Due to Salmonella

http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-recall/diggin-your-dog-withdraws-pet-treats/
http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-recall/steves-real-food-recall/

Probably isn't the best post to ask this question on, but does anyone on here feed Steve's Real Food? I'm considering replacing the Orijen in Nikolai's diet with this. I just don't have the resources around me to go full raw myself right now, but I know a raw diet might help with Nikolai's seizures or at the very least his eye goop and itchiness.

I have a friend who feeds it, but she has a Bernese mountain dog and I just would like perspective from a husky point of view.

A couple questions:

Which Steve's product are you considering?

How much of Nicolai's diet consists of orijen?

Which orijen product do you feed?

How long does it take you to go through a big bag?

I was going to start with the nuggets of Turkey. He is still going to get his Honest Kitchen in the morning, so that will help with the cost a little bit.

Unfortunately Orijen is the main part of his diet, and his largest meal at night. Gets about a cup and a half of that. We feed adult. The red didn't agree with him, and the 6 fish gave him an ear infection.

Between Siku and Nikolai it takes about a month to go through a bag of Orijen. I will continue feeding Siku his normal food and only change Nikolai. I will most likely also up his breakfast of the honest kitchen to a cup to save on how expensive this is going to be.

I'm guessing he's not sensitive to chicken right? If you can feed chicken, raw feeding will be cheaper than than the Steve's. You can find chicken super cheap, less than a dollar a pound. If you combine it with thk depending on how much thk you're giving in the morning, Nikolai would need around 3/4 of a pound of chicken per day (that's if you are doing half raw at night and half thk in the am), which would equate to less than a dollar a day. Eventually you'll want to introduce other proteins which can increase the cost, but if you can mix chicken in it's still relatively cheap. Also, I know a lot of people have huge freezers, but we don't have room for that. So basically I just go shopping a little more often and store 10-25 lbs at a time. Our small freezer holds about 35 lbs if its stuffed completely with meat lol. Orijen was way more expensive than raw when I tried to put Diz on it and it totally messed him up. So, back to raw we go. Just some food for thought.

I'm not really sure what his tolerance to chicken is to be honest. He cannot eat the Honest Kitchen chicken at all, and Orijen Adult is a lot of chicken as well and he doesn't do awful on it. Firm poops, but itchy and gooey eyes over the last couple of months. Its just so hard to pin point what is bothering him. But it could also be different if it was real chicken.

What kind of cut of chicken do you feed Dizzy? And where do you get it? We don't have any kind of health food stores around here, so the only meat that I could get would be at a normal grocery store and I'm not sure I trust their chicken being as organic as they say it is.

I'm just on the edge of wanting to do raw so badly, just can't get myself to fully take the leap. I don't know why.

I don't feed him chicken because he reacted to it as a puppy, although, once his hot spot is gone I do want to try chicken again to see if he still has issues with it. When I was feeding chicken I was feeding wings since he was still a little guy, but also quarters and drumsticks (his fav). For his cheap meat, I use turkey necks and drumsticks and pork, a lot of times I can find pork spare ribs for under $2/lb which is still cheaper than most high quality dog foods. I honestly don't worry much about organic, mainly because I assume that whatever is going into dog food is below human grade anyway, so buying non-organic meat doesn't bother me. Essentially I have a couple of lower end grocery stores I frequent and buy whatever is on sale.

Thanks for all of the information. I will definitely look into what we have on sale when I go grocery shopping.

I swear between allergies and personality, Dizzy is the exact mix of Siku and Nikolai!

I know! It's very funny. His anxiety has pretty much totally gone away after his neuter though. He has really mellowed out! Still has his crazy streak though.

Have you looked into this for Nicolai?

http://www.pawfectlyrawne.com

Megan, thank you for that website! That doesn't work for us yet, because I think you have to pick up the food at certain locations and there aren't any in Maine. But if we do end up moving to Vermont, I will for sure be using this guy! If we had a bigger freezer, I would just stock up but we don't have room for that right now.

Wow. That's a great site! I may actually start using that Megan. There is a drop off location that is about 2 hours from nyc. I'd be willing to do that!