The Barf Diet: Raw Feeding for Dogs and Cats Using Evolutionary Principles

By Ian Billinghurst

This third book from Dr. Ian Billinghurst was written to help pet owners either understand or expand their knowledge of evolutionary diets for both dogs and cats. It contains important background research from his first two books together with lots of new information. Experienced "BARFers" will benefit from a number of new suggested recipes and practical information to assist in the home production of BARF diets - now everyone can do the BARF diet for their pets!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dogwise Publishing
• Release date: May 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781617811777

Ian Billinghurst

Dr. Ian Billinghurst has a diverse educational background and a varied professional career including that of Nutritionist, Agricultural Scientist, Veterinary Surgeon, Author, Lecturer, Nutritional Consultant and Acupuncturist. His first book on raw feeding, Give Your Dog a Bone, was published in 1993 and has sold more than 100,000 copies. His second book, Grow Your Pups With Bones, was written to meet the needs of breeders. This is his third book. He lives with his wife and pet family in Australia.

Book preview

The BARF Diet

Raw Feeding

For Dogs And Cats

Using Evolutionary Principles

Dr. Ian billinghurst

B.V.Sc.[Hons], B.Sc.Agr., Dip.Ed.

Published by

Warrigal Publishing

PO Box 9064 Bathurst 2795

NSW Australia

The BARF Diet

First Published in Australia 2001

By Ian Billinghurst

Copyright Ian Billinghurst 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.

World rights reserved

This book is an Australian product

Design and typesetting by Ian Billinghurst

Edited by Caelia Corse, Brenda Hagel and Rick Billinghurst

Photography by Roslyn Billinghurst

Isbn 0 9585925 1 9

Also written by Ian billinghurst

Give Your Dog a Bone – 1993

Grow Your Pups With Bones – 1998

To order further copies of these books, address all enquiries to …

www.BARFaustralia.com

Dr. Ian Billinghurst

Po box 9064 Bathurst 2795

N.S.W. Australia

E-mail [e-mail]

Contents

The BARF Diet

The BARF Diet

About This Book

Note To Readers

Acknowledgements

How To Use This Book

Introduction

Chapter One…

Did You Say BARF?

Chapter Two…

BARF Can Work Wonders!

Chapter Three…

Should Dogs And Cats Eat BARF?

Chapter Four…

Keys To Feeding BARF

Chapter Five…

Building Blocks Of BARF

Chapter Six…

BARF With Extras!

Chapter Seven…

Bones Bugs And BARF

Chapter Eight…

Complete And Balanced BARF?

Chapter Nine…

Turning Food Into BARF!

Chapter Ten…

Switching To BARF

Chapter Eleven…How Much BARF?

Chapter Twelve…Trouble-Shooting For BARF

Chapter Thirteen…Starting Out With BARF

About Ian Billinghurst

About This Book

The BARF Diet is very much a book for the beginning BARFer. However, it has also been written for vets, breeders, trainers, pet owners or any other person seeking to either understand or expand their knowledge of evolutionary diets for our companion animals, the cat and the dog. In other words, it has much new, interesting and useful information for the experienced BARFer as well as serving as a primer for the uninitiated.

The BARF Diet is the third book in a series dealing with feeding pets their healthy evolutionary diet. It is the first book in the series that deals with feeding both cats and dogs. It contains important background material from my first two books, together with much new information.

The word BARF stands for ‘Biologically Appropriate Raw Food’, or ‘Bones And Raw Food’. The BARF diet presented in this book is a simple, practical and commonsense alternative to the health destroying processed pet foods.

This book starts out by providing the reader with the sound scientific principles on which the evolutionary diet—the BARF diet—is based and outlines the enormous health benefits available for any animal fortunate enough to be fed that way. At the same time, readers will quickly appreciate why feeding grain based pet foods is so dangerous to the long-term health of modern pets.

In the second half of the book, the reader is presented with recipes and other highly relevant and practical information to assist in the home production of BARF diets for both dogs and cats. Included in this section is a chapter on Troubleshooting and one on Switching to BARF.

Once again, the basic inescapable theme of this book is that animals are much healthier when fed their evolutionary diet. A diet based on whole raw foods. The diet they are designed to eat by a long process of evolution.

Note To Readers

The information in this book is supplied on the understanding that it is not designed to take the place of your veterinarian. Its aim is to supplement your veterinarian’s advice and guidance. Diagnosis of a medical or surgical condition in your dog or cat can only be carried out by a veterinary surgeon. The author of this publication cannot be responsible for decisions any reader may make with respect to feeding or treating their pet animals. Any application of the recommendations set forth in this book is at the reader’s discretion and sole risk. It is strongly advised that the reader seeks out the best veterinary resources available in order that informed decisions on the care of pet animals is obtained at all times.

Acknowledgements

This book has its origins in a suggestion made by Brenda Hagel. She claimed it was needed. From that point onward, my darling wife Roslyn [my strongest critic and staunchest supporter] has propelled its evolution forward, ably assisted by Brenda and Dennis Hagel, Lily Noon and Rob Mueller.

I owe much to the thousands of BARFers and their pets, out there in cyber space and elsewhere. It is they who have ‘told’ me what to write.

Editing and critical reading have been carried out by my brother Rick, by Brenda, by Roslyn and by our daughter Caelia.

All the errors, typographical and otherwise are my own.

How To Use This Book

This is not a long book and it will not take you a great deal of time to read it. I therefore suggest you start at the beginning and read it straight through. It most definitely has a developing thread and theme, which requires to be followed if you are to gain maximum insight and use from this book.

Make sure you have in your hand a pen or a pencil or a highlighter, or all three so that you can mark the book appropriately as you move through it. Mark those points or paragraphs or sections, which have particular relevance and interest for yourself. You are creating your own index of sorts.

Having done that, you are then free to concentrate on those sections which most concern you.

I wish you and your pets – good health

Ian Billinghurst

Introduction

The arrival of the third millenium has brought with it a new breed of health conscious pet owner, fanatical about what cats and dogs should eat. They do not feed their pets any cooked and processed foods. They do not base their pets’ diet on grain. These new age pet owners feed their dogs and cats fresh whole foods including raw meaty bones, crushed vegetables, offal and other healthy whole foods. This method of feeding pet animals is called the ‘BARF diet’, and people who feed their pets this way call themselves ‘BARFers’.

BARF—apart from meaning ‘to vomit’—stands for ‘biologically appropriate raw food’, or ‘bones and raw food’. The ‘BARF diet’ is a method of returning pet animals to their evolutionary diet. This profound but simple change brings enormous health benefits to our companion animals.

Because of the widespread adoption of processed pet food over the last forty to seventy years, what was once common knowledge—‘how to feed our pets a fresh food diet’—has become a lost art.

However—the good news is—producing the BARF or evolutionary diet is simple, once the basic principles are understood. The BARF diet consists of the broad range of fresh whole foods that a wild or feral cat, or a wolf or a dingo would consume over the course of a year. This is duplicated or mimicked with food that is easily obtained from the butcher and local supermarket.

The simple brilliance of BARF is its reliance on raw meaty bones, which contain almost the whole range of nutrients our pets require, and in the form that evolution dictates as essential. This includes practically all their protein, fat mineral and vitamin requirements.

In its simplest form, the BARF diet consists of fifty percent raw meaty bones and fifty percent multi-mix BARF patties. The multi-mix patties contain dietary elements not found in raw meaty bones. However, they too are typically based on raw meaty bones. The food components in the patties are reduced to a finely ground state and thoroughly mixed to ensure our pets cannot pick and choose between them. The principles that are essential to BARF include rawness, a predominance of raw meaty bones and a wide variety of fresh whole foods that reflect the scope and balance of foods our pets have evolved to require.

However, we are getting ahead of ourselves. I am sure you have a load of questions. They will be answered! Keep reading and learn how you can promote supreme wellness in your pets by the simple device of feeding them the foods that evolution designed them to require …

Chapter One…

Did You Say BARF?

Or… What Exactly Is The BARF Diet?

The word BARF stands for Biologically appropriate raw food. The BARF diet or BARF feeding program is about feeding dogs and cats the diet they evolved to eat over millions of years of genetic adaptation.

Other equally apt terms include Evolutionary Diet, Natural Diet and Species Appropriate Diet.

Simple logic and basic biology dictates because our pets’ bodies require an evolutionary diet that is exactly what we should feed them.

The Basic Philosophy Of The BARF Feeding Programme

If our pets are to reach their genetic potential in terms of health, longevity, physical activity and reproduction [if reproduction is what we want], their modern day diet must mimic as closely as possible their evolutionary diet.

The further an animal’s diet departs from its evolutionary diet, the more health problems that animal is likely to develop. That is why modern grain based pet foods, no matter how well researched, cause so many health problems. It is impossible for them to match the health enhancing attributes of the evolutionary diet.

If we can accept that the evolutionary diet is the gold standard diet for our pets, it is by definition, the most health promoting diet possible. Any other diet, must therefore be of a lower standard and therefore less likely to promote good health. Having understood this profound nutritional truth, it becomes very easy for pet owners to want to feed, and for health professionals to want to recommend, an evolutionary diet for pet animals.

BARF Also Stands For The Bones And Raw Food Diet

This is the specific version of the biologically appropriate raw food diet that evolution designed for our dogs and our cats. This presents both the cat version and the dog version of the bones and raw food or BARF diet.

To Produce The BARF Diet Is Very Simple

You may use whatever you can buy [or find] in the way of whole raw healthy foodstuffs—meat, bones, vegetables and organ meats etc—that mimics the diet of a wild or feral animal. Many of these products may be found at your local supermarket.

You can enhance the diet you produce with healthy supplements such as vitamins, essential fatty acids, probiotics, kelp, alfalfa powder, various herbs etc.

Once you understand the simple evolutionary principles on which the BARF diet is based, you will find that feeding BARF is uniquely simple.

We Are Not Attempting To Return Our Pets To Nature

The natural environment can be dangerous. It includes lack of shelter, lack of medical and surgical intervention, the possibility of starvation and the danger of injury or death from many quarters, particularly from other animals, including those animals hunted for food.

We will continue to keep our pets in an artificial environment, that includes regular bathing and grooming, training, shelter, love, regular flea and worm treatments, vaccination and medical and surgical intervention when required. The only part of the environment we wish to become more natural is the food, though of course we shan’t expect our pets to hunt for it.

We shall begin to provide our pets with the type of food for which their body was designed. Food that is raw and whole and in the same form, balance and amount, as they would have received in their natural environment.

The BARF program was introduced to the world in 1993 by my first book Give Your Dog a Bone

BARF received instant acceptance from breeders and pet owners and has now spread deep into the heartland of ‘kibbledom.’ It is here that health conscious pet owners, alarmed at the high levels of degenerative disease seen in modern pets, are successfully adopting the BARF