Here at Animal Arc Raw Supplies we offer premium quality, packaged raw pet food - frozen minced meats, raw meaty bones and carcasses for raw-feeding your dogs, cats, ferrets, Birds & reptiles.

These are the basic guidelines for feeding raw to your Cat/Dog. If you are new to raw feeding,

What to buy?

There are many ways to feed raw food to your Cat/Dog to meet it’s nutritional needs – in basic terms, based on the values provided by prey that would be caught in the wild, a Cat/Dog needs:

80% meat, sinew, ligaments, fat

10% edible bone (can be up to maximum 20% if required)

5% liver

5% other organ meat

This can take the form of fresh whole meats including bone sourced from a local butcher, or by using the packaged raw we offer above as an affordable way to either supplement other raw foods, or as part of a complete diet. Balance over time is the key, just as we meet our own nutritional needs with a variety of foods over the course of several days, there is no need to get caught up in precise calculations for every meal for your Cat/Dog either; simply ensure they have enough variety over the course of a week or even month.

Each Cat/Dog is different, so some Cat/Dog do better on a higher bone content, especially when Kittens/puppies are growing and cutting teeth, other Cat/Dog do better on a lower bone content – this is visible in the consistency of the stools – too much bone = dry, crumbly stools, too little bone = loose stools. Liver must not be fed more than 5% over time, as the vitamins in liver are not water soluble. Too much organ meat can also lead to loose stools, so the best advice is to monitor what you feed, and then observe what comes out and adjust accordingly!

It is advisable to start with just one meat type, with no added organ meat in the early weeks, and then once your Cat/Dog is established on raw, provide a variety of different meat types over time, for optimal nutrition.

We recommend starting all new Cat/Dog and Kitten/puppies initially on our Chicken Mince or green Tripe for at least 2 weeks – tripe is an amazing, nutritious complete meal that is gentle on the stomach, very easy to digest and with the naturally occurring digestive enzymes it helps the stomach to transition over from the alkaline environment needed by carbohydrate based commercial dry and canned feed to the acidic environment needed to digest raw meat.

What to Feed

The key points to remember with a raw diet are:

• Balance over time – one meal could have more bone content, another more meat or organ. The approximate ratio to aim for overall is:

80% meat, sinew, ligaments, fat

10% edible bone

5% liver

5% other organ meat

• Meats are high in phosphorus, bones are high in calcium. When meat is fed with 10% bone you have the exact ratios of calcium to phosphorus required by a Cat/Dog. Whole prey, fish, eggs and tripe have a balanced ratio.

• Organ meat should not exceed 10% of the diet overall and 5% of that should be liver (beef liver has the highest nutrient levels). Feed liver once a week (or several small servings per week) and try to find an organic, free range source if possible because the liver is responsible for filtering toxins out of the body.

How much to feed

Most Cat/Dog eat around two to three percent of their ideal adult weight per day.

So for example:

2% of adult weight:

3% of adult weight:

30kg dog:

30,000g x 0.02 = 600g of food

30,000g x 0.03 = 900g of food

20kg dog:

20,000g x 0.02 = 400g of food

20,000g x 0.03 = 600g of food

10kg dog:

10,000g x 0.02 = 200g of food

10,000g x 0.03 = 300g of food

Initially, when switching your Cat/Dog to raw, we recommend starting with 2% of body weight and splitting the daily amount as follows:

• over 6 months old – split into 2 meals per day

• for 4-6 months old – split into 3 meals per day

• for under 4 months – split into 4 meals or more per day

Once your Cat/Dog has been on a raw diet for two or 3 weeks and the stool is fine, Cat/Dog over 1 year old should be switched gradually to one feeding per day as it is better for their digestion when on a raw diet. If your Cat/Dog regularly does not eat all of his meal in one go, then you know you are feeding too much and should adjust accordingly.

Once established on raw, then you can increase the amount of food to 2.5% or 3% of adult body weight depending on your Cat/Dog. If your Cat/Dog is very active, you may need to feed a little more than 3%, or if your Cat/Dog is more of a couch-potato, you may need to feed a little less than 2% – every Cat/Dog is different. The best way to tell if you are feeding the right amount is to run your hands over your Cat/Dog ribs. If you can feel the ribs, yet not see them, your Cat/Dog is at a good weight.

Kittens/Puppies

Kittens/Puppies should receive about 2-3% of their ideal/expected ADULT weight split into 3 or more meals per day depending on age. When Kitten/puppies are four to six months old, they require a great deal of food and a little extra edible bone as they are building their adult teeth. Between four and six months of age Kitten/puppies cut their permanent teeth and grow rapidly. At this time they need a plentiful supply of meaty carcasses or raw meaty bones of suitable size. Do not let Kitten/puppies get too thin at this important age as their energy demands are tremendous when cutting new teeth.