Why I Feed My Pets Raw

I’ve been thinking lately about how I got into this whole adventure, and what started me down the path of conscious living.  Interestingly enough, one of the big starting points for me was my pets.  (Incidentally, they were also part of what motivated me to learn to process rabbits.)  While I was still living off a diet largely composed of takeout and fast food, my dogs and cats were eating real, whole, and sometimes even locally, sustainably sourced foods.

But first I should say that if a discussion of meat offends you or grosses you out, you may want to leave now.  There won’t be any graphic descriptions or pictures (which is kind of too bad, because I have a bunch of great ones!), but raw feeding pet carnivores is fundamentally about meat.  To be honest, it grossed me out at first too – when I started feeding my pets raw, I was more or less a vegetarian.  Interestingly enough, many raw feeders are vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian – it stems from the same set of values.

I’ve been feeding my animals raw for almost three years now.  Unlike many people, I didn’t start feeding raw because my animals developed health problems (although it did fix Shoxy’s minor allergies and help her gain weight, neither of which I’d been able to address with any of the bagillion kibbles I tried).  I really started feeding raw because it made sense to me.  I deeply and profoundly believe that what we eat matters.  It matters to us and it matters to them, and the unnatural way in which we feed our pets seems to result in pets as unhealthy as we are.  You know how they say pets often resemble their owners?  Well our pets are afflicted with dental issues, diabetes, heart disease and obesity just like we are.  As with humans, many of these issues can be traced back to diet, and the fact that we feed our domestic companions the same junk we eat.

What Is Raw Feeding?

So what does feeding raw actually mean?  It is not the same sort of thing as a raw diet for people.  My dogs and cat don’t chow down on spinach smoothies and yeast balls.  “Species appropriate diet” is a buzz phrase in the raw feeding community.  For carnivorous predators like dogs, cats, and ferrets, a species appropriate diet means raw meat, in an appropriate ratio of muscle meat, bone and organ.  Some people include veggies, oils, and other supplements, but for the most part the core concept is the same.  Ask yourself what your pet would eat in the wild and simulate that diet as closely as possible.

A typical week in my house includes a varied combination of chicken, beef, lamb, pork, llama, emu, turkey, fish, or any other meat I can get my hands on.  They get several kinds of organs, muscle meat, bone and cartilage.  The crunching, ripping and tearing keeps their teeth shiny and clean.  The lack of carbohydrates (sugar) in their diets means their mouths don’t get gross.  The healthy fats and Omega 3s keep their coats shiny and soft.  They don’t have dog breath and they’re soft.  So, so soft.

But Pets Aren’t Wild Animals

No, they’re not.  But in the same way that traditional food and primal diet advocates understand that people didn’t evolve to eat pop tarts, our carnivorous companions didn’t evolve to eat kibble.  The selective breeding of domestic canines didn’t change the fundamental evolution of their digestive systems in such a way that processed food would be better for them than whole foods.  This is even more true for cats, ferrets, and other pet carnivores who haven’t been exclusively bred for utilitarian purposes.  You could meet all your daily nutritional requirements with a fortified blend of multi-ingredient pellet food coated with vitamin supplements, but would that really be the healthiest choice?

Conscious Eating

Finally, raw feeding allows me to control what my pets eat in a way that lets me carry over my own personal food values to their diet.  There is a lot wrong with the industrial food system, and it doesn’t just end with people food.  Together, my pets eat more food every day than I do.  As far as my values are concerned, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to pull myself out of the cycle but leave them in it.  Feeding raw lets me source their food as sustainably and humanely I want to, and it makes me directly aware of the impact my four-legged family members are having – at least the part that comes from food.

(Oh, and the parrotlet eats raw too.  But his isn’t meat .)

How about your pets (if you have them)?  What’s on their dinner plate today?