LOL, Gerry, I was typing almost exactly what you said when I was timed out. I had to log back in. Chicken backs for the RMB part...... you can't go wrong, IMO, because of the cartilage-y bones, the good ratio of bone-to-meat, and the extremely low cost.
I agree about the Ester C too.
Well, I will say that I learned a lot from my last dog on what NOT to feed for Good Health and healthy Joints. Of course, it's the diet that the mainstream advocates and my last dog grew SO FAST as a puppy it was incredible. She also did too much running around as a puppy. I learned that mainstream commerical kibble (Iams, Puek-anuba) is not a good thing if you want good probability of healthy joints.
Here is what I am feeding my puppy and you can tell me if I can Improve this:
-I feed mostly Ground beef, Ox Tails, Beef Hearts and Meat Scraps @ 5% of Body Weight. I also give him a raw marrow bone every night so he wont chew my ankles off when I am watching the Sopranos. I re-evaluate this number every month when I weigh him. I tried 10% but it was too much. He is 40#'s @ 16 weeks so I now feed him 2 pounds per day split into an AM and a PM Feeding. I feed him more if he is hungry of course!
1 tsp of Cold Pressed Flax Oil
1 tsp of Alaskan Salmon Oil
1 tsp of Olive Oil
200 IU Vitamin E
2000 Milligrams of Ester-C
1 Raw Organic Brown Egg WITH the Shell
1 Spoon of Organic Plain Yogurt
He is growing at a very moderate rate and is as healthy as a puppy could be. He has never been sick and he has also never seen any kibble in his life. With Grim ZPS in my Pup's Pedigree, I have to pray for good hips!! :-k
Some dogs are allergic to flax, but otherwise I think it's a good food (either as ground seeds or as oil).
Are there enough RMBs? It's hard to tell.
The first ingredient being ground beef is what makes me ask.
Is it just the first thing you listed, or is it the major ingredient?
If it's the major ingredient, then it might be significantly off the ratio of calcium to phosphorous that you'd find in a wild prey diet.
The other thing I'd say is that heart is really a muscle meat, IMO, although not everyone agrees. I'd add a little liver or kidneys, I think (maybe 5% of the total diet).
These comments sound number-y, I know, but really the idea is just to replicate what the canid has evolved eating, which I think is mainly whole small prey (including stomach) and most of large prey (except the first stomach of big ruminants) and a little produce, and to make up for the lack of long-chain Omega 3s in modern diets by giving fish oil and E.
I would include a small amount of appropriate produce. (Not a big item, but one I don't want to withhold when the animal on his own would priobably eat it in one way or another.)
Timber wolves (gray wolves) eat small amounts of ripe berries and young greens. I know there is a ton of argument over this issue, but not for me any more since the U.C. Yellowstone Gray Wolf Project (I keep saying Yosemite, but it's Yellowstone and I'm brain-dead).
The project was a study of how reintroducing gray wolves into the ecosystem impacted other species, but for me it cleared up a lot of stuff about what they actually choose to eat when prey is plentiful and they are unaffected by human intervention. They do eat small amounts of produce, both partly-digested in some of their prey and growing in the area.
But I digress. :lol:
