When feeding a raw, whole food diet, it is important to take into account your animal friend’s health and digestion. Some will need lightly cooked food, some will thrive on strictly raw food. I mostly feed raw, and the cooked I feed is bone soup or cooked egg whites.
This is what my dogs’ and cats’ meals look like:
- Greta and Albert our dogs: raw room temperature milk, lukewarm bone soup, raw meat with organs and bones, Q’s Super Greens.
Twice a week, I rotate into their diet: beans, grains, sour milk, egg yolk and cooked egg white. I will also add leftovers such as salad, stew and soup when there is some. - Ollie, our Frenchton (Boston Terrier/French Bulldog), has some sensitivities so his meal consists of: raw room temperature milk, lukewarm bone soup, Q’s Super Greens. Three times a week he will have hamburger (from grass fed cattle). Once to twice a week he will have somegrains, beans and soured milk.
- Our cats Alvin, Seymour and Matilda eat meat, organ meat, bones, super greens, bone soup and raw goat or cow milk.
It is really important for dog health nutrition and cat health nutrition to feed our animal friends chemical-free foods; animal friends are smaller than us and metabolize the chemicals much faster. Choose foods that are pesticide-free, organic, and hormone-free whenever possible.
Whole organic/free range or wild game are foods that have not been altered, and contain all the minerals, vitamins, amino acids, enzymes (co-factors) needed by the body to provide optimum nutrition and health.
Enzymes
Enzymes are found in raw food, are destroyed in cooking. They are necessary for metabolic functions and digestion.
Enzymes:
- aid in the digestion of food
- are essential for the production of energy required to run the body
- are vital for a healthy life!
Leaving kibble out for your dog or cat to nibble on is extremely hard on their digestive tract, it causes them to activate digestive enzymes every time they smell the kibble.
Vitamins, minerals and hormones do not function without enzymes.
These special proteins are necessary for:
- Every chemical reaction in the body
- Normal activity of the cells, tissues, fluids and organs
When dogs and cats hunt their prey, it is rich in saturated fats, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and essential fatty acid; especially Omega 3. The only amount of grain a dog would eat in the wild would be predigested and found in the stomach of the dog’s prey.
It is important to re-create what a dog or cat would eat in nature
Dogs are omnivores & cats are obligatory carnivores, feeding cats raw meat, organs; liver/heart, egg yolk, raw bone, bone broth and raw milk is the perfect diabetic cat food! If your cat is an indoor cat add super green foods to prevent hair balls, and the ‘sunshine vitamin’ Vitamin D3 – to benefit the immune system.
If you are going to feed kibble it is worth watching this video, not all kibble is the same!