Hi Courtney,
In regards to your questions:
I would get full blood panels on each dog prior to starting your new diet so that you have a baseline to compare back to. I’ve seen it recommended to repeat blood panels every 6 months for dogs on homemade diets.
Some feel comfortable feeding bones.. I do not… I do not think the risk is worth the benefit. If using raw bone as your calcium source I feel finely ground is much safer. Disclosure: I do not feed a raw diet. If I did I’d either use a commercial HPP product or would buy large cuts and partially cook to kill off the bacteria both on the surface and those that have migrated deeper and grind myself. I remain unconvinced that dogs tolerate food borne pathogens significantly better then people do.
What supplements you use are up to your own personal philosophy. The primary concern is that you feed a balanced diet. Unfortunately, when the raw diets that people were feeding have been analyzed, most people who participated in the study did not accomplishing this.
I understand the appeal of a simple 80/10/10 mix but honestly I think it requires just as much attention to detail to balance a raw diet as it does to balance a cooked diet.
There are a few veterinary nutritionists that will balance a raw diet, most will not. Veterinary nutritionists legally can not consult directly with you unless they examine your dog which is why you found that they do not do phone/e mail consults. However they can consult indirectly via your veterinarian. Your vet orders the consult and works with the nutritionist on your behalf.
In regards to carbohydrates, people do not have a dietary requirement for carbohydrates and dogs do not either. Both species require carbohydrate from a metabolic standpoint, the body just has to generate what the diet doesn’t supply. But I don’t understand this statement “Carbohydrates carry significantly less calories by volume than protein does” Protein and carbs are considered to carry the same number of calories /gram, the volumes involved will depend on the water content.
