Just curious....

I know this is always a controversal topic but I am interested in your feelings or thoughts on raw meat diets, in particular the BARF diet. Any thoughts??????

My cats won't touch raw meat, but then the only meat I buy is for them so they don't get much opportunity. But a friend's cat was brought up on raw steak (he worked in catering and took all the meat that was due for the bin) and the cat is enormous and has no health problems.

Jessica, When I was raising Collies, the president of the club owned the Champion stud dog, and they were to get the pick of the litter. They recommended raw ground meat at two weeks (only once or twice) to give them a boost and get them started on something other than mother's milk. I started to object, but they had raised many champions, and loads of litters. My puppies loved it, did get a boost, and made the transition to canned meat, meal, and milk in a blender with no problem. That is as close as I can get to the BARF diet. I had never heard of it. I hope that helps.

Well, I feed it to both my dogs (have for over 2 yrs now), and the younger cat, the older one refuses to eat anything but kibble. I truly think it is the best way to go, since that is what our animals have evolved to eat, although of course feeding a raw diet is only coming close to a "natural" diet, since we don't have the opportunity to let our pets go out and hunt for themselves. My dogs are doing better than ever, the cat raised on raw is doing beautifully, and I've had no problems. Of course there is a risk to it, but so there is to all feeding routines, even if they're not always generally recognized, so I think the way to go is to be aware of the risks, and figure out if you think they're worth taking. So it's very much a personal decision.

On the other hand, I do think that raw diets becoming so 'popular' is a risk in itself, since people are just doing it without really knowing what it's about, you do have to have some basic information about raw diets and cats' and dogs' nutritional requirements to do it properly. If you just feet your cat raw meat and nothing else, that is not even close to a good diet, which is why I think raw diets are not for everyone, if they're not prepared to do the work and find out about the diet.

Btw, BARF is now a registered trademark, for prepared raw diets by a particular company. So it is perhaps best to refer to it as a 'raw diet' now, to avoid confusion in this regard. And a raw 'meat' diet is also not a good term, since it sort of implies only raw meat is fed, which is not the case in a good raw diet.

Thanks for the input!

I, personally am not interested in feeding a raw diet to my pets but the topic was bought up on a canine message board and I was curious to see what cat lovers had to say. I have mixed feelings about the diets myself only because I have not read any unbiased opinions on the subject(until now). It's usually one extreme or the other.

Eeva, I mentioned BARF because it includes bones and was curious if people fed bones to their cat(or dog) and if they really felt comfortable doing that. I for one would be really uncomfortable doing so since I've seen the ill effects of an animal eating bones, raw or cooked.