has anyone tried "Nature's Variety- Prairie" frozen raw food

[Randy Jane]

After lots of reading and talking to vets, dog owners, and pet store owners, I am thinking about trying a frozen raw food diet. I would probably still feed some dry kibble, like Evo, which has no grain, or the Prairie dry kibble.
Prairie has a frozen raw food that I have heard is great.
I have a small dog, 14 lb. Havanese.
Presently, he is on Artemis, which he is doing fine on, but I think the raw food thing is probably better.
Anyone have any experience with Prairie frozen raw food?
rj

[Susan Bacon]

RJ,
I haven't tried their raw foods, but I tear up their freeze-dried food and use it as reward treats exclusively, which was recommended by someone on DoggieBag. I'm considering using their dry kibble when it comes time to make a change because the boys like the medallions so much and they're not really wild about the taste of their Chicken Soup..... If you try the kibble please let me know what you think.
Susan

[Randy Jane]

Susan. I got a sample bag of theChicken Prairie kibble and have been giving it to my puppy as treats. He seems to love it. He is on Artemis kibble right now and doing really well on it, so I'm probably going to start mixing some of the frozen Prairie with the Artemis. That way he'll be getting the benefit of both foods. If he does well on the frozen raw Prairie, then maybe I'll switch to the Prairie kibble, but the Artemis is really high quality stuff.
rj

[Grace Erick]

randyjane,

My natural pet food store carries the BARF brand diet and Prairie. The BARF had grains in them. I don't know if it's in all their food, but it doesn't make sense to feed raw, then feed grain. I did like the looks of the Prairie Chicken raw food w/veggies.

It says all the raw foods have the Norwegian Salmon oil, but I don't actually see it listed in the Chicken variety unless they left it out by error. I am supposing Norwegian Salmon does not have mercury and that's why they say it's Norwegian. Salmon can have mercury, especially if it's older fish.

I'm on the fence about trying it since you have to keep up on making sure the food is kept fresh after it's unfrozen and I'm just.....I don't know....not sure if I want to feed raw. It is more expensive. People say you feed less, but it is still a lot more expensive.

Here is the link if anyone wants to check out the frozen foods:

http://www.naturesvariety.c om/content.lasso?page=1 137&-session=naturesvarie ty:47238C6C0eac93898 0QYw15855CE

This is a link to some other frozen foods. You have to scroll down the page:

http://www.dogaware.com/dogfeeding.html#froz enraw

The thing that gets me about the Prairie food is that is states it meets the AAFO standards. The AAFO sets minimun standards that canned and hard foods will state that it meets. I expected Prairie to say it EXCEEDS the standards since raw food is supposed to have more vitamins since it's not cooked.

Anyone can call this company and ask questions about their food. You just have to be wary of how they word things since they are biased about their own food.

Bye, Grace

[Susan Bacon]

RJ, Thanks for the tip on the dry kibble. I think I'll get a small bag myself and see how the boys like it for treats. Good luck with your transition with the raw frozen if you decide to try it. I'm going to stick with dry kibble for now but would be interested to see how it goes for you with the Artemis blend.

[Missy Stewart]

I frequently use the freeze dried treats from this company and Sonny LOVES them. Recently I picked up a bag of their frozen raw beef diet (hoping Sonny would like it since it is WAY cheaper than what I am feeding him now) and he won't touch it :rolleyes: The diet is 95% meat/bone/organ and 5% veggie/fruit with a few sprouted grains. As a whole, the grain content is really minimal, so I wouldent over obsess over it. They are also sprouted grains... which is different from processed grains.

Sonny is super finicky.. so him not liking the frozen version is not saying much. I have had Sonny on a raw diet since about 16 weeks of age, and he has done great on it, he is just so picky about any veggie/grain being in his food.

Their site has a lot of info on it if you want to read into it more.

[Randy Jane]

Hi Missy.
Curious as to what food you feed Sonny. You said it was a another raw food diet. Would you mind sharing the name? And do you feed Sonny anything else?
Thanks
RJ

[Grace Erick]

randyjane,

It would seem that a dog would eat the raw food readily since it's supposed to be a more natural way of feeding them as wolves ate in the wild, but they don't always take to it or need some mixing of food for them to get used to it, so I would suggest buying a small package if you decide to feed any brand of raw food since it's pricey.

If you do decide to feed raw, I'd love to know how the transition goes and how your dogs likes the food and which one you choose.

Bye, Grace

[Missy Stewart]

I mainly use a company called Hare Today Gone Tommorow. They have limited distribution in stores... so the majority of the price with them is the shipping costs. They do not use antibiotics are growth hormones so you are getting an organic product with them. I supplement their foods with the "green tripe" that they sell. Green tripe mimics the partially digested insides of a prey animals stomach that a dog would get in the wild. Tripe is great. It gives a variety of great digestive enzymes, etc. Here is the site for Hare Today.

http://www.hare-today.com/

And here is a site with more info on green tripe.

http://www.greentripe.com/

A lot of raw feeders use veggies... (they are easier b/c you can buy them in your grocery store and smell better!!!) But Sonny refuses to eat them... so I use tripe instead. It really is a fabulous thing to use, in my opinion, if you can deal with the smell.

I have also used Amore Foods with him. As well as Raw advantage. Here are the sites for those:

http://www.amorepetfoods.co m/

http://www.rawadvantagepetf ood.com/

I also use a fair amount of whole prey type items (you can buy some of these from Hare Today, and yes, she will de-fur them for you ;) ) As well as drumsticks, bresats with ribs, etc. from the grocery store.

Just let me know if I can help you with anything else. It can definately be overwhelming at first. But I have found that it has been well worth the efforts!

[Randy Jane]

Hi Missy.
Thanks for the links to the other sites. My dog is doing well on PRAIRIE raw, organic chicken and I mix it with the Artemis dry food. However, I've been looking at EVO, which is made by the INNOVA people, but it has no grain.
Do you know anything about EVO? Also, I was thinking about supplements but not really sure what to give. If the food I give is so complete and high quality, do I really need a supplement. So many things out there, it's so confusing.
Rj

[Grace Erick]

Look on under this food topic and you will find an EVO topic. This is what Maria found out from the company about the food:

Quote:
" Natura uses a slow, low temperature extrusion process which is carefully controlled to ensure thorough cooking and optimal nutritional availability and digestibility of the ingredients.* The ingredients are mixed and then cooked in an extruder and forced through a die to form the shape of the kibble.

Water-soluble vitamins are affected by heat, and are formulated in compensatory levels.* This means we add in more because we know what will be lost during the cooking process.* Probiotics*are heat sensitive*and are added after the cooking process.

What makes the Innova EVO different is that it does not contain any grains, which makes it low in carbohydrate and higher in fat and protein.

Here is an excerpt from*a letter our Vice President, co-founder, and nutritionist Peter Atkins*wrote that might help to further define the Innova EVO formula for you:

"...if you are looking for an ultra high performance food, a more convenient or reasonable substitute for a raw food diet, or if you have interest in approaching nutrition from a high-protein low-carbohydrate angle, then we would urge you to consider EVO.

We are the first to admit that EVO is not for every situation. Likewise, the conventional wisdom, of which your veterinarian's recommendations are in direct alignment, would suggest a much lower protein diet is better. Conventional wisdom would also recommend a low fat diet to avoid obesity.

However, if we look at a conventional pet food label with 25% protein, 12% fat, the moisture will likely claim 10%, crude fiber about 4% and we can assume ash (minerals) of about 6%. Then by difference the carbohydrate fraction can be estimated to be approximately 43%. Most often these carbohydrates are grains. Now, we don't suggest that any grain is inherently bad. But, it is often alarming when we actually understand just how much grain can be found in a conventional diet.

Critical to understanding EVO's philosophical challenge to conventional nutritional recommendations, one must realize that there are no established nutritional requirements for carbohydrate!

Traditionally grains have been an inexpensive way to dilute the nutrient density to more closely align with the minimum requirements. For conventional thinkers this is still a good strategy today.

More recently nutritionists have begun to question the conventional wisdom of providing compounds which aren't inherently key providers of essential nutrients just to lower protein and fat to a level that barely meets requirements. In essence, EVO challenges the conventional thought of adding grain only to lower protein and fat concentrations - the grains have been removed. Thereby, the protein and fat concentrations are going to be elevated.

In long-term feeding studies, EVO has performed extremely well and no adverse conditions have been detected. Further, there have been a number of myths promulgated regarding links between protein and kidney failure, aging, and other health related issues. Repeated research studies have simply not been able to substantiate these myths: Quite the opposite. Much of this work has led us to a better understanding of the role that high quality proteins have on health, disease prevention, and even recovery."



Rory Tharp
Customer Service Supervisor
Natura Pet Products
1-800-532-7261


Also, the food is 42% protein. It gave my dog a soft stool after eating a few pieces of kibble, so if you went with that, you definitely want to mix it slowly with your dog's old food.

Bye, Grace

[Grace Erick]

Hi Randy,

I had looked into the Prairie chicken and veggie raw food since it sounds the most appealing to me and it says it meets the nutritional standards set by the AAFCO which other canned and kibble foods say too. It is a minimum standard, so I supposed a dog can always be supplemented with vitamins.

I did read that there are different vitamins and that some are stronger and made for homemade diets where they may lack more vitamins and minerals where the regular dog foods do meet minimum standards so they need less vitamins or less potent ones.

Also, I don't understand why Prairie does not exceed minumun standards since raw food is supposed to have more vitamins since it's raw???

Bye, Grace

[Missy Stewart]

As far as I know "meets or exceeds AAFCO standards" is just a generic term used for a food that has been proven to provide adequate nutrition. Now I might be wrong on this, but I have never heard of different levels of AAFCO approval. I have always heard that it either meets it, or it doesen't, and that there is no measurment of exactly how much it meets or exceedes the standard (I hope that was not confusing!!!) In general, this statement means very little to me.

Here is an easy to read essay on AAFCO (just one of HUNDREDS that you can find online!)

http://members.aol.com/lifegard/petfood/index.htm?f=fs

Just some info on raw :wink:

Raw meats/organ and bone provide an array of nutrition in its most natural form. So you are definately not going to need "stronger" supplements if you are feeding raw. In fact, if you are feeding a balanced raw diet, the only supplement I would reccomend would be a cold pressed fish body oil that is proven to be free of mecury. I actually consulted an animal nutritionist who was well versed on raw diets in conern to supplementing. And she also said that a balanced raw diet of fresh meat/organ/bone and (veggie or tripe) did not need any type of additional supplementation beyond the fish oil.

Just as an example:
Raw meats include a highly bio-available assortment of amino acids and protein, enzymes, antioxidants, vitamins A,C,D,E,K,B1,B2,B3,B 5,B6,B12, biotin, choline, folic acid, fatty acids, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, chromium, copper, maganese, selenium, zinc, and vanadium.

The raw bone in a raw diet gives ample calcium.

Organ meat is rich in vitamin A among other things.

A study of green tripe (which is what I use in place of veggies was done by Woodson-Tenent Laboratories, Inc. in Gainesville, Georgia. The results were as follows.

Moisture 71.37%
Crude Fat 11.70%
Protein 15.82%
Ash 1.23%
Phosphorous 0.14%
Calcium 0.12%
Calories 756.35 cal/lb.
pH 6.12
Lactic Acid Bacteria 12,000 CFU/G
Linoleic Acid (EFA) 2.72%
Linolenic Acid (EFA) 0.37%

Tripe also contains wonderful gastric juices which help in digestion.

I would also suggest using a variety of meats that you can rotate to keep variety in your protein sources. And stick with raw foods that are grain free. I know Praire has VERY small amount of sprouted grains in theirs. Like I said before, the diet is 95% meat/bone/organ and 5% veggies/fruits/sprouted grains

Hope this helps :wink:

[Missy Stewart]

Grace,

The term "home-made" diet is often reffering to a home-cooked diet and not raw. Cooking the food destroys a lot of the vitamins and enzymes which is why you would probably need stronger supplements.

[Grace Erick]

Hi,

I actually meant exactly what I said. I'm saying that a home made diet which I understand is used as a term referring to cooked food needs more vitamins not because it's cooked, but because it does not have all of the ingredients necessary to make a balanced meal where as the canned food is cooked, but has vitamins and minerals added so it needs less vitamins and minerals.

Then when it comes to raw food, I don't know if some are complete diets or meet higher standards than those made up by AAFCO, but Prairie says for the chicken w/veggies that it meets AAFCO standards which I've always read are minium standards.

In this case, being raw for this variety of food does not offer any more vitamins than canned foods, at least not that I can see if it just meets AAFCO standards and does not say that it exceeds them which would be a big selling point.

Bye, Grace

[Grace Erick]

Randy Jane, I also heard from a dog nutrition and holistic person that EVO is too high in protein for the average dog unless it's working dog that burns a lot of calories, plus for whatever reason, it's not good for young dogs I guess that may be still growing.

She recommened only adding 25% of the food to whatever a dog is presently eating.

Bye, Grace

[Missy Stewart]

Dog food companies add vitamins b/c the cooking process destroys the naturally occuring vitamins and minerals that you find in raw food. The same thing happens with home cooked meals. The cooking destroys the enzymes as well as a lot of the nutrition, therefore, you need to supplement with cooked foods. Raw foods are completely unaltered. It's kind of like doctors telling people to eat more raw, fresh whole foods. The nutrition content is greater (and more bio-available) than something that is cooked. The same thing really applies in feeding a dog a raw diet. The vitamins and minerals in raw foods have a high bioavailabilty, whereas a lot of sythetic supplements do not.

Here is a generic breakdown of raw vs cooked:

Some Benefits of Raw Foods

Minerals better assimilated
Vitamins more bioavailable
Beneficial antioxidants present
Amino acids more bioavailable
Natural digestive enzymes still present
Probiotics spared
Amino acids such as taurine are not destroyed

Some Negative Effects of Heat Processing

Loss of up to 100% of certain vitamins
Loss of up to 60% of certain amino acids
Enzymes destroyed
Probiotics destroyed
Loss of up to 10% of certain fatty acids
Fats can become toxic or rancid
Oxidation of cholesterol

Again, I really do not get hung up on AAFCO. Most companies exploit the fact that they meet AAFCO standards b/c that is what consumers have been trained to look for. How much a company actually exceeds the standard really is not measured. It really is a VERY generic standard.

Since Sonny refused the Prairie diet, I really did not go into a lot of detail on it. At first I was simply intrigued by the idea of spending about $20 dollars a month to feed my 15 lb jack vs the $70 a month that I spend now!! But like I said before, he refused it :? Now the natural pet store that I bought it from (the owner studied animal nutrition at Purdue) really supports this food. She said that it was the first "pre-packaged" raw food that she felt confident in promoting.

I have strayed away from using the "complete package" raw diets, but that is just my preference. I think that they are great for a lot of people, but I prefer to put together Sonny's diet on my own. If you are using quality, organic meat/bone/organ, supplementation really is not necessary b/c of the wealth of naturally occuring vitamins and minerals in raw foods. I spent months reading up on raw feeding before I switched Sonny to a raw diet and never found one vet, holistic practicioner or animal nutritionist that reccomended supplementation with raw feeding (outside of using a good fish body oil). Most just advise using a variety of protein sources and if you use veggies, make sure you pulp them completely before mixing them into the meat b/c a dogs digestive system is not equipped to break down the vegetable cell wall. It is also crucial to keep fresh bone in the diet as well as about 10% organ meat. It really is just that simple ;)

[Missy Stewart]

Also, just b/c the raw food does not offer "more" vitamins per serving does not mean that it is not more nutritious. The vitamins in raw are more bio-available and are utilized by the dogs body much easier than a synthetic vitamin added by a dog food manufacturer.

It's like trying to compare the protein content on two bags of dog food. While one company may be using high quality meat and claiming a certain protein %, another dog food company will claim the same % but will use a low quality protein source such as by-products or egg shells. In evaluating nutrition it is VERY important to take into consideration the bio-availability of the source being used, and not just the listed %

You also used an example of canned food. Canned food has been processed beyond recognition. It is like comparing a fresh piece of ham to a can of Spam. Your body is going to utilize and digest these products very differernt! The less the product has been processed the better!! ;)

[Grace Erick]

Hi Missy,

I definitely agree with the foods being of different quality. I did read that putting vitamins in dog food was just as good as them getting them from the food source, but I only saw that in print once and I'm not sure I believe it. I know for people, it's better to get vitamins from food so I tend to believe as you say, it's also better for dogs to get vitamins from food.

On poor dog foods, they tend to have a short list of ingredients with a long a laundry list of vitamins and minerals added, where the better foods have more and better ingredients and have less added vitamins and minerals.

Bye, Grace

[Missy Stewart]

I have kept in on-again off-again e-mail contact with the nutritionist that I used in formulating Sonny's diet. I'm thinking about writing her for her opinion on these "medallion style" pre-packaged raw meals. If I get a good response, I'll write back with the info. I'll probably have to wait till Monday though b/c I don't think that she checks her e-mail on the weekends.

I know that one thing that I really did not like about the Praire is that the other frozen meals are not 100% organic. It just seems to me that if you are feeding a meat source EVERY single day, you do not want it to be pumped up with antibiotics, steroids, or growth hormones. I have really strived in using 100% organic products. But that is just my take on this.

Again, let me write her and hopefully by early next week I'll have some sort of response. ;)