We have a lovely lab who doesn’t like raw food. At best, she eats around two thirds of what she should. The breeder provided us with the raw minced chicken she’d been eating and she never ate it willingly. We switched to raw chicken and tripe on the advice of our local raw food wholesaler. Same again. We’ve mixed it with puppy biscuits, kibble, added goats milk (another suggestion). Same result. She takes a few mouthfuls and that is it. She will return to it and will eventually eat, but never the recommended amount. We have tried cutting out training treats but it makes little difference. We have tried twice a day, four times a day, same result. She is a greedy girl who will eat up the cat’s food and the tinned stuff we give to our elderly dog. She loves dog treats. She consumed raw minced beef for humans at my sister’s house yesterday as if she was starved. She also eats Puppy Organic with gusto. She looks healthy. She is growing. At her check at 10 weeks she weighed 6.4kg. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Maybe she's self regulating (unlikely for a lab)? Maybe she doesn't like chicken? Not a problem I've had myself with my greedy beast but I'm in a few raw feeding groups and a lot of people do seem to have this problem. The advice is always the same - just take the food away and offer it later, they won't starve themselves. You are feeding plenty of variety I hope? Dogs need more than just chicken mince to meet their nutritional needs.
Sounds like she's got you well-trained... All dogs will always eat tastier food before what they get every day. Just as all kids would quite happily eat only chocolate pudding and pies and no vegetables, left to their own devices. But it's you who enables this and makes it possible... It goes like this: No dog treats. No raw minced beef. No puppy organic. Nothing else. Till she is eating what YOU have judged to be a balanced diet with the nutriments she needs. Now - onto the latter as a subject: Raw minced chicken (only) and raw minced chicken and tripe (only) are not balanced diets. If you want to feed a raw food (which is an excellent choice, by the way), please ensure you feed growing puppies a complete raw. It is very easy to get the wrong calcium to phosphorus ratios, insufficient vitamins - and so on - if you are feeding a DIY raw diet to a puppy and are not an experienced raw feeder. Find a complete raw food you want to feed - such as Nutriment, Natural Instinct, etc etc (if in the UK) - and feed the Puppy food from that range. That will be a complete and balanced diet for a growing puppy.
Thank you so much for your replies. This site has been so helpful; after doing a bit of research on the forum, with posts to the main site, I discovered we has been giving her DOUBLE. The breeder’s advice was 1.5lb a day, or 600g, or 200g per meal. The advice on here was 100g and maybe chuck in some sardines. So we reduced the portions and soon had a dog who couldn’t wait to woof it down. Not a problem since. Thank you for the advice on variety - i have only just checked back in and will order some variety, including the ones Jo mentioned above. This forum is fabulous
The usual advice regarding quantities is 2.5% of their adult body weight per day so assuming an adult weight of 30kg that would be around 750g per day. The alternative is to use a percentage of her current weight at 10weeks old it is 10% this percentage drops as the pup grows -there are tables around online I'll see if I can find one for you. I don't know where you've seen 100g per meal on here, it doesn't sound like enough, raw food is mostly moisture after all. You absolutely must get some balanced complete food. It doesn't sound like you've done enough research to make your own meals. It's not hard but it really isn't as simple as just feeding chicken mince and adding a few sardines.
Lots of basic info here including feeding chart. https://dogsdinner2.webs.com/feedingpuppies.htm More detailed nutritional info here https://perfectlyrawsome.com/raw-fe...gically-appropriate-raw-food-barf-adult-dogs/
