Why the whole egg? Are the shells nutritious?
Egg shells contain some calcium, my dog doesn't like the shells and will leave them, but she does like the eggs. I just give her the ones I've bought for us as in the UK the hens are tested for salmonella so our eggs are pretty safe.

Raw chicken bones - not cooked?
All bones being fed to the dog should be raw. When bones are cooked they can take on a honeycombed like structure inside, most bird bones have large air cavities or are made of a sponge like structure, I know chickens don't fly well but thats retained and thats how they can splinter as opposed to being ground down by the dog.

Tripe - how about cooked tripe? I know you meant raw in the blurb.
Tripe smells when it's raw, well the 'green' tripe does and thats what you'd be getting from the slaughterhouse. If you cooked the tripe it'd smell even more and so would the house.

Could i mix the complete with the chicken mince?
If you were weaning the dog over from one food to another then yes you'd mix the new food into the old food like normal. I've never weaned a dog or cat onto raw, they've just been changed over. They've not suffered any problems with their digestive system when I've done this but some dogs might.

Do you make the chicken mince or can you buy it?
If your butcher has said he'll mince stuff for you then he'll probably mince the chicken for you, or you could buy yourself a hand mincer and do it yourself but it would take a long time and you'd have a sore arm from turning the handle.

Will most butchers have a stock of waste meats they sell off dor peanuts and is it anygood? Anything to avoid?
Most butchers will have a scraps box, there will be the paddywack, gristle, any bone dusted edges (if they've had to saw through a bone the dust sticks to the meat), meat from just around the neck area (from beef) there will also be quite a lot of pure fat in their scraps box as well. Things to avoid - obviously meat that is turning (just starting to go off), pork apparently should be avoided (this is because when worming procedured weren't as good as they are now tape worms eggs could be found in pork legs afaik), small vertabrae bones as a dog could choke on these.

Would a chicken quarter be too much for a JRT?
That would depend on how big the quarter was and how much the dog weighs.

If I'm wrong on anything I'm sure someone will point it out, but thats just off the top of my head without looking through anything.

No i think we are moving into an age where it is absolutely acceptable to question everything. We have some knowledge and we want to improve our lives for the best.

The dog mince the butcher was talking about has everything in it. kidney liver too so perhaps this is a better way to feed tese things as its a more diluted variety.

My concern too is which type of beef mince? I saw James Martin(chef) cooking it on tv and he demonstrated how much extra fat is in the value mince copmpared to the middle of the road and then the leanest and there were big differences between the three. i don't know how much fat in a diet is a good thing or should we attempt to do the leanest meat as much as possible?

pork apparently should be avoided (this is because when worming procedured weren't as good as they are now tape worms eggs could be found in pork legs afaik)

Would it be sensible to worm more often on this diet? I have thought this b4 now.

Dogs are different to us though, whats healthy for a dog when cooked wouldn't be good for us. I'm sure if I cooked my animals food there'd be fat coming out of it. One of my parents cats is fed on the raw value mince as he has teeth problems (caused by the vet taking some of them out after he'd been kicked in the face, but leaving the corresponding teeth in so his bite is totally out) and he's very healthy. Even humans need fat in their diet otherwise things start to go wrong. If you are worried about the content of the fat go for a middle of the road one. Most butchers won't know exactly how much fat is in their mince but it's generally lower than the value mince.

Butchers have been making pet mince for years, it's generally the things that have been out and haven't sold that day, the facings of some of the steak meat as when exposed to air the meat changes colour and can dry slightly at the edges. Theres a local farm shop near me who makes pet mince, their farm dogs and cats are fed on it and they look really healthy, even when the collie has been rolling in the mud I figure if the farm dog does well on it my dog will do to. Their pet mince is made up of the things that didn't sell during the day, it's got some of everything in it, somedays more chicken, somedays more beef etc; but at £1.49 for 1.5kg it's not expensive.

Thats about the same price as ours - 80p/kg. I am going to try it. Heseemed to know a lot more about it. Two butchers turned their noses up - but they akso told me tripe was hard to get hold of - that translates to we don't want the smell in our shop i think. I live in the country so i thought 'this is rediculous' and its solved now. I think the chap said a whole tripe for £2. is that cheap? He told me dogs do really well on it!

Oh i tried tripe in a white sauce and i liked it!!!!! (cooked of course!) LOL'S I think Jamie Oliver cooked it at a fair once.

Worm as normal, I'm a butcher and tbh I've only ever seen tape worms in a pork once and the meat was condemed at the slaughter house because of this(this was when I was training so over 20 years ago). Worming methods have got better over the years as farmers want healthier livestock. Most butchers wouldn't be mincing whole pork legs anyways and would spot something like that - they end up in a hard round lump in the leg area - and would throw it away (not putting it in the scraps box)

You wouldn't need to worm the dog anymore than you do now, when I was growing up dogs were only wormed every 6 months, unless they were puppies or had a bad case of worms. Most worms in dogs come from fleas as the flea generally carries the worm egg, in the case of tape worms, worms live in the intestines and you won't be feeding your dog the intestines anyway so the possibility of them getting any worms from eating raw food is virtually zero.

The tripe that humans eat is bleached - thats why it's white and doesn't smell. The tripe from the slaughterhouse is 'green' or unbleached, it will have a very small amount of part digested grass in it (one reason why it's called green) and thats okay for the dog to have as it's the residue that stuck if you like to the walls of the stomachs (cows have 4 stomachs, humans eat 3 of them in the various different tripes), it'll be a greenish colour as well as the grass dyes it.

Thanks for your comments today. They are really helpful!

Hi everyone - i've started the raw diet!

We had (dogs!):
1 x raw egg (didn't think much of shell) each
1 chicken wing each
licked out container from mum's ox liver but no solid pieces yet
Currently chewing on a raw bone now and am very very happy.

Mum says is this too quick and will it upset our tums to start this quick?

We have a green whole tripe coming tuesday which she has to portion up and freeze plus hooves. Am I allowed lambs mince?

From Georgey and Milly Mouse x x x x

Hmmm...... we are talking about a Lab here so I would be careful. Dogs tend to know which bones to eat and which ones just to get the meat off and the marrow out but Labs being Labs may like to eat the whole lot whether it's a good idea or not.

I started to see improvements in their stools the next day. Breath was fresher within a few days and they stopped having stinky rear ends after about a week. After a few weeks Milo's teeth were noticably whiter and his coat looked healthier.

Small and solid, colour can vary depending on what's been fed. If they've eaten a lot of chicken my lots tend to be near white, if they've eaten red meats it's darker. They should start to crumble (sp?) within a few days if left. Sometimes Milo's crumble as they hit the floor but not noticed this with the pups.

From memory: I started feeding just beef mince and chicken wings then introduced kidneys and hearts towards the end of the first week and then one new thing each week after that.

Never ever feed cooked bones. They can splinter and cause internal perforations.


Cooking food defeats the whole object of raw. Cooked foods are not natural, the nutritional content and molecular strutcture of the food is alterted making it less digestable.


Why do you want to feed chicken mince. All meats are far more beneficial whole. Chicken mince isn't widely available but wings, thighs, legs are and are cheap give the dog a better mouth and jaw workout during feeding time.

Simple answer; don't put them in kennels, send them to me and I'll feed them raw!

I use butchers beef mince, no idea about the fat content but don't forget that dogs do need fat in there diet so don't be too concerned about it.

How many new foods the dog will tolerate depends on the dog, she should be okay but if not just stick to one fairly balanced food (such as chicken wings) for a week or so and then slowly introduce more ingredients.

Nice reply Aj, thank you.

Went down to Co-Op last night and got some chicken and some beef. Only because the butchers was well and truly shut by the time i cycled back home. I HOPE that the butchers is a cheaper alternative as Daisy needs about 675g of food a day according to the 2-3% of 27kg. Well for £5.45 i got 600g of chicken legs and 300g of Beef bits. Thats about £28.61 a week on feeding her alone !!! .... AT LEAST !

Meaning instead of spending £9 - £15 a month on crappy dog biscuits im spending £114.44 on meat....i know that dog biscuits are SO bad for her but really, £114 on dog food ?!? I thought it was supposed to be cheaper.

Please tell me this is just cos i am buying from the co-op ? Please tell me i am being a rediculous noob and have overlooked something trivial that saves me about £99 a month !

Cant afford that atall !

*worry*