[Dawn A]

Hello!
I am pretty new to raw feeding, and although I have done (what seems like) extensive research on the topic, I still have a few questions. Our pup is 12 weeks this Saturday and we started him on raw at 6 weeks. We tried a handful of proteins including chicken, beef, pork and turkey, as well as eggs and goat’s milk to begin with, although the last two we only fed a few times before finding that it tended to result in runny stools. More recently we have been feeding about 18-20oz. per day of chicken (we took a whole chicken and quartered I, partitioning it into daily allotments that we freeze immediately, then partially thaw before feeding) and occasional liver, gizzards and hearts and all has been well…until about two days ago. He’s not acting sick (so much energy!) and eats with gusto, but his stools are getting looser. He will have one solid in the morning, then the rest will be runny to completely liquid. Among possible solutions I have read are removing the skin (we haven’t yet, but will be trying that over the next couple of days) and adding more bone (currently we are supplementing with extra chicken breast meat, but are considering legs instead for the bone…plus he loves them!). Any ideas or feedback would be great! Thank you in advance!

[charles h]

Hey,

Your definitely not adding enough bone to the diet. It’s very hard with a young dog to get the consistency right. Our puppy refused to eat any chicken bone and we had to literally starve her but it is all we could do to avoid runny stools.

She now eats a full raw diet with no complaints and looks healthier for it. The trick is to not give in and feed her ‘other’ food just to get them to eat.

Stick with raw and it wil work itself out.

[C4D]

Dawn A,

I feed raw, but I use a commercial, complete and balanced diet. If you are making your own, please research how to make a balanced homemade recipe. This is particularly critical since your dog is a puppy and nutritional deficiencies and/or imbalances can cause some really big problems as they grow, particularly in large breeds.

Dr. Becker, Whole Dog Journal, dogaware.com are a few places to start.

[pugmomsandy]

Dr Becker’s book has adjustments for puppies as well.

[Author]

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