie blend, not complete
- Back To Basics – A 5 PROTEIN VARIETY PACK – 20 lbs box variety pack of multiple meat blended rolls
- Beginners Choice- a mostly complete diet, but missing eggs
- Chicken/Pork/Salmon- a complete diet, includes eggs
You can feed only the premade diet, or use it as a portion of your dog’s diet. From our research, we have not found any pre-made cooked diet that has ingredients we suggest due to high starch.
Resources for feeding a fresh meat diet to dogs
- Dr Lew Olson is a great source for how to properly feed a dog. Her book K9 Nutrition is wonderful. She has an informative Facebook group of the same name.
