New! We have added a new Subscription Service so you can have your favorite products delivered to you automatically on a schedule. You can change the schedule and cancel any time you wish. Your Credit Card or PayPal Account is charged automatically with each shipment!
We have also repackaged our Frozen Product for more efficient shipping. Now it comes in packs of 2 containers, so you get more bang for your buck!
Article from WebMD
http://pets.webmd.com/dogs/guide/raw-dog-food-dietary-concerns-benefits-and-risks
Raw Dog Food: Dietary Concerns, Benefits, and Risks
Are raw food diets for dogs an ideal meal plan or a dangerous fad? Experts weigh in.
By Elizabeth Lee
WebMD Pet Health Feature Reviewed by Audrey Cook, BVM&S
Raw dog food diets are controversial. But the popularity of the diets — which emphasize raw meat, bones, fruits, and vegetables — is rising.
Racing greyhounds and sled dogs have long eaten raw food diets. Extending those feeding practices to the family pet is a more recent idea, proposed in 1993 by Australian veterinarian Ian Billinghurst. He called his feeding suggestions the BARF diet, an acronym that stands for Bones and Raw Food, or Biologically Appropriate Raw Food.
Billinghurst suggested that adult dogs would thrive on an evolutionary diet based on what canines ate before they became domesticated: Raw, meaty bones and vegetable scraps. Grain-based commercial pet foods, he contended, were harmful to a dog’s health.
Many mainstream veterinarians disagree, as does the FDA. The risks of raw diets have been documented in several studies published in veterinary journals.
Potential benefits of the raw dog food diet that supporters tout include:
Shinier coats
Healthier skin
Cleaner teeth
Higher energy levels
Smaller stools
Potential risks include:
Threats to human and dog health from bacteria in raw meat
An unbalanced diet that may damage the health of dogs if given for an extended period
Potential for whole bones to choke an animal, break teeth or cause an internal puncture
Since Billinghurst’s book,Give Your Dog a Bone, was published, several other types of raw dog food diets have emerged, including commercially processed raw food diets that are frozen or freeze-dried and combination diets that use blends of grains, vegetables, and vitamins that are mixed with raw meat purchased by the owner at the grocery store.
Raw dog food recipes and meal suggestions are readily found online and in books. Interest from pet owners continues to grow, with the widespread recall of melamine-contaminated pet food in 2007 bringing in new followers.
A raw dog food diet typically consists of:
Muscle meat, often still on the bone
Bones, either whole or ground
Organ meats such as livers and kidneys
Raw eggs
Vegetables like broccoli, spinach, and celery
Apples or other fruit
Some dairy, such as yogurt
Today marks a landmark for Primal Pet Products. We have our first Internet Sale! Kinda. Actually, a woman that saw our booth at the Grayslake Dogs Show called and said she found us on the internet but did not want to pay the shipping costs since she was close to Palatine, so she came over and bought one of our frozen products for her two German Shepherds.
If we can sell one, we can sell a million…..
From dogfoodadvisor.com:
As unsavory as it may seem, it is completely natural for a wolf toconsume the entire animal. Meat, bones, organs and all. As direct descendants of wolves, dogs are simply not genetically optimized to consume the 50% carbohydrate content of today’s commercial kibbles.
So, how do these diets compare?
The Ancestral Diet
Compared to Dry Kibble
No one can argue the dry baked pellets we call dog food aren’tconvenient. Yet the nutrient profile of a dry kibble is nowhere near the nutrient content of a dog’s ancestral diet.
Notice the higher carbohydrate content of the kibble compared to the dog’s natural ancestral diet. Or how about the dramaticallylower protein and fat levels?
The Benefits of a Raw Diet
Feeding a raw dog food diet has many notable benefits…
There have been many reports of improved health when chronically ill pets were switched from a commercial product to a raw dog food.
The Downside
of a Raw Dog Food Diet
A raw dog food diet can’t touch the convenience of a kibble. Just measure and pour. It just doesn’t get any easier.
Yet besides the lack of convenience, there’s another critical issue.Bacterial contamination.
Salmonella and E. coli germs can always be a potential problem with raw meats. Yet the risk of food-borne disease is actually quite low.
That is, low risk for dogs. But not for humans.
That’s because a dog’s digestive system is shorter and more acidic.
Which makes canine infections like these fairly rare.
The real risk of food-borne disease is actually greater for a dog’s human caretakers — not the dog.
Yet with proper care and handling, this risk can be dramatically reduced.
How to Use Our List
Below you’ll find a list of the Advisor’s suggested raw dog foods. Of course, this list should not be considered a complete catalog of all the raw dog foods on the market.
For there are others. Many others.
We only provide this small group as a starting point.
As a matter of fact, if you know of a specific dog food you believe we should have included on this list, please feel free to share your recommendations in the Comments section below.
Or if you’re looking for some suggestions yourself, be sure to look through our readers’ Comments to find more good ideas.
Carol and I just finished up our Vendor Booth at the Wheaton Dog Show last weekend. We sold some product and met lots of new people and it was a great success! We are looking forward to the Lake County Show coming up this weekend.
