NATURAL DIET
If a Diet Is Unnatural. Disease Will Keep Company With Those Subject To It �.
Juliette de Bairacli Levy.
Author of "The Complete Herbal Hand Book For the Dog & Cat" first published in 1955.
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Natural Rearing
I started natural rearing in 1984 after reading Juliette de Bairacli Levys book �The Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat�. Natural Rearing is a practice developed by the author in the late 1930�s, after observing wild animals and how they survived. Juliette de Bairacli Levy is known as the grandmother of NR and was certainly well ahead of her time, she has spent a life time studying animals and nature. To read her books on diet and herbal medicine is indeed an experience and after reading her books you will realize that what she foretold about the decline in the health of animals fed an unnatural diet has indeed come true.
If you go through the many web sites available on NR you will see there are many different ideas about how, why and what to feed your dog. Some people feed only meat, offal and bones, while others will add vegetables, fruit, grains and dairy. You have to find a diet that you are comfortable with and also more importantly, which suites your dog.
Do a lot of research, read as much as you can, so that you understand why a dog should be fed this way. I have tried my dogs on a meat offal and bone only diet, but they didn't do so well on it, so grains where put back onto the menu as was all the other bits and pieces that they have with these meals.
As with humans, dogs do have their likes and dislikes, strange as it may seem. I have a young bitch who flatly refuses to eat pork, if I offer her a pigs foot she will take it from me but will drop it on the floor and come back to see what else there is, it could stay there all night but she will not eat it. If I offer her a pork bone in one hand and a chicken frame or a piece of lamb flap in the other she will take what ever is in the other hand.
Two of the boys will not eat kangaroo and I once tried all my dog�s with horse meat, they all refused to eat it, mind you I don't blame them, the smell was awful, even if they had have eaten it, I wouldn't have given it to them anymore, it made me feel ill, and I had the smell with me for days afterwards!!
I feed my dogs a small cereal meal 5 mornings a week which is based on rolled oats and barley with a few additives. They love this meal. I think just as much as their meat meal going by the yodeling that goes on when they hear me coming.
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Grain forms only a very small part of a dog�s diet, but a very important one a dog cannot digest whole raw vegetables or cereals, so some form of processing has to be done. The best way is to put the veggies through a juicer a food processor or a blender. If done in a juicer the pulp should be mixed back in to the juice, the cereal has to be flaked [as in porridge oats] and soaked in either water, milk or vegetable water or the grains can be sprouted.
In the wild a wolf or any other wild meat eating animal would have the whole prey animal to devour including the intestines which is full of vegetable matter, seeds, bark from trees herbs, etc. This is all semi-digested ,which is the only way a dog would be able to eat it and get any goodness out of it.
If you are able to feed a whole prey animal to your dog, great, rabbits or chickens are good, but not everyone is able to have a have a half eaten goat or sheep lying around in their back yard for days or weeks, while the dogs pick away at it, so we have to feed them a natural diet the best way we can.
In the past my dogs have caught their own chickens,[mine] and the next door neighbours guinea fowls [only because they were silly enough to go into the dog run], rabbits, snakes, lizards, birds and eaten the whole thing with great enthusiasm. This is of course the best and natural way for a dog to eat, but not always possible.
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THIS IS THE WAY I FEED MY DOGS.
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BREAKFAST
Rolled oats and barley soaked overnight in either water , vegetable water or rose hip tea.
Added to this the next morning
1tsp honey
1tsp desiccated coconut
1dsp wheat germ
1dsp yoghurt [plain with live cultures, no sugar added]
Eggs can be added to this meal, the finely crushed shell should be added as well.
Mashed up fruit or veggies can be added to this meal. Anything you have in the fridge .
The fruit if given should be very ripe but not rotten.
Sometimes I add some LSA mix or Tahini.
I also add some cottage cheese or ricotta cheese.
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MAIN MEAL
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Raw meat, either chicken, beef, lamb, beef or lamb heart, although a muscle meat, a lot of people class heart as offal. The meat can either be minced or in large pieces.
Although it is preferable to have the meat in large pieces, some dogs are very clever at eating around the veggies and the other additives.
Twice a week raw offal should be given.
Green tripe is wonderful if you can get it [especially here in Australia].
Mackerel is also given twice a week
Veggies put through a juicer or processor. Any green veggie, carrots, sweet potato, whatever is in the fridge except white potato and onion.
An egg can be added once or twice a week [with the shell, finely crushed]
Make up the rest of the meal with some raw meaty bones eg. Lamb flaps, chicken or turkey frames, chicken wings, legs, thighs, brisket bones, any kind of meaty bones as long as they are raw.
NEVER EVER GIVE COOKED BONES.
To this meal I add -
¼ tps seaweed meal
1tsp nettle or alfalfa powder
2-3 fish oil capsules or 1 dsp flax oil
1 clove of fresh garlic
Some fresh herbs are also added, what ever I have on hand.
This pm meal is given 3 times a week the other two nights they will have just big meaty bones.
On day 6 a non meat/bone meal is give consisting of the above cereal meal.
Day 7 is a fast day. After a week of good feeding a dogs digestive system is ready for a rest.
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Puppy Diet
I usually start to wean my puppies between
4-5 weeks old, depending of course on mum.
The first meal my puppies will have is -
Slippery elm and honey mixed together with milk [raw goats milk if possible].
After about 2 days I will add some fine oat meal and almond meal.
When the pups can handle this I will introduce a meal of raw beef or chicken. I will slowly keep adding different things, so by the time the pups are 6 weeks old they are eating 4 small meals a day consisting of:
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Breakfast
Oats and barley, soaked in milk and rose hip tea
1tsp honey
1 tsp desiccated coconut
1tsp wheat germ
some mashed up fruit
yoghurt
some slippery elm can be added to this meal
an egg 2-3 times a week
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Lunch
Any raw meat, either minced or in small chunks.
Tea
Raw meat and veggies
Plus, seaweed meal just the tip of a teaspoon
½ tsp alfalfa powder or nettle powder
1 fish oil capsule or ½ tsp flax oil
small amount of garlic
some fresh herbs
rose hip tea or vitamin c powder
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Evening meal
A small bowl of milk with honey and slippery elm can be given late evening to settle the puppies down before bed time.
Plus mum should still be feeding them.
At about 5 or 6 week of age I start to introduce meaty bones, chicken necks[large ones],wings, chicken legs, lamb bones, anything that is nice and meaty.
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At first the pups usually just mouth it and play with it, but it doesn't take them long to realise what to do with it. It�s amazing how quickly instinct takes over and before long they are holding the bones with their paws and ripping the meat from the bones, and also getting quite competitive with their litter mates, thinking that someone else�s bone looks much better than their own!!! By 7 or 8 weeks the pups can usually manage to eat the whole meaty bone. So a bone meal replaces the meat meal at lunch time and a bone is given after their tea.
At about 4 months of age I reduce the meals to 3 a day, and at about 8 months I reduce to 2 meals, which gives them their cereal meal in the mornings and a meat and bone meal in the evening.
I give my puppies a ½ day fast every week from 6 or 7 months of age, they get their cereal meal in the morning but no meat. If the puppies are really hungry I give then a drink of milk in the evening. I do not give them a full fast day until they are about 12-14 months old.
This way of feeding may seem a bit overwhelming at first, and it certainly is a bit more time consuming than just throwing a hand full of dry biscuits into a food bowl, but your dog will thank you for it and I am sure that you will see a big difference in the way your dog acts and looks.
Through out this natural diet no cooked meat or commercial dog food is ever given.
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Natural Rearing Links
Juliette de Bairacli Levy
Juliette of the herbs
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Recommended Reading
''The Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat' Juliette de Bairacli Levy
'The Illustrated Herbal Handbook' Juliette de Bairacli Levy
'Lets Have Healthy Dogs' Helen Cramer
'The Natural Remedy Book for Dogs and Cats' Diane Stein
'Pet Allergies.Remedies for an Epedemic'Alfred J.Plechner DVM & Martin Zucker
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