Raw Food

Question
Hi Marcus, we have just adopted our first Sibe from the UK welfare association we have over here in the UK. My question relates to raw food - chicken etc. as we would like to incorporate this into our husky's diet safely. He is 3 years old in November, and constantly hungry! We give him 1.5 mugs of dry food twice per day, however he is still begging / sniffing for food. I will say that he is underweight at the moment also and therefore wondered if the introduction of some raw meat would help.

Thanks

Answer
High fat and high protein diets usually are pretty good for Sibes and their efficient metabolisms.  I recommend that their daily kibble contain 30% protein and 20% fat minimum, so that should be a good start to help make sure they are getting calorie rich foods.  You may even notice that you don't need to provide as much kibble then.

As far as raw feeding, I don't recommend a total switch to a bones and raw food diet (although I've heard some great success stories with it), but I go with it as a supplement/treat.  If the dog is up to date on shots, and generally healthy, there is little to no risk if you are providing it from a trusted butcher and feeding fresh food.  I would start off small, and just see how it goes.  My breeder recommended a tablespoon of raw ground beef with each feeding, and it worked pretty well.  You may want to try just once and see how the dog responds and making sure stools are still firm, the dog doesn't vomit, etc.  Then try maybe one feeding every 2 or 3 days has meat, then once a day, etc.  Just build up slowly and see how it goes.  Some good options:

1) Any good ground meat (beef, pork, bison, etc.)
2) Chicken (uncooked - bones are ok if they remain uncooked, although I don't usually give them anything with smaller bones.  If I allow them to have uncooked chicken with bones, I usually go with drumsticks)
3) Fish - I usually lightly cook the fish, but that's just me
4) Steak . . . higher quality the better.  Nothing beats a good New York Strip or filet mignon . . . oh . . . wait . . . um . . . for the dog?  Cut off some fat and feel free to toss it to them :)  I keep my filets!!!

Hope that helps, but I think the meat would definitely help.  Just start slow and you should be good.  Also, there are some good resources on the net if you run a search on Bones and Raw Food (BARF) diets for dogs.  They'll give you some other supplements that you may want to try and things to look for to make sure things are staying healthy.  I definitely recommend looking further into it if you are doing much more than a tablespoon or two per feeding or beginning to replace the kibble intake with raw food as you'll want to make sure to keep an eye on the nutritional values.