The Barf Diet

I feed all of my pets barf (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food), and they do extreamly will on it, the diet manly consists of raw meaty bones i.e chicken carcasses, meaty lamb bones and the odd rabbit. It was my brother who first told me about feeding dogs raw meat when he got his Husky, at the time i did not believe it was a good thing so I quietly disagreed. When my first dog a German Shepherd bitch (Niena) was diagnosed with enzyme deficiency, causing her to have foul smelling diarrhoea. My brother again mentioned raw feeding and suggested I try it with Niena. I still was not sure about it but because of my, then, lack of knowlage about the subject but I opened my mind to the possibility. I went onto the internet and found lot's of info about natoural feeding it was then I found out about Dr. Ian Billinghurst and the Barf Diet, so I went out and bought his book "Give Your Dog A Bone".                                                                               It was also on the internet that I found out about Dr. Pottenger's cats.

Dr. Pottenger had found that a lot of the cats he used in his experiments died post-operative, he fed the cats on a diet that, according to the experts of his day, was the most nutritional.The cats exceeded the food supply available so he began ordering raw meat scraps from the local meat packing plant and fed this to a separate group of cats. To his surprise he found that this group of cats seemed much healthier, and their death rate was much lower then that of the cooked meat group. At some point this spurred Pottenger to beginning a study that lasted ten years from 1932-1942 with three generations of cats, over this time there was approximatley 900 cats involved.

The study consisted of five groups of cats each on different diets:

• Adequate DietA: 1/3 raw milk, cod liver oil and 2/3 raw meat.
• Defficient Diet B: 1/3 raw meat, cod liver oil and 2/3 pasteurized milk.
• Defficient Diet C: 1/3 raw meat, cod live oil and 2/3 evaporated milk.
• Defficient Diet D: 1/3 raw meat, cod liver oil and 2/3 sweetened condensed milk.
• Defficient Diet E: raw metabolized vitamin D milk only.

Effects on cats:

• The cats eating only raw food were disease free and healthy, generation after generation after generation.
• The cats eating the cooked and processed foods had all kinds of problems

By the end of the first generation of cats in the B-E groups the cats started to develop degenerative diseases and become quite lazy. By the second generation the cats had developed degenerative diseases by mid-life and had started losing their coordination. By the end of the thrid generation the cats had developed degenerative diseases very early in life and some were born blind and weak and had a much shorter life span. Many of the thrid generation cats couldn not even produce offspring. there was an abundance of parasites and vermin while shin diseases and allergies increased from an incidence of five percent in normal cats to over ninetey percen in the thrid generation of deficient cats. Kittens of this generation did not survive six months. Bones became soft and pliable and the cats suffered from adverse personality changes. Males became docile while females became more aggressive. The cast suffered from most of degenerative disseases encountered in humen medicine and died out totally by the fourth generation.

His conclusions were that:

• A diet consisting exclusively of raw milk and raw meat was the only adequate intake which insured the maintenance of optinal health for cats. Cats on all-raw diet showed good bone structure with wide palates and plenty of space for the teeth as well as excellent bone density, shiny fur, and lack of parasites and disease. They reproduced with ease and were gentle and easy to handle.
• Cooking the meat, or substituting heat processed milks for raw, resulted in heterogeneous reproduction and phyrical degeneration that escalated with each successive generation.
• The changes in the facial structure and beginning of degenerative diseases that Dr. Pottenger observed in cats on deficient diets mirroed the human degeneration that Dr. Price found in tribes and villages that had abandoned traditional foods.

Although this study was done with cats I am in no doubt whatsoever that if it had been done with dogs the dramatic and very frightening results would be the same.

I was convinced so I changed Niena's diet and was amazed when within 24 hours she started having normal poo's and stopped eating it. Within a week she was like a different dog, she was much more active and she became more responsive to her training, her coat changed from a dull grey to shiny black, her skin was no longer dry and flaky and her eyes were much brighter and full of mischief like they should be. The vet was also surprised that she no longer suffered with enzyme deficiency, but was still against the diet I had put her on even though the benefits of it were more than evident. I cannot understand why my vet still believes that feeding my dogs food that they have not evolved to eat is better than feeding them the food they have evolved to eat. It has been proven time and time again that humankind does not know better than nature. If dogs were not meant to eat raw meat and bones then surely they never would have come into existance.

I recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about this diet to buy the book, it is very informative and it takes you through the diet step by step, although I must admit I do not follow the diet rigidly, I feed my dogs and cats what I believe to be right, and so should you.

Dogs can live on pretty much any kind of food as can we, but does that mean that any kind of food is good for them or us?