Feeding the BARF Diet

Are you considering feeding your dog the BARF diet? (BARF, in this case, stands for Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods.)

Basically, when you feed your dog a BARF diet, you feed him all things raw and you have to get the percentages right and do all the nutritional balancing yourself. Your dog will eat things like raw chickens, raw eggs, and raw beef, along with certain veggies, cottage cheese, and other sources of protein.

In some ways, feeding a BARF diet is easier than feeding kibble–you’ll be able to pick up healthy, safe dog food right at the grocery store from your butcher–but it’s also more costly. And, if you have a big dog you may have to increase your trips to the grocery store. (For DH and I, I go grocery shopping every two weeks, when we fed Vance the BARF diet, I had to go every three days because he needed so much fresh meat–something we don’t eat much of around here.)

We tried the BARF diet to prevent dog ear infections for Vance, and he did enjoy it. But ultimately, it was just too much work and I wasn’t entirely sure that I was feeding him proper amounts of all the essential nutrients. So, we switched him to Canidae dog food and haven’t looked back.

If you’d like to try the BARF diet, though, Amazon offers a great book on the topic. How about you? What do you feed your dog?