Raw Feeding((plz only post if exp in this)) -- Novices need to know HOW

If you figure she might be 100 pounds you would start at 2-3 pounds of food a day. Start with chicken. Buy a bag of chicken quarters that are low sodium. Look at the nutrition box on the back for a sodium level of less than 100 mg per serving. Around here a quarter is about a pound so it would be easy to give her one quarter three times a day for starting out. A 10 pound bag would last for 3.3 days on average.

Those legs and thighs are likely too small to be a safe meal for her. One of the toughest parts of feeding raw is appropriate sized meals. Dogs are programmed to get food inside NOW and worry about the consequences later [go off, hork it up and rechomp it most likely]. In nature small meals would be gophers and mice, small bones. Something with chicken bone sized bones would be too large to swallow whole, a rabbit most likely. We are concerned with overfeeding as we aren't fond of horked up food and excessive poop from a house dog so are stuck feeding stuff just the wrong size for chomping up properly. Those legs and thighs are fine IF she would just chomp a few times and swallow but many dogs are so thrilled getting fresh food they will just swallow stuff whole. You don't know if she would respect them or not so don't feed them until you know she does respect small stuff. I have found that the bone knobs on chicken wings, legs and feet can be forced inside kongs and Max will chew down to the knob, not pull the food out but then I have to get that knob out of the kong. So far so good but it wouldn't be a good thing if I couldn't get it out!

The rest of the meat is fine except for the sausage but it is for later. You would cut the bones out of the chops and steaks and throw them away unless they are nearly whole and the small dogs can safely chew the soft stuff off - later.

This is exactly like introducing a human baby to solid food. Feed one bland thing until the gut figures out how to deal with it and then substitute a small amount of a different food increasing as the gut is comfortable. It is perfectly normal for dogs to regurgitate and have horrible poop when switching but don't accept it, change the meals to make it easier for the gut instead of letting it suffer. If there is liquid to soft to mucous even tinges of blood on the poop consider the amount of food, the amount of bone and the amount of fat. Max will still have large soft poop if I overfeed him so I weigh his meals and cut back a bit if he has soft stool. If he hasn't enough bone then he has soft poop, too much bone results in hard to powdery poop. Oddly he had mucous and a tinge of blood but needed MORE bone not less. If there is too much fat a dog can have nasty poop too.

Chicken has a good amount of bone for new to raw dogs, 30% for a whole carcass. It is easy to cut off a bit to make a meal smaller. Most of the fat is in the skin so it is super easy to adjust the amount of fat the dog gets. In time you want to feed less bone and feed all the nice raw skin but taking skin off and feeding the extra bone makes for a raw meal more like the high waste low fat kibble diet most dogs are coming from. And chicken is cheap! You do need to be concerned with the sodium content always check the bag.

Right now you are offering meaty bones every once in a while to see how she likes it, much the way I gave my dogs meaty bones to clean teeth once a week back when.

You can safely substitute one raw meal out of four meals without unbalancing the diet but they need to be not very bony or you risk loading up on calcium which can cause bones to grow too fast which is dangerous for a large breed pup. Kibble already has more calcium than dogs require and something like a 16 ounce turkey drumstick has 5x the calcium Max requires in a meal that is only 1.5x his usual.

If you want to continue offering raw every once in a while keep it to 1/4 of her total feed and only offer bony stuff every other time at the most. If she is eating twice a day a raw meal would be one pound, if she is eating three times a day a raw meal would be 11 ounces.

Even if your experimenting with raw means by the time she has finished the kibble she has tried liver, pork, beef, chicken, turkey and whatever else you have in the freezer without any problems you still need to go right back to plain bony chicken when you drop kibble. She may need to eat plain chicken for 2 days or 2 weeks before you can move on but you must take it easy anyway. If you do end up going through the meat in the freezer you must cut the meat from the steaks and chops, they are small and pointy.

If you notice any poop issues at all stop and evaluate what she has eaten and modify the diet the very next meal or the gut can easily go into a horrible feed back loop that is difficult to get out of.

Oil of oregano is really strong, do you check that the mixture doesn't burn?

When the kibble is out of the house start feeding her 2% of her ideal adult weight, you are estimating 100 pounds at maturity so 2 pounds total a day. Split that up into the meals she needs each day. Probably half a whole chicken a day split in half or 2 quarters from those 10 pound bags would work nicely.