to Live a Long, Healthy Life? Healthy Pet
Don’t You Want Your Pet
By Camlyn Miller-Stevens
D
id you know that your pets will live healthier lives by eating raw food? Specifically, a Biologically Appropriate Raw Food or the BARF Diet, as it is sometimes called. This is a type of
natural diet that consists of raw meat, bones, organs, and veggies -- the vegetables being primarily for the dogs, not cats. With raw feeding, what you see is what you get, natural raw products without preservatives or fillers. A raw diet should be composed of the same quality of ingredients that you would feed yourself, but fed in the raw state, the bones and the organs being more optional for us. I know that eating raw meat sounds less than appealing but take a step back and think about it. Dogs were domesticated a few thousand years ago and today they still share about 98% of the same genetics as the wolf. Their jaw structure is very closely related. This holds true if you are sitting and reading this next to a Papillion or a Great Dane.
Cats were domesticated even later than dogs and are also closely related to their larger wild ancestors. The stories of the first domesticated cats come from Egypt, where they were enlisted to protect grain silos from rodents. They were so successful at it they were regarded as gods. There isn’t a cat today that doesn’t hunt, or at least try, given the opportunity. By feeding our pets a raw food or BARF Diet we are bring-
ing them back to their roots and giving them what their systems are actually designed to eat. A raw diet is what they have eaten for hundreds if not thousands of generations before the invention of commercial pet food, or kibble. In the early 1900’s commercial pet food emerged in the marketplace. The mid-1960’s is when there was a major marketing effort against feeding table scraps and promoting the importance of feeding processed foods to pets. Before kibble was even a glimmer in the eyes of businesses
many Europeans -- and I am sure Americans -- were feeding their pets meat-based diets, getting scraps from the butcher or hunting ex- cursions, leftovers of food from the table, or if worst came to worst, the animals would hunt down their meals. The beauty of raw food is that they contain no preservatives, fill- ers, or things that you have never heard of. Bones, raw meat, organs, vegetables, and nothing more are the components of a raw diet. There are also many benefits to your pet’s health.
34 Natural Nutmeg April 2014
Benefits of Raw Feeding: • Natural Hydration: Most raw foods are at least 68% mois-
ture while most commercial kibbles are under 10%. Dogs and cats require water to survive just like we do. It is necessary for metabolic function, regulation of temperature, not to mention a building block of life. It is always encouraged that you leave water out for your animals, but when feeding raw foods, your pets will drink less water because they are getting naturally hydrated from their food.
• Smaller, less odorous stools which turn into dust within
a few hours: Maybe you haven’t ever done the input to output comparison mindfully, but the next time you scoop the litter box or go on poop scoop detail, think about how much you fed your pet. Kibble, being mostly starch-based, can’t be broken down and uti- lized effectively; therefore stools are massive and smelly. With raw food, stools are small because your pets are digesting and utilizing all of the nutrients present in the food. The stool turns to white in a few hours because of the presence of natural calcium in the raw food and when the stool becomes dust, it will eventually blow away in the wind.
• Cleaner teeth and gums: Have you paid to clean your ani-
mal’s teeth or even brushed their teeth on a semi regular basis? You need to do that because their mouths lack the enzyme needed to break down the starch in kibble. We suggest feeding them whole bones (often referred to as RMB or Raw Meaty Bones) such as neck bones. Everything runs parallel in the neck making the neck perpen- dicular to the teeth, thereby acting as a natural dental floss.
Oma’s Pride’s philosophy is to feed whole bones in the morn-
ing. This gives the pet’s system something to digest and helps prepare for the digestion of nutrients in the evening raw feeding. Recreational bones such as long bones or marrow bones scale the teeth, and knuckle bones massage the gums. The task of chewing and eating bones stimulates pets both physiologically and psycho-
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