RawPetMedics Tuesday Night Live: Back To Basic

Good evening, good evening, good evening. You are live with Raw Pet Medics. Here we go, you lucky fellas. Guys, how are you?

I'm good.

Yeah, yeah, I've had a wonderful time away in Arran. I've been to a spectacular part of Scotland, and then I came back and one of my nurses who I work with had been a ranger on Arran and then gave me the lowdown of what it can be like to live on Arran for a long time. I was wondering why there were so many houses for sale. Now I know why. No, it was spectacular. We've had some wonderful weather, guys. Really enjoyed it. But yet again, came back with another virus. This is what you do. You go away, mix with all of these people in the pubs, in a strange place.

What sort of virus? A virus of the heart? Oh, just heart.

I wonder why you were so concerned for a moment there.

Not asking for a virus. Something you might be ashamed of. Sounds like a nice trip. I always wanted to do Scotland. I drove through Scotland once and that was all. Actually, no, I drove through Scotland twice. We drove through Scotland for a Hogmanay one year and we didn't realize, you know, Edinburgh was going to be -6. We thought it'd be like Dublin cold, which is 0, and rain. We can handle that. But driving in -6, they've gritted all the roads, and we're in this brand new Mini Cooper that my friend's mum had lent us, and there was grit. And the grit, because we ran out of spray water stuff to clean the window, it was just freezing on the, on the, on the car. So it was all this slush frozen on the car windscreen. So I had to wrap my arm up in like 5 or 6 jumpers and crack a beer with loads of beers and crack a beer. I don't know why I'm telling this live on there. It's probably And you'd have to pour the beer over the windscreen, keep wipers going to get us to Edinburgh. And then the bloody IRA did a bomb scare and it got called off for the first time ever. And we were just stuck there. It wasn't good. Very busy though. Very busy. Anyway, that was my trip to Scotland. I didn't see a whole lot, to be honest with you.

I have to say, I love Scotland. I went to college in Edinburgh. I did 6 years in Edinburgh. And part of my heart still lies in Edinburgh. I have to say, I do love it as a city. Beautiful. And I've never been to the castle, actually.

Ah, okay. I beat you on that one. I was— I went to the castle. We went there for about half an hour, I think. I also love the, uh, I love the anthem, Wee Bonnie Scotland. I love that for the rugby. That's it. That's a good anthem. I like a good anthem. So, uh, anyway, there you go. So good trip to Scotland anyway.

It's Flower of Scotland now, not Wee Bonnie Scotland.

I don't know, that's what I— that's what I was saying anyway. I'm usually locked in a martian room. Also, Nick, what did you think of— this is going to be non-dog related, I'm putting you on the spot— what do you think of Elon Musk buying Twitter? How do you feel about that?

Well, he's not Zuckerberg, so that's a plus, I think.

Yeah.

And I think Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are in cahoots with some very, very shady characters around the planet without going going into too many details. And I don't believe that Elon Musk has muddied his hands in that direction. I'm sure he's no angel, but he's not going into that kind of thing. So I'm happier with him than I am with Zuck.

He seems to be, uh, he seems to be one for debate. He wants people to be able to speak their minds. I think that's good because I can't actually name another place where you could go on and speak your minds about certain things and say, I'd like to see a study on, you know, uh, something. Name a hot topic of the last couple of years. I can't think of any. But you know, there's no place, there's no street for scientists to go to and stand up on their box and just start talking and debating and having a reasonable debate. So I like the idea if that's true and that's what he's going to bring to the party. I thought that was kind of— actually inspired me to reopen my Twitter account and think maybe I'll go back to it. Okay, we'll see, who knows.

Anyway, that's good. Some philosophy, some politics for this early in the day. And today we're going to be going back basics because we did a survey a few weeks ago. Thank you very much, loads and loads of replies, 250, 260, I can't remember, loads of replies within 24-48 hours. And there was a small but very insistent minority who said, please, please, please, can you do the basics every now and again because not everybody is, you know, advanced diploma of canine nutrition and let alone us, that's for sure. So we're going to just do the basics tonight. Brendan's got a very cunning plan to lead us through 9 topics.

We shall see.

A cunning plan at the time. So, Bren, over to you.

It's your gig, I think.

Oh, but we've got to mention, otherwise we get into trouble, we've got to mention a Patreon. And Conor, just— and it's just at the bottom of the screen there— Conor found our top donors. And guys, there's some people who are just being incredibly generous, and to those we are very, very grateful indeed. And to those who are just donating what they're able, we're totally— we love you guys as well. So thank you, thank you, thank you very much. So patreon.com/rawpetmedics. You can go there to give us a little bit of support in a monetary way. That's wonderful, thank you. And the other thing we have to mention is the podcast. You can get this very, very podcast— not this podcast, but us, Waxing Lyrical— and you can get it on pretty much any medium. You can get it on Apple, you can get it on Acast. Acast is is where it all comes from. I'm not sure if that's where you get it. I use Apple Podcasts and I get everything there. And so, uh, Spotify, it's on. So basically you can get it absolutely everywhere. Sorry, Bren, over to you.

Yeah, well, thanks guys. I think, you know, we've been asked actually for quite a while to do this Back to Basics, and so we're going to split it up into some simple stuff. And I know, thank you to all of the guys that shared the post to newbies to RAW that want to use this as a resource. There are some great video stuff done both on Nick's page, he's got some stuff, and also on Conor's page. Okay, so do also refer to those. We'll put some links through to their little videos there. So we're now going to hide them and I'm going to talk to you about how I would do it. No, I'm joking. I just would go down the route of go through the process of going back to basics. So we're going to start with the 3 basics that each of us would employ if we're going to do raw food feeding for starters. And so I'd like to ask Conor first, you know, based on, you know, if you're seeing a starter, you're going to say, this is my principles of raw food feeding. I'm sure some of it will overlap with us guys, but we'll sort of address that as we come to it. What's your top 3? So what's your top first one? What would you say?

Okay, top 3 principles. If you're brand new to this, you're going to see this ratio 80/10/10 coming off the back of dry food. You want all these stats and figures and percentages as if that's how we feed ourselves and the kids. So, but you need something because, you know, you're not quite sure what the dog's food pyramid looks like because you've been a bit confused from some of the nonsense that's out there. So there's a figure out there, 80/10/10, which is very popular, and a lot of the raw dog foods use that ratio, and that's a decent start. It means 80% meat, meaty bits of any type, big variety, read an article on that later on, 10% organ meats, which is your liver and kidney and heart and pancreas and stuff like that, some of the gory stuff, and 10% bone. That's kind of the figure a lot of the raw dog food companies use, but I'd like to remind you that that figure could easily be 70/10/10/10. In other words, people that put in a bit of plant matter in the knowledge that the meat sector is probably not what it was 10 years ago, wasn't what it was 20 years ago, certainly doesn't look the same as 50 years ago when they're all outside pecking around the ground. So a little bit of plant matter, I certainly adhere to that. So I like this ratio of 70-10-10-10. And finally, on that ratio bit, I would say, guys, that figure is very vague. I mean, that's based on our assumption of what a rabbit kind of looks like, but it's not what a cow looks like, it's not what an insect looks like, it's not what a frog looks like. So this ratio of 10% bone, do raw dog food manufacturers adhere to that religiously? No, not at all. Do any of us? I would— well, I can only speak for myself, but no, not really. You have an idea, and you know, I have enough, I know what Dudley can take, but other cocker spaniels mightn't be able to take as much as the bone was. So it's very individual, but that ratio is a decent start to take the edge off. And that's the first principle. Do I do all 3 here, Brian, or do I just do one?

I think you've talked long enough that I'm going to move on to Nick. Otherwise you're going to use up everybody's airtime. Yeah, I'll come back to you. Nick, go on, give us a principle. Maybe discuss what Conor's talked about a little before you— okay, your first principle.

Okay, to try and keep things as simple as possible, 80/10/10 is a great start. It is not everything, you know, when you're 3 months down the line and you understand a bit more, you'll know why. But just for now, if you get a punnet of 80/10/10, you add some veggies, you add some bits and pieces, and off you go. It's a great start. I would say that's good. Make sure you get some skin in there as well. I think that's really important, i.e. chews and things like that. Okay, so my first principle would be try and move where you can to once a day feeding. I always say to my clients that sleeping is to the brain as fasting is to the pancreas. Yeah, it looks like it's nothing at all, but actually it allows really incredible function of those organs, brain and pancreas. So if you can, And if you do it slowly and you feed random times, you will in many cases be able to avoid the hunger pukes because the hunger pukes come from dogs having 3-4 hours to think, oh, it's going to be dinner soon. So there you go. If you can, if you've got an Irish Setter, for example, who is prone to twists, then you may not want to do that. I don't believe that deep-chested dogs per se are more prone to twisting. We're getting into another thing here because I've got two deep-chested dogs and Whippet, Italian Greyhounds are not prone to twisting. So I think there's an awful lot more to it than deep chest. And the average, your average dingo, your average wolf has a pretty deep chest as well, but that's another topic. So there you go. Once a day feeding, it's a really good idea. I do talk about it in my, in my video, which is on holisticvet.co.uk. Just go there and you follow your nose.

Okay, there you go. It's a nice introduction, that video for newbies. That's a great introduction on your website. Soon as you land on your website, I'd check that out, guys. It's a simple—

yeah, we'll put a link in, uh, for this so that you guys, if you want to follow through to both of these, uh, new starter videos on raw food feeding, you've got other options to look at. Um, I would say, look, first principles for people coming to raw is understand the slight differences in quantities that you're going to be feeding. Um, and for the very young puppies we often will quote a range between 5% and 10% of their body weight in raw food just to sort of get enough energy and materials for growth in there. And generally that will come down as they pass maturity. So when they've stopped their growth curve, then you will come down to sort of 2% to 3%. But always remember, it's an individual thing. And if your dog is like my spaniel running around like tearing through chasing rabbits and and doing everything that Spaniels love to do, then they may stay needing 5% of their body weight or even more in some cases. And there are some dogs that, you know, I've got a Labrador that probably really sticks down to 2%, sometimes a little lower depending on the amount of fiber food. I'm going to talk about fiber in a moment. So I think first principle gives you an idea of quantities of percent of body weight. So just to give you a repeat of that, so that means that for every 10 kilos you're going to be feeding 100 grams of food is 1%. Okay, so simply make that up. So if you're feeding a 10-kilo dog and you want 3%, that's 300 grams. Simple as that. If you're feeding a 30-kilo dog, that's 900 grams. Yeah, it's 3%. So that's an easy way to just divide it down and work it out roughly where you're at. Okay, so, and I love these guys' ideas, you know, of where you're at with this percentage stuff, but I'm going to talk about that and how I reach that ratio. And Nick, you know, yeah, love the idea of getting some fasting in there. Absolutely agree. So Conor, second principle.

The percentage thing is interesting and it does vary with your breed and the type of dog for sure. And some people are tempted, like a lot of raw dog foods are very lean. Some of them are very, very lean. Like for example, turkey raw dog food can be made on turkey necks and a bit of turkey liver. Liver and a bit of turkey heart, and that's a very lean food. So the temptation is to feed more and more of the very lean food, whereas you might be better off, certainly financially, if you thought about just adding a slightly fattier cut like a cheap beef mince from the supermarket. And you can get really good quality beef mince from the supermarket, cheaper than most raw dog foods, and a nice handful of that, particularly with a young pup or a working breed or a bit of a nutter, and that could really take the edge off, put in a nice oomph of calories, and saves you on the raw dog food.

Now, before he goes giving away too much much. When you watch us at the end of this show, if you join us on Patreon, we're going to do a cost of living, how to make things less expensive.

Oh yeah, yes.

No, more value please, Nick.

We never do. Yeah, no, yeah, never use cheap.

I know you love a cheap bit on the side, but that's not what we're doing tonight. Okay, so yeah, second principle, getting the principles.

Okay, everyone's gonna know this, but it's variety. Okay, so there's no such thing as complete food. Take it from someone that's done an awful lot of research into it. There's no such thing. There's no science to back that sort of nonsense principle up. The closest we came to complete food was for human babies, and that didn't work out too well for us. You can't replace Mother Nature. We can get close enough and get them through for a while, absolutely. But so forget the word complete and just use the word variety, okay? Because you can come to this with a lot of fear and apprehension and bloody PTSD about feeding the dog that you don't have for the kids. So, you know, a lot of that comes from you need to feed a balanced diet, and if you don't, his butt will fall off for the want of some nutrient that you can't even pronounce. It's not like that, guys, but variety is important. So if you've just bought a week or two's worth of turkey raw dog food and say, you know, maybe I'll vary it up the next time, maybe I'll get lamb and beef, or, you know, chicken and something. And so mixing up the flavors is fantastic. And on top of that, as we'll get to another time, is adding in your own bits. Because that helps with the balance and the variety. Nutrients come, as Nick said a while ago, nutrients come like they don't come evenly in nature, they come haphazardly. Suddenly you've got a whole heap of calcium because you found a carcass, or a whole heap of vitamin D because you found a liver or whatever, but they don't come evenly, and your body learns to store what it absolutely needs, and what it will die for the want of has learned to make itself. So you don't need to feed it every single day, that should take the pressure off. Forget about complete, just think variety, mix it up a bit, and that helps with the whole nutrient imbalance over time. That's my one.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. That was my second, um, feeding nugget. No, that's okay, because variety is, is really, really massive. I would just go a little bit further with that. I think Bren's good with the variety thing. Of course he is, he's seen my video, that's why.

So it's all about you, isn't it, Nick?

We all find it. Absolutely, absolutely. So, um, Variety-wise, I tend not to go, um, variety, something different on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I would— what I do for variety is I would feed turkey for a week, and then I'd feed beef for a week, and then I feed lamb for a week, and then I'd feed venison for a week, or whatever. Okay, but just you do blocks of food because I think Mother Nature is pretty unimaginative, and you would be on elk during elk season, rabbit during rabbit season, and what have you. So I think a little bit of monotony is— with most dogs, some of them will just say, I'm leaving home if I get another rabbit in my bowl. Okay, but so you just have to go roll with the punches. What I was going to say, and Connor briefly touched on this, is the fear thing. Everybody, when they started feeding raw food, was afraid because we've had 50 years of the the processed food manufacturers going, if it doesn't come in a tin, it's gonna kill your dog. If it doesn't come in a bag— can you hear that? I'm whispering.

Yeah, and there's a few people out there now rubbing their trousers going, oh, easy, easy, boys.

So they've been whispering subconsciously that unless it comes with pack unless, you know, it thunks out onto the chopping board from this tin. Can you remember that? The Pedigree Chum advert, thunk, 8 out of 10 dog breeders prefer Pedigree Chum and what have you. Yeah, other, other dubious food sources are available. So I'm just going to say you're not alone when you're first starting. If you're terrified for the first month, yeah, do not feel bad. And I think the best— there are two, two ways around that. Number one is, is getting with the really good and, and, and not too thou shalt do this type forum on Facebook where you've got friendly people who are willing to discuss ideas and they're not too rigid to one way of feeding. There is no one way of feeding. That's number one. And number two is if— find a, find a raw feeding vet. If you go to the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society, they've got a map and you can find a vet Fiona, that's exactly what I thought. As I was doing it, I thought, aha, yeah, it's Halloween. I hate Halloween, by the way. But no, so that was my Halloween whisper. Okay, so there you go. Fear. Fear. You will be fearful until you get the confidence. And when you get the confidence, you will be like one of these nutters who follow us on a weekly basis. And you'll just be, oh my God, it's so amazing. And it's as simple as that, really. Bren, what's your second principle?

Yeah, I love that. And variety is certainly in there, but I'm utilizing my space to find the other bits that I would use rather than copying you guys. So, you know, yes, it's one of my principles too, but I'm not going to use it as one of my principles. I would like to say the next thing is to take away that OCD stress from people. there are ready-mades for you, okay, of various companies. We've had some of them sponsor us in the past. Uh, we've had some great ones out there. I would just say, you know, do a bit of due diligence. You know, if you turn up there on a Saturday afternoon and you find dripping bags of smelling ambient product, probably not the food you're going to choose to start with. Okay, from an aspect of safety, I would think, you know, just be cautious. Try and make sure you get something that's pre-made. If you're panicking at this point and going, oh my God, DIY is just too much, I can't stand the thought of an eye looking back at me out of the dish, then please look, there are some pre-mades out there. You know, use that principle. And I'm going to sneak in a little addition to that is if you're really struggling to transition your dog or cat onto food, I don't have a problem with just initially flash frying. So what I mean by that is heat the pan. Okay. Usually a frying pan, but a wok will do until you can throw in a spoonful of water and it evaporates immediately. That's hot enough for me. It means literally small chunks. So no greater than about an inch across. You can chuck in, or if it's a mince just chuck it in, spread it around a bit, 10 seconds, flip, 10 seconds, out into the dish. That's what I mean by flash frying. Okay. And literally that's heated it enough usually and just caramelized it a little bit. And I know Conor's going to go on about various reactions with protein, etc. No, no, just enough at this point to just interest your pet Intaking it, and then slowly you reduce the amount of flash frying. So just go down to 10 seconds on one side and out. Okay. And then you'll find that you can pretty much do it. Maybe just with pouring a bit of boiling water across the top of it is enough to warm it for them, and eventually they'll just go straight onto raw. So transitioning, my thing is I don't think anybody should critique you if you initially have to just flash fry the first stages to get your dogs onto it or cats.

Totally, totally.

Even a sprinkler of good quality salt, guys. They've come off very salty food and going to non-salty food is a big problem for kids and it's a big problem for dogs and big problem for us. So, you know, some foods just don't taste right unless you put salt in them because we're so used to— when I make mashed potato, it gets a healthy pinch of salt and a heap of butter, French style, so it's nearly oily. So I mean, I love that, my mashed potato. If I don't have salt in my mashed potato, I'll know straight away and I won't like it. So you can imagine if you're a cat and you've got this serious salt affiliation because you're a carnivore and they love a bit of salt. So they know that and they pump 3 or 4 different types of salt in there. So sprinkle a bit of salt in on top of Bren's idea, definitely get them hooked, and then you come off the cooking.

So that's Conor's third thing. So we're moving on.

Sorry, my third thing will be very brief. Now I think, like, I think dogs are very largely meat eaters, okay, and they eat a bit of plant matter here and there, but I think the best meat out there is outdoor-reared meat. Meat that has been pecking around outside, lamb, beef that has been eating like in pasture fed, this kind of stuff that we're learning about, fish from the sea, not so much from farms, like all that. I believe the fat profile content, omega-3, omega-6 ratio, and even all the bioactive compounds in that animal are a completely different animal to a shed reared chicken fed corn until these are 10 weeks old and slaughtered. So I would say as much outdoor reared meat as you can, you can get it decently priced and it's just fantastic stuff. So if you are using a very cheap pre-made raw, you might ask where they get their meat, but we know it comes from where this stuff comes from. But I would be supplementing that with as much outdoor meat that I can get myself from the supermarket, to be honest with you. But anyway, we'll talk about that in the additions later on.

Absolutely with you all the way. It's quite nice that we're all very, very much on the same page here, boys. We— I can't remember the last time we had this conversation, but this was not scripted in the slightest, guys. But we're actually, we're, we're, you know, um, oscillating around each other without saying exactly the same thing.

I'm quite concerned about you. I, I think there should be a cauldron in your room, Nick, and I think you've put us under a spell. You're now in a darkened room whispering like Voldemort into the microphone, and I'm like, I like it. It's just he never lights up.

I don't want to scare you, Gran. I don't want to scare you. Yes, there you go.

So come on, third principle.

There you go. Don't want to get you scared. Okay, I was just looking on Instagram just to see whether I could, I could find very— I had a thought I should have done it while you guys were waffling on about goodness knows what, but you know what I mean. If you've been ever been on Instagram and you've put in raw food, you will, you will see the most beautiful bowls of food. And there will be three-quarters of a Norwegian herring, and then there will be a quail's egg, and then there will be a strap of wagyu tripe, and then there will be— yeah, you're laughing, but you should see them. Okay, you see that basically that they look absolutely beautiful and I haven't got any problem with that. If you want to do that for your dog, knock yourself out. I think it's absolutely perfect.

Brilliant.

Great. However, if you haven't got the time, and I would suggest most normal people don't have time for that stuff, then what you need— don't get worried about it. If your dog bowl looks like a dog's breakfast, Well, it's kind of okay. Okay. When I do the dog's food, I do the antithesis of Instagram. I just will go chop a bit, chuck a bit of this, chuck a bit of this, chuck a bit of this. Look in the fridge. There you go. There you go. Well done, Bren. Yeah, it's— I deliberately go to the opposite of the beautiful bowl. And I sometimes find that my two girls go for it better the more unji gunji it is, you know.

Michelle says my bowl looks like vomit, full stop. My bowls look like vomit.

Michelle, you're even more poetic than me this evening. Well done, you.

It's awesome for you.

There you go. Again, don't go with— don't be put off by the fashion. Yeah, we're feeding dogs. It's not complicated. Keep it simple. Keep the variety. Keep the you know, all the things that we've discussed this morning, this evening, you know, all good, all good.

Yeah, sounds good. Brad, what's your last one?

Yeah, so I definitely agree with all of that. I think, look, you know, a lot of those demo bowls are just to display the variety of stuff that can go in safely, and I get that. I've done it. I'm guilty of doing those photos just to try and display to people that you can put this stuff in, you can recognize it, that side of things.

I'm not your better though.

Yeah, just because Nick can't organize a, you know, cookery lesson if he wanted to.

Anyway, expensive ingredients. Lovely.

Yeah, that's right, I can afford them. Anyway, but from a point of view of understanding those basic principles I think the— I'm going to add in at this point, I generally go for a third, a third, a third carcass because I think it's really important we don't miss out on something here. What I mean by that is I will do a third meats as a basic part of the diet. I will do a third carcass material. So that's like, yeah, it can be anything from chicken carcasses which are quite cartilaginous all the way through to necks, you know, with bone into wings. To, you know, even ribs of, you know, goats to lambs, things like that. They, they can get through those. So that's the third. Now, that third is not third bone material. It actually probably equates to around about 10%. Around about. I'm not fixated on it must be exact. Okay. But it will have around about 10% bone material over the whole amount of the diet in the end. So a third sort of general meats, which is not just protein, it's fats, it's blood vessels, it's collagens, it's all sorts of things in that meat. You know, it's not just protein. It's going to have a third carcass material. And then the last one I call a third innards. Some people would say organs, but I'm going to say innards because that's the point where I will do organs such as kidney, heart, liver, making sure, because they've got lots of vitamins and nutrients in. Tripe are also in there, but also fermented veg. I love fermented veg in that because I think that gives off its own variety of vitamins from that fermenting process. There will be people kicking off about histamine at any moment, I'm sure, but that's about— there's other enzymes to take those histamines out and actually it adds to the sort of digestibility. And that would be the last of my third principles, how to sort of give a general— if you're going to do DIY, stick to those general principles, a third, a third, a third. You know, you've got your varieties in that we've talked about earlier, but those organs and innards includes that fermented veg bit. So not a lot has to go in of fermented veg. And now We're going to talk about our top 3 additions to the foods just before, because I saw loads of people getting upset that we weren't talking about omega-3s and eggs and NHS and things like that. So I think what we need to do is now go through top 3. Yeah, we've probably just about got time to go through top 3 useful additions.

Additions. Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's, let's do, let's do get our 3 out in like 3 minutes. Okay. A minute on each one. Okay, so I'll just bust through my 3 and I'll get them done in 3 minutes.

Yes, bust through your 3 in 3 minutes.

Here we go. My first one is omega-3. So we are— omega-3 is fantastic. Okay. It's animal fat and we get mostly— it comes from animal fat largely. That's where the dogs want it from. And so we usually get it from fish oil and oily fish and that kind of stuff. You have a lot of different options when you start talking about fish oil supplements. I like little sardine or anchovy oil because a small little oily fish, they don't accumulate the larger the nasties in the food chain. The bigger the fish, the more it can accumulate that sort of stuff. And I watch how much I'm getting in my tablet because you can get a lot of filler and very little of the fish oil you want, or they cut it with mackerel oil or they cut it with something else. Some of the really cheap oils don't even tell you what the filler oil is, so you have to look at your EPA/DHA content. They're the two omega-3s your dog really wants, and they're the ones you're spending your money on. So generally, you'll see the really cheap fish oil tablets in the supermarket have very little EPA/DHA, and some of the really better ones, they're called refined fish oils, have a lot more EPA/DHA. They'll cost a little bit more, but you avoid a lot of the filler. The best source of omega-3 is surely sardines or sprats, and small little oily fish that you buy yourself fresh or dried from the fishmonger. Raw dog food companies do, do kilo bags of I love omega-3. Second one, I'm always gonna say a nutritional booster, okay? And you know what nutritional booster I'm gonna say? I'm gonna say seaweed. Where's the pack I had ready? It's disappeared. There it is. So I know I'm becoming the seaweed person. I love seaweed. If you're near the sea, go and crop it yourself. Wait till the tide goes out, stay away from the ports, bring your scissors, snip it off the stipe, dry it in your garage, and it's ready to go in 2 or 3 days. You can sprinkle it on the food. I sell seaweed. I'm gonna plug because I know people are listening and I'm gonna make money out of it.

So this is our seaweed.

We've got 6 or 8 different types. This is CaniDent, and it's a blend of 2 or 3 brown seaweeds, 3 brown seaweeds, and it cleans their dog's teeth at the same time. It's wonderfully nutritious. It's a rare source of iodine for your dog that they need. Natural iodine is not the same as iodide, which can, if you feed too much of, harm dogs, not when it's given in seaweed form. Small bit of seaweed, brilliant nutritional booster, in my opinion, better than spirulina, chlorella, all that sort of stuff, in my opinion. And the third one, believe it or not, because people rarely talk about it, is a bit of salt. I like a bit of salt, and I think gut-sick dogs plow through their electrolytes because they control the in and out water of your guts. And dogs that are working hard definitely need a bit of salt. So canicross dogs, anybody working their dogs, and a little bit of salt is great because raw dog food is zero salt, and that's not the best nutrition either. Good quality salt has a bad rep from all the horrible ultra-processed food we've been eating, refined salt rotting us inside and out. But a little grind of good quality salt, I think, is fantastic. It's not just sodium. Chloride. There's all sorts of minerals all the way down to 60, 80 different minerals in some of the good quality salts. Anything with a name— pink salt, Himalayan rock salt, whatever— they're my 3 additions that Dudley gets, particularly the seaweed, regularly. That's my 3 done. 3 minutes, Dad? Boom!

3 and a half minutes. I was trying to speed you up on the first one. Come on, Nick, go for it.

You're allowed to overlap. Yeah, you're going to miss out here, Bren, because we will have taken all the low-hanging fruit. Okay, here we go. Right, I'm, I'm going to give you— in fact, I'm only going to do 2, but at the same time I'm going to do 4. Okay, so the first one's bone broth, and I think bone broth is just wonderful. Again, some people, somebody's going to say, oh, what about the histamine? But if you give a certain type of bone broth— ah, there you go— to your dog and they start itching like crazy, well, then you know that that's not for them, and you'd go and get another type of bone broth. Okay, and you can use whatever the bone broth is. You can use it for yourself, you can give it to your husband, give it to whatever you fancy, yeah, give it to one of the other dogs. Off you go. You can use it for the very young, you can use it for the very old, you can use it for the pregnant, you can use it for those recovering from disease, you can use it when you're transitioning, you can use it to help with leaky gut. There are very few situations where you can't use the bone broth. One little trick is in the summer you can freeze it into ice cubes and you can feed that as a treat. Or if you've got a really greedy dog and you're trying to get some weight off, then really slightly dilute bone broth ice cubes are a winner. Yeah, they think they're getting a treat, but they're actually getting just very little nutrients and everybody's happy. Therefore, the next thing is, and these guys have mentioned it, is NHS. NHS is my little mnemonic to remember nuts, herbs, and seeds, and it's a very easy thing to remember, especially after the last couple of years we've been through NHS. So nuts— what are nuts? Nuts is anything you can get a hold of as long as it's not a macadamia. Very easy. Ideally, you soak overnight before you feed, and then you just chop, chop, chop, or you put them in the blend with greens, pour it on and off you go. So nuts, very easy. Herbs, very easy. Anything you like. If you've got a dog who is very sensitive epileptic, then don't go rosemary. Apart from that, anything that's seasonal, anything that's out there in the garden. If you haven't got a garden, you can get a grow bag. If you can't get a grow bag, you can even grow herbs from a pot. You can even buy them in Tesco's in little pots. You have those along the the windowsill. You just have a snip of this and a snip of that, off you go. Really, really good, really, really easy. Nuts, herbs, seeds. Finally, seeds. Seeds, the two very obvious ones are sunflower seeds. Now, sunflower seeds, if you use sunflower oil, it's been pre-ground and it's filthy, horrible stuff. But if you get really nice fresh sunflower seeds and they go straight into your blend and you blitz them before you feed the dog or before you freeze and feed fairly quickly, then that's absolutely great. The other one, and probably my absolute favorite, is pumpkin seed. Okay, very good for the prostate, gentlemen. Did you know that? Yeah, we should be eating a bit of pro— bit of pro— I was going to say, don't eat prostate. It's quite difficult to do. Don't eat prostate, eat pumpkin seeds. Ladies, pretend I didn't say that. Okay, so pumpkin seed is absolutely wonderful. You can use it as treats, yeah, because they're really tiny, they're really silky, and they don't mess up your pocket. So you can use them as treats if when you're wanting to just give not too much in the way of food to the dog, but you've got to treat them a lot when you're training. So you can use those, or you can just put them into the blend and give them in. Some people say they have an anti-parasitic effect, and that may well be the case. There's no studies that I know, but it sounds pretty, pretty logical. There you go.

There's my two cents on them. Cucurbitacin is the name of the compound in pumpkin seeds. You want EU pumpkin seeds, you want the organic pumpkin seeds from the EU, you want Austrian pumpkin seeds.

I'm going to call you out, Conor. I'd love you to post that. The only one that I could find was in farm animals, and they found it was equivocal as far as the results. So I'd love to see you put some of those on. You start doing your 3. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I don't know about cats, but I'll find them out.

All right, so that would be great. So yeah, I agree entirely. I love the idea of if you're going to do the herb stuff, I would offer some access to fresh herbs. Um, absolutely, a bit of ZooPharmacognosy stuff is great. People have talked a little bit about, um, walnuts in there— great adaptogens and things like that within, uh, walnuts. So if your dog's eating those, got no issues. Um, there, I would say my top ones, definitely bone broth. I love to make it myself. I've seen a few people talk about adding bone broth in there and definitely, definitely back that up. I think a couple of cheats. I'm going to do the cheats tonight. Okay. For people that are really anxious, if you have— and I am not sponsored, I don't have to be paid by these guys either. So if you are really concerned about your dog or cat and you're thinking, oh, I want to do DIY, but I'm not totally sure, I might be deficient in occasional bit bits. There are some great products out there. Dorwest does one, actually this guy does one on his— I don't know why he does some sort of—

oh yeah, the Pinch Pots by DermaDog.

Yes, yeah, you do those. Yeah, some people will use BioFunction 8 as a little bit of an addition, and but Dorwest do Keepers Mix Sensitive. I think that's quite a nice one. This is one that I think is also great was one that we used before all of that stuff came out, which was Pet Plus, available in the US as well as in the UK.

Pro Dog do a range of supplements as well. Have a look at those.

That you can add in once, twice a week, okay, which will give some extra nutrient value to the foods if you're at all unsure. And don't get upset that you might be up or down on nutrient values. So just consider something like one of those additions there. And then my last one is going to be eggs. I love to add eggs. Okay. So I think it's a great source of omega-3s, you know, in the fresh source if you can get pasture-raised eggs. So that's usually people have raised them in their back gardens or on small paddocks and they're selling them at the gate end. To be honest, those are usually the only true properly free range, not open a door and hope they might go out if it's really hot weather sort of free range, which we also suffer from in the UK, where the majority of them are actually in the barn staying nice and warm near the food and water and not strolling around amongst an orchard. But if you can find those eggs Quail eggs, I think, are great because it's really hard to intensively bring up quail. I think, you know, they pretty much like to have a bit more space, and they can be nutritionally compact as well. So eggs is my useful addition.

Nice.

Yeah, love an egg.

I've cracked through— did you get that joke? I've cracked through mine, and so I think we can go into things to avoid, and that's dad jokes. We've got 4 minutes. I'm gonna just say one primary thing that you would advise a newbie starter to avoid in— so you've got to choose your best one, Conor. Um, things to avoid if you're raw feeding.

One thing to avoid.

I struggled with this, to be honest with you, but I would say if you are going to use, um, pre-made raws, okay, particularly in the— can't blame the cheap raws all the time, but know that some pre-made raw dog foods can be made on ground carcass. And ground carcass is chicken, you know, ground carcass is lamb, ground carcass is duck. And to the unknowing eye, that very light-colored duck mince that you're looking at is ground-up duck carcass, very high fat, bit of bone, very little meat. It's the definition of a carcass. They've taken all the meat off, same with chicken, chicken carcass. So that's a problem because I don't see dogs getting a lot of meat there. And I would say that I would bring over a bit of my concerns about dry foods to pre-made raw dog foods as well. And I would say, guys, there is no such thing as complete. Don't trust that anybody has your pet's perfect health in one little product. And I'd always add my own bits. So things to avoid is any of the nonsense and the window dressing at the end of the product that's there to make you believe their product is completely different to the other guy's product. We're all using the same bits, give or take. Some are using better sources, but I would say always add in your own bits. Be careful of the label. Avoid using just the same pre-made every single day. That would be a mistake in my opinion.

Okay, my one is avocado. It's not to avoid, but lots of people will tell you to avoid it. And I think what's happened is that at some point in 1865, a dog died of a pit, an avocado pit, getting stuck in their throat. And everybody else since then has said— has thrown the baby out with the bathwater and said avocados will kill your dog. Avocado flesh will not. A bit of avocado skin probably won't, I don't know, but stick with the flesh because that's what's something that we know about. It's super good for you. The fats are incredibly good. It's a bit pricey, but if there's one going off, put it in the dog. I would suggest it is not an inherently dangerous product, Bren?

Yeah, so I think the one thing I would implore you to avoid is getting stuck into a rut, going, my little pooch Fifi, or my little kitty cat will only eat chicken. And then just getting stuck, just feeding chicken for the rest of its life, or indeed just feeding breast meat, you know, is getting stuck into that rut. So please, please, please, I know it's a bit of a reverse of variety, but, you know, if there's one thing that you remember from tonight, don't get stuck into a rut of just feeding one thing over and over again and think you're feeding raw appropriately, because I can pretty much guarantee you're not. Okay, so Um, yeah, that would be my one thing to avoid. Um, at this, there are other things and we're going to talk about that over on Patreon, uh, of, um, other bets and things also best things to try and make at this current time it more efficient and value to feed raw. Okay. So if you want to hear the extra bits, please join us over on Patreon. You'll see that go live in about an hour. By the way, if you see a couple of guys talking about mowers, there seems to be some glitch that Patreon keeps flipping the link to our videos to some weird South Americans talking about mowers. And it's hilarious because I get it pretty much every week. I have to go and fix the link and I don't know what's going on. But that's one that Nick's going to inquire with the Patreon person that he knows. And, uh, but, but so sorry if for all of those hilarious guys that got to watch the guys talking about mowers. Okay, um, I'm really sorry, but that's not us.

I just posted a, I just posted a study there, the evaluation of the antihelminthic activity and composition of pumpkin seed extracts, all the in vitro and in vivo studies from 2016. So I just put it up on the Facebook page there so people can have a look just in case on Patreon. It's kind of interesting, a bit nerdy, but the bottom line is that there's great potential here because of the rise of resistance to the chemicals we're using for pets and horses and whatnot. This is certainly a solution that they could be looking at.

Could I just check, was that the one that talked about the concentrations fed to mice and their activity? Or is that specifically in dogs?

No, listen, I haven't seen any solid studies in dogs. I've just seen chickens, pigs, one in cattle, one in sheep.

Because there was one in mice, but it required that you needed to feed the concentrate made from the pumpkin seeds at a rate of 1 gram per 100 grams of body weight, which I thought was going to be excessive.

Yeah, yeah, okay, well, I'll check it out again. I'll have a look.

Just check if that's the same one that I saw before. Oh yes, it seems to have an effect, but the concentrations might eliminate how good it is. Yeah, overall. So you should always do a worm egg count following using it just to make sure it's done the job.

Oh yeah, great. Okay, so guys, next week we have got Amaya, who is the incoming president of the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society. She is a feline specialist, so it's going to be all about cats and all about Raw Feeding Veterinary Society and all about the, the coming year. So I think it's going to be fascinating. She's really charming and really lovely, and she's going to come along and join us then. And the next thing was Karen was suggesting that we do our next Back to Basics on bones. What do you think? Maybe next month, uh, maybe December we'll do a bony—

yep, be nice.

Indeed. That's absolutely great. Okay, so, um, for all of you guys, if you want to join us over on www.patreon.com/rawpetmedics, uh, for the price of cup of coffee or tea depending on your preference, uh, you can join us over there, get lots all of the bits on the side videos, um, added in, uh, some other great information. And we thank you for your support. Thanks again, and do share this with any newbies to RAW. Feel free to do that, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Thanks guys for joining us.