Switching to BARF feeding
There are probably as many ways to switch your pet to the BARF diet as there are people and their pets.
The switch can be (and mostly is) rapid, straightforward and trouble free. Occasionally, it can be a difficult exercise with problems. Cats can be difficult so far as acceptance of new food goes and both dogs and cats, but more particularly dogs, can exhibit a variety of gastrointestinal upsets as their body adjusts to the new food.
Consider the diet you are switching your pet from. Where a pet has some experience of eating a variety of home-produced foods both cooked and raw, there is usually more acceptance and less likelihood of upset. With kibble fed pets, the change is more dramatic for the pet's system.
There are two general methods of making the switch to BARF. "Rapid" and "Slow".
RAPID Switch.
This is the simplest way to make the switch. You go ahead and do it! Yesterday you fed your pet kibble and/or cooked food, today you begin to feed the BARF diet.
The rapid switch is the preferred, simplest, most trouble free and most successful method for dogs, particularly young and healthy dogs with a relatively normal gastro system.
On the other hand, the rapid switch only works for a limited number of cats.
Sometimes it is not wise to use the rapid switch for older pets who have digestive problems or impaired immune systems. However, many old and young pets who have been kibble fed all their lives cannot tolerate both raw food and kibble together in their digestive tract. That combination can result in diarrhea, vomiting or both. In this case the switch has to be rapid.
Fasting for one or even two days prior to switching can be helpful. This allows for a small amount of detoxification and also brings to your assistance a mightly ally - hunger! Hunger can be an invaluable aid in re-training the taste buds of fussypets.
WARNING: Dogs can tolerate long fasts, whereas cats, especially our fat cats, should not be fasted longer than 24 hours. This is because cats can develop a fatal disease called heaptic lipidosis if fasted for long periods.
One of the simplest ways to initiate the switch is to offer your dog or cat some raw meaty bones. For cats or small dogs this could be a chicken wing or neck. For a larger dog it could be a turkey wing or neck of a chicken back, ox tail, lamb shank or lamb neck.
SLOW Switch.
There are four basic ways to approach the slow switch.
1. You can offer one meal of BARF followed by one meal of the old food and gradually feed fewer meals of the old type. If your pet accepts this method with no problems it is a fair indication that it has a very robust digestive system and would have handled the rapid switch extremely well.
2. The second way to go about it is to offer both types of food at the same time and gradually offer less and less of the old food and more of the new food. eg. kibble and chicken wings. In the BARF context this will often lead to the pet rejecting the new food. On the other hand, if the food is accepted, some pets will develop gastrointestinal upset as they cannot tolerate these two vastly different types of food in their digestive system at the same time.
3. The third slow switch method is to physically break the old and new food down a nd combine the two foods into a homogeneous mass. This works well with a pet that is reluctant to try the new fare. Many cats will fit into this category. However, this too may result in gasto upsets for the reasons set out in no 2.
4. This method involves introducing the new food in a cooked state and gradually feeding it in a more raw state. This works well with very fussy pets and can be useful with cats when all else fails.
For the vast majority of dogs, switching to BARF 'cold turkey' is the best option. Switching slowly usually proves to be difficult and ultimately a waste of time and effort, often causing more digestive upsets than not.
For the majority of cats however, you will have very little choice, cats will insist on the slow switch.