Blacklash Unearthed

15/12/2024

What's in the bowl tonight?

🦆Duck (Prime100 Frozen Raw Bites)
🐟Whiting tail offcuts
🧀Cottage cheese
🏺Omega 3,6,9 (Natural Animal Solutions)
❤Frozen blood topper
💊CoQ10 supplement

🥣The fish tails were offcuts from our own meal prep.

🥣The stars were made in silicon moulds from the blood and juices from some thawing meat - nothing goes to waste here haha.

🥣Using toppers to a premade or homemade BARF is a good way to bring variety into the diet. We save any dog friendly leftovers (eg offcuts, veggie scraps from our meal prep) to add to the dogs' meals.

🥣We feed all our adult dogs CoQ10 daily to support heart health.

Learn more here: https://drjudymorgan.com/blogs/blog/benefits-of-coq10-for-heart-disease?srsltid=AfmBOopr9N5UGlrTCW7LGfoo-ux-NZ-Bn0AqRbQGU_NK0mJSo9U2hdYp

10/12/2024

10/12/2024

Raw and Natural Nutrition for Dogs, Revised Edition: The Definitive Guide to Homemade Meals

08/12/2024

What's for dinner tonight?

🦃🐐🐟Turkey, goat & salmon (Big Dog Raw - Wild & Free)
🐑Green tripe (K9 Natural freeze dried raw)
🐄Greek Yoghurt
🫐Mixed berries
💊CoQ10 Supplement
🏺Omega 3,6,9 blend (Natural Animal Solutions)

All our adult dogs get a CoQ10 supplement daily from the age of 2 years, to support heart health maintenance. ♥

Feeding a raw diet has a massive impact on our dogs' health and keeps our Cavaliers in peak condition throughout their lives.

Many health issues in Cavaliers are preventable and as breeders and owners, we have full control over what they eat and therefore can prevent some of the illnesses that are so common.

Diet is the cornerstone of health. Raw diet gives our dogs the following benefits for life:

🦷Clean mouth, teeth & healthy gums - no tartar and no need for veterinary dentals

👌Healthy gut - we work hard when weaning puppies to set them up with a good colony of healthy bacteria. A healthy gut is important for a strong immune system and fighting disease. It is also important for a healthy brain and has a significant affect on behaviour.

🖤🧡Shiny coats which grow well - we have comments all the time on the quality and condition of our dogs' beautiful glossy coats. The coat reflects what's going on inside the dog's body. If nutrients are missing, the coat will suffer and a dry, dull lifeless coat will result.

😊Free from yeast infections (ears, feet, mouth are common in dogs fed high carb diets a.k.a kibble).

🐶Soft supple skin - no itchy skin, no dryness or dandruff.

💩Small, firm poo that has virtually no smell - it's a far cry from the sloppy, stinky and voluminous poo of dogs fed processed food.

13/11/2024

A new recipe to try! 🍗

✅ Complete & Balanced
✅ Nutritionist formulated
✅ Quick & Easy

🙄 Feeding a balanced fresh food diet doesn't take a degree or a consult with a Vet.

😠 Those who do not support fresh food diets will have you believe feeding a fresh food diet is too hard & too dangerous but are happy to sell you their services/products instead of providing you the resources.

🥩 Your dog's digestive system is literally made to consume its original and natural diet....yes, even all these thousands of years later! Your dog's digestive system is shorter than a human's and has a very specific bacterial community and a pH level to help it safely consume this diet.

⭐ Like anything, there is a right way and a wrong way to do anything. Many Vets so commonly see people feed terribly unbalanced diets to their dogs such as chicken, veggies & rice so of course over time they feel less inclined in people feeding non-commercial diets. Then they see people feeding the wrong type of bones to their dogs and causing dental injury and getting blockages. And then they see poor hygiene and food handling practices that lead to bacterial infections.

😋 Let's promote that a little bit of education can go a long way so our Vets are more comfortable with our dogs not eating ultra-processed diets that can negatively impact their health in the future.

Raw vs cooked - some dogs have such dysfunctional digestive systems that they're not able to consume a healthy balanced raw diet but that's ok, whilst healing can be working on, they can consume a lightly cooked balanced fresh food diet, it is not one or the other.

Recipe information: in complete and balanced recipes there are no substitutes as every ingredient contributes its own nutritional profile to balance the recipe.

JOIN US AT Fresh Food Feeding for Dogs - Kibble Feeders Welcome! to learn more about balanced and healthy fresh food feeding.

12/11/2024

🍗🍗🍗 FEEDING BONES 🍗🍗🍗

We feed bones daily from weaning puppies to seniors in their teenage years.

Bones are a natural food for dogs and are important for:

🍗NUTRITION - there are nutrients in bones which are not present in other foods (or are in very small amounts). We feed edible, softer bones for this (eg poultry bones such as chicken, turkey, duck, salmon heads or frames, quail frames)

🦷ORAL HEALTH - dogs brush and floss their teeth with bones. Dogs grate their teeth on bones as they rip and tear meat off the bones. Chewing bones also massages and exercises the gums, preventing gum disease.

BEHAVIOURAL HEALTH - chewing is calming for dogs and chewing releases happy hormones in dogs. Happy dogs are healthy dogs.

To reap the benefits of bones, we recommend feeding them on more days than not (so at least 4 times a week). If you don't feed whole bones or are feeding ground bone in meat, you have nutrients covered but not the other things. Feeding a raw diet will help with oral health but you will still need to do other things eg manual brushing, dental seaweed, water additives, dental scaling etc).

10/11/2024

Although we mainly feed raw, we do include good quality cooked rolls in our rotation. We love the Prime rolls especially. They are handy to have in the fridge or freezer as a standby meal or used to improve the variety in your dog's diet. They can be fed as complete meals, or used as toppers or here, I have used the roll as a base (instead of raw meat) and added in healthy raw, extras.

🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟🐟

What's in the bowl?

🐟 Snapper roll (Prime Pantry)
🥚 Eggs, raw
🏺 Olive oil
🐄 Greek yoghurt
🫐 Blueberries
🍃 Baby spinach

10/11/2024

These are disgusting. 🤮 Don't buy them! If you are gifted some for your dog by a well meaning relative or friend, the best place for them is the bin.

14/08/2024

This is a very interesting talk. It's focus is on ultraprocessed food for humans and how it's marketed. This is the same way that the big pet food companies sell kibble, ie market it as healthy when it's the exact opposite.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/niVh18eZkmM1HW5c/?mibextid=oFDknk

10/08/2024

No living being should be getting 100% of their calories from ultra-processed foods.

Kibble’s best qualities are that it’s cost-effective and convenient.

Fresh, nutrient-dense whole foods have always been and will always be the key to longevity for all living things.

Take this knowledge and let it motivate you to boost your dog’s bowls, even if that’s just a small step in the minimally processed direction.

10/08/2024

🍪ADDING COMMERCIAL RAW FOOD TO A PUPPY'S DIET 🍪

Although we predominantly feed homemade raw meals (balanced to a recipe), we also introduce commercial premade products to puppies.

We use airdried and freeze dried food for:

🚗Travelling with raw fed dogs
🍪Healthy training treats
🧇An alternative to kibble in food toys, snuffle mats etc
🍲Meal toppers
🥣Adding variety into our rotation of food

Air dried raw food is new for Kit today. I crumbled some on top of his meat meal tonight and he loved it. We rotate brands and flavours for variety. Prime 100 is an excellent product and one we use regularly. We also like Ziwi Peak, Providore & K9 Natural dried tripe and meal toppers. These kind of products are also good as balancers for homemade meals, as they can add things into the diet, we can't access easily eg some organ meats.

We will also introduce some premade BARF, Prime rolls etc in the coming weeks.

10/08/2024

🐾❤RAISING PUPPIES ON A RAW DIET❤🐾

🐶Our singleton puppy, Kit, is 6 weeks old today. During the past 2 weeks, we have been weaning him to a raw diet.

🐇He is eating well and eats a good variety of proteins, edible bones and other wholefoods such as green tripe, eggs and yoghurt.

✅He is currently eating 4 small meals a day and will do so up to 12 weeks.

🍪Although I make up my own meals for him, I will also introduce him to commercial raw & fresh food products (dehydrated, airdried, frozen etc) so that he knows what they are and will eat them in future.

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⚠️ARE YOU NEW TO RAW FEEDING? DO YOU HAVE A YOUNG PUPPY?

If you have a puppy and are new to raw feeding, I would encourage you to feed a balanced premade raw (eg Big Dog Raw) or use a base mix to add to meat (eg Vets All Natural), until you are confident about balancing the diet properly. It is crucial that growing puppies are fed a balanced diet, for normal growth and development.

07/08/2024

It's so important to understand this information. Although I don't feed or recommend kibble, I still research it so I can help to educate others.

The marketing is clever and labelling of ingredients is really very deceptive and preys on people who want to feed their dogs the best food. Dogs are not designed to eat kibble, which is a highly processed food and contributes to so many preventable health issues in our pets. Kibble was developed for our convenience and has nothing to do with health at all. I learnt this the hard way with my first Cavalier.

If you are feeding kibble, this explanation is easy to understand, in terms of what the actual meat and other content is.

Remember also that protein isn't necessarily meat - in kibble (including expensive "high end" kibble) it is often meal (which is cut with other things not listed) and includes things like pulses, pea protein, beet pulp etc - none of which should be fed to dogs in large quantities.

🚨📌 BEWARE OF KIBBLE MARKETING TRICKS! 🚨📌

Animal protein should be the first ingredient in any quality pet food—ideally, the first two ingredients. But kibble marketers know this and use it to trick you into thinking their food is higher in protein than it really is.

Here’s the catch: The ingredient list shows items from most to least by weight, but this weight is measured before the food is processed. Fresh meats, like chicken or beef, contain a lot of water, while meals, like chicken meal or beef meal, don’t.

When kibble is made, fresh chicken might be listed as the first ingredient. But remember, chicken is about 70% water. Once processed, it loses most of its weight, which means the actual protein content from chicken ends up being much lower in the final product.

For example, if a food lists chicken as 40% of the ingredients, after drying, it might only be 12% chicken. The rest? Likely corn meal or other fillers. 🌽

Want to decode more kibble marketing tricks and ensure your pet gets the best nutrition? Learn more here:https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/3-bullhit-moves-revealed-pet-foods-hide-crappy-proteins/?fbclid=IwY2xjawEaCiZleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHSMaqJ3Cxx9vps8e4KaIMtkXRZJ4UimWXdhYUUXwN5owOPuSTddf7g-ABw_aem_KmH0XN8O8Xi1XJVnV7Os4A

07/08/2024

20/07/2024

FEEDING MUMMY WHEN MUMMY IS FUSSY

😱😱😱

Don't despair! Alice is nursing a singleton puppy who is now 3 weeks old. There have been a number of issues with feeding Alice so we have been working through those. Alice has never been a great eater (which is very unusual in our house and certainly unusual for a Cavalier) but it's what we have! I thought I would share some of the things I have done to encourage her to eat well while she's nursing.

This is a selection of some of Alice's meals over the past 3 weeks. We are following the "BARF for lactation" guidelines set out in Dr Ian Billinghurst's raw feeding book that he wrote for breeders.

Alice's meals are being alternated between raw meaty bones, the fortified milk drink and her meat meal with extras.

🍗EDIBLE BONES
Alice is eating chicken wings, chicken necks, chicken frame pieces, rabbit meaty bone pieces, lamb ribs and forequarters choose and turkey carcasses (minced)

🥛FORTIFIED MILK DRINK
This is a rich, nutritious drink that is high in calcium and protein. It is great to keep the mother's milk flowing and the quality is high. It keeps good condition on the bitch as well as helping to form good milk for the litter.

🥩MEAT, ORGANS and EXTRAS
Dr Billinghurst's book has a recipe called BARF FOR LACTATION - a recipe we usually feed to purchase nursing mothers and they love it. Alice didn't want to eat it. I tried and tried and she just wouldn't touch it. I was worried about her not eating so I fed her the things she WOULD eat. Sometimes this was hit and miss. Most of the time I did get her eating. Sometimes I hand fed her. When she didn't eat or drink from a bowl (😭), I syringed the milk drink into her mouth. I did that for the first 2 weeks. At the 3 week post whelping mark, she is now back to eating out of a bowl and eating quite well.

She eats pork chunks, beef chunks, pork mince, liver (cooked), kidney (cooked) and heart. She doesn't like salmon or sardines which is a pain but OK with white fish. I did cook her some Pink Ling one night in bone broth and that was a hit.

I got clever at hiding things I wanted her to eat and also fed her things that I wouldn't feed her regularly. I bought in a selection of dehydrated raw food: Ziwi Peak, Prime Air Dried Raw, Our Patch Airdried Raw Toppers, Dried organs etc. These toppers are a good way of picking up nutritional gaps in the diet.

Anyway, we're doing OK! I bought some roast chicken in and have portioned it for the freezer. Alice does like roast chicken but I haven't used it yet, as she is chugging along OK with the fresh raw food and toppers.

06/07/2024

Learn how to feed a healthier diet today...you can either buy it all done for you or make it yourself with some guidance:

https://www.freshfoodtribe.com/how-to-start