Different types of Best Raw Dog Food
There are different ways to feed raw to your dog. Let’s take a look at the two main options – home made raw and commercial raw dog food:
Home made Raw Dog Food
A common way to feed your dog raw is to make it at home using fresh whole-prey ingredients. There are many intricacies with canine nutrition and it’s vital to cover all nutrient requirements for long term health.
To offer an obvious example – feeding your pooch chicken breast or minced beef every day doesn’t address all nutritional requirements. The richest nutrition comes from organs, bones, and hard to get stinky stuff like green tripe.
Another less obvious example is feeding an excess of liver. It’s a wonderfully nutritious and essential organ, but as the liver has such a high level of vitamin A it can lead to vitamin A toxicity, otherwise known as hypervitaminosis A.
Commercial raw dog food
Thankfully many home grown Australian companies have sprung up to offer raw dog food products already formulated with the correct ratios of meat, organs, and bones, so you don’t need to think about it.
Unfortunately with lax regulations in Australia, and many small raw dog food companies not adhering to standards, there’s a vast range in quality between different brands of raw dog food.
Even some of the better brands don’t adhere to standards, but it’s a rather moot point as the standards are mostly in favour of the manufacturer rather than the consumer, merely offering ways to hide the truth.
A caution on feeding raw dog food products / BARF
A concern I often have with many commercial pet foods, particularly wet dog foods and BARF, is they don’t address dental health, plaque, or tartar control. The reason for this is they’re soft foods with no abrasive qualities.
Options for dental health are varied, from dental treats (yeah, nah), to regular brushing (some credibility), or chewing on a raw meaty bone (which is how wild animals retain excellent dental health).
If you consider chewing on bones as an excellent option for dental health (which they are), and you feed a BARF product with ground bones, it’s also worth considering you’re doubling calcium intake and throwing the balance out of whack – answer me that conundrum.
Human grade vs pet grade
One of the best metrics for assessing the quality of a raw dog food / BARF product is whether the ingredients used are human grade or pet grade. In Australia there is a vast difference in quality between the two, with the letter proving harmful in many cases over the years.
There have been a plethora of other issues over the years such as plastic and metal contaminants and excessive sulphite preservatives leading to renal failure in some dogs.
However, with lax pet food regulations and no accountability, some Australian pet food companies make claims such as “contains human grade ingredients” which doesn’t necessarily mean all are human grade, or “made with meats from a human grade facility” which doesn’t necessarily mean the meats in their product are human grade – many pet grade meats come from a human grade facility.
Some of these companies, and I won’t mention names, have a loyal following in Australian dog groups.
Raw dog food delivery
The “best raw dog food” list below only contains brands which are easily accessible to most Australians (including regional areas), but if you live in a city you’ll likely have options specific to you.
There’s a list of raw dog food delivery per city
Best raw dog food (Australia)
Here you go! Here are some of the best raw dog foods in Australia!
I work on the philosophy that variety is the best policy, and I see no reason not to rotate between different brands or styles of food. After all, we don’t eat the same thing every day, do we?
This list is inclusive of “dried raw”, which is a very convenient way to feed raw dog food without the problems with filling up the fridge with fresh meats with a short use by date.