I feed all of my pets barf (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) and they do extremely will on it. The diet mainly consists of raw meaty bones, i.e chicken carcasses, meaty lamb bones and the occasional rabbit. It was my brother who first told me about feeding dog’s raw meat when he got his Husky. At the time i did not believe it was a good thing, so I quietly disagreed. When my first dog, a German Shepherd bitch (Niena), was diagnosed with enzyme deficiency, causing her to have foul smelling diarrhea, my brother again mentioned raw feeding and suggested I try it with Niena. I still was not sure about it, but because of my lack of knowledge about the subject at that time, I opened my mind to the possibility. I went onto the internet and found lots of information about natural feeding. It was then I found out about Dr. Ian Billinghurst and the Barf Diet, so I went out and bought his book "Give Your Dog A Bone". It was also on the internet that I found out about Dr. Pottenger's cats.
Dr. Pottenger had found that a lot of the cats he
used in his experiments died post-operative, he fed the cats on a diet
that, according to the experts of his day, was the most nutritional.
The cats exceeded the food supply available so he began ordering raw
meat scraps from the local meat packing plant and fed this to a
separate group of cats. To his surprise he found that this group of
cats seemed much healthier and their death rate was much lower than
that of the cooked meat group. At some point this spurred Pottenger to
begin a study that lasted ten years from 1932-1942 with three
generations of cats, over this time there was approximately 900 cats
involved.
Adequate Diet A: 1/3 raw milk, cod liver oil and 2/3 raw meat.
Deficient Diet B: 1/3 raw meat, cod liver oil and 2/3 pasteurized milk.
Deficient Diet C: 1/3 raw meat, cod live oil and 2/3 evaporated milk.
Deficient Diet D: 1/3 raw meat, cod liver oil and 2/3 sweetened condensed milk.
Deficient Diet E: raw metabolized vitamin D milk only.
The cats eating only raw food were disease free and healthy, generation after generation after generation.
The cats eating the cooked and processed foods had
all kinds of problems.
By the end of the first generation of cats in the B-E groups the cats
started to develop degenerative diseases and become quite lazy. By the
second generation the cats had developed degenerative diseases by
mid-life and had started losing their coordination. By the end of the
third generation the cats had developed degenerative diseases very
early in life and some were born blind and weak and had a much shorter
life span. Many of the third generation cats could not even produce
offspring. There was an abundance of parasites and vermin, while skin
diseases and allergies increased from an incidence of five percent in
normal cats to over ninety percent in the third generation of deficient
cats. Kittens of this generation did not survive six months. Bones
became soft and pliable and the cats suffered from adverse personality
changes. Males became docile while females became more aggressive. The
cats suffered from most of degenerative diseases encountered in human
medicine and died out totally by the fourth generation.
A diet consisting exclusively of raw milk and raw meat was the only adequate intake which ensured the maintenance of optimal health for cats. Cats on all-raw diet showed good bone structure with wide palates and plenty of space for the teeth as well as excellent bone density, shiny fur and lack of parasites and disease. They reproduced with ease and were gentle and easy to handle.
Cooking the meat, or substituting heat processed milks for raw, resulted in heterogeneous reproduction and physical degeneration that escalated with each successive generation.
The changes in the facial structure and beginning of degenerative diseases that Dr. Pottenger observed in cats on deficient diets mirrored the human degeneration that Dr. Price found in tribes and villages that had abandoned traditional foods.
Although this study was done with cats I am in no doubt whatsoever that if it had been done with dogs the dramatic and very frightening results would be the same.
I was convinced, so I changed Niena's diet and was
amazed when, within 24 hours, she started having normal poo's and
stopped eating it. Within a week she was like a different dog. She was
much more active and became more responsive to her training, her coat
changed from a dull greyish black to a bright and shiny black, her skin
was no longer dry and flaky and her eyes were much brighter and full of
mischief, like they should be. The vet was also surprised that she no
longer suffered with enzyme deficiency, but was still against the diet
I had put her on, even though the benefits of it were more than
evident. I cannot understand why my vet still believes that feeding my
dogs food that they have not evolved to eat is better than feeding them
the food they have evolved to eat. It has been proven time and time
again that humankind does not know better than nature. If dogs were not
meant to eat raw meat and bones then surely they never would have come
into existence.
I recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about this diet to buy the book, it is very informative and it takes you through the diet step by step, although I must admit I do not follow the diet rigidly, I feed my dogs and cats what I believe to be right, and so should you.
Dogs can live on pretty much any kind of food as can we, but does that mean that any kind of food is good for them or us?
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