Occasionally, I get emails asking questions about raw feeding and it makes me conscious about the fact that not everyone understands the nutritional advantage of feeding their dog this way. I guess I have been doing this business so long that I forget that there are new consumers that don’t understand the changes that will happen when they make the switch to raw.
Last week I had a customer that was going to quit feeding the BARF patties to her dog because the dog’s stool turned to a chalky white consistency and she was nervous that the dog was reacting bad to the diet. Wow! I realized that she was not informed from the beginning about the difference in utilization of the nutrients between a dry kibble diet and a raw meat based diet. The nutrients in a raw meat based diet are more readily absorbed by the body and the result is as much as a 30% reduction of stool volume. In addition the stool color and consistency changes because all that is left in the stool is ash and fiber which casts a chalky white consistency to the stool. This is completely normal and should pose no concern to the dog owner. It is a sign that the dog’s body has utilized all the nutrients in the food . If the dog receives other table scraps and various treats you will see a change back to what the stool was like on dry food.
