Lets talk about diet

We are raw feeders and we can say that our dogs have been fed raw for many years.  We did go from raw to kibble again but that lasted about a year, and then after a dog of ours died from bloat, and the autopsy showed fermented food had caused the gas we then went back to raw. Ive got so many stories which I share with you in our hidden files.   

Raw has so many benefits, and the biggest one is health of the dog.  Dogs which are raw fed are dogs which generally have less allergies.  Puppies reared onto raw have a bigger chance of never developing an allergy if the puppy has had the correct diet from weaning.  But if your dog did have an allergy you can do a food elimination and easily find what food is not suiting.  But if your feeding dry you will find that its harder to eliminate.  Dried food is a product which has so many chemicals on it.  Lets look at it like this.  If you got a bit of stale bread and put it in the bin, it would go mouldy with in a week.  Dried food is opened and actually is going to decay in the same way unless you have a lot of chemical and preservatives to try and stop it decaying.  It's common sense.  How is it possible for an opened bag of dog food to not decay?  Common sense tells us its soaked in a preservative.  They also say as food sits warming up in a bag that it can activate bugs such as salmonella and you can find more in a sack of dried food than a frozen pack of meat.   Did you know that dogs acid in the stomach is very different to humans, and this is why they can dissolve bone easily.  But this is also why bugs get killed in the stomach acid. 

There are many health issues in animals which can be prevented by raw feeding.  Such as bowel disease, obesity, skin irritations, diabetes, and cancers. 

I attended a seminar once on bloat at a referral hospital.  Bloat effects any deep chested breed of dog.  Weimaraner, Great Dane, Irish setter, Vizsla, Bracco Italiano.  When talking to the specialist the information given was if they get 3 dogs come in.  One fed dried, one fed tinned, one fed raw.  How easy is it to save the dog?  Kibble fed was the worst as the food compacts like concrete in the gut, causes gas.  Tinned was easy as it was soft and easy went through the digestive system and they could get a pipe into the stomach and suck it out with no problems.  But tinned meat had no proteins in it and no goodness what so ever. Then they have raw, they had to admit most raw fed dogs food had already digested and gone into the intestines, and it's much rarer to have bloat in a raw fed dog.   If you think food ferments and causes gas then the stomach extends and then gastric torsion occurs.  The stomach dies, all internal organs can not get the blood supply and the dog is dying in front of you.  So on just the evidence based on which dog would survive bloat the easiest and its raw fed dog, that is enough reason to feed raw.

We keep hearing from dried food companies that people who fed raw are at a higher risk to salmonella themselves.  When looking at statistics people who have had food poisoning its mainly salads we eat for human consumption.  Raw dog food contamination was not flagged up as the cause of human food poisoning.

The sensible thing is hygiene isn't it.  If you left some meat out in the sunshine for the flies to get in, and it warmed up, of course its going to get bacterias growing.  We have to think hygiene and put in a plastic box inside the fridge.  To be even safer have a shelf just for the dog meat.   So those companies who like to throw misinformation out there about food poisoning are just trying to put you off.  Of course they are as one rumour or two helps to destroy an industry that's working quite well.

The factories who make the raw are given on spot checks in the UK and they have to be very clean.  They say that in fact in the factory the hygiene levels are brilliant.  Where it can slip is when food is shipped by courier, they may of stored it in a warm area and the food starts to defrost.  This is why its important to buy only from companies who will keep the food frozen and only send with a quick courier. 

My dogs coats gleam in the spring sunshine, from good diet.  Their is no magic grooming product our dogs are given. 

The one thing about diet which I must stress is variety.  A dog can live on just chicken mince but its not getting a varied diet and therefore not all the nutrients they require.  Change the dogs food and give it variety.  What meats are available for dogs? Chicken, Turkey, Duck, Quail, Guinea fowl, beef, lamb, venison, wild boar, ostrich, pheasant, pigeon, partridge.  We have eggs, fruits, veg. 

The dog benefits from fresh food and by feeding a variety you will be giving your pet a much wider group of ingredients which in turn give the dog the right minerals, right vitamins, right amino acids. 

Our puppies are given warmed goats milk daily.  Fresh eggs which are laid daily, chicken minces, duck minces, veg, fruit, fish. When you buy a Silvestre you are buying a puppy that's had the best diet money can buy. This is why our puppies are healthy.   Our puppies do vary in weight depending on the parents.  Our pups leave us between 5 kilos and 8 kilos if Vizsla pups.  I will never have a thin puppy.  My father instilled it into me as a child the important of good diet for our animals.  He reared his own animals and had them killed for the table. I had once a Weimaraner who I could not get weight on.  He nearly flayed me alive when he saw it, and it wasn't that thin.  I ended up feeding the dog about 5LB per meal just to get her covered in weight. 

WE FEED THE BEST FOOD MONEY CAN BUY!