I heard about this pet food called 'Oma's Pride' made right here in Conneticut were I live, and we've been thinking of trying it out. It's an all raw diet that sells USDA approved meat and is made by a private manufacturer at its own plant. (So it isn't made at those giant plants that manufactor a lot of different brands) The thing is, you need to add in all the vitamins and minerals and veggies to it, which makes it more expensive.

 But wouldn't it just be easier and less expensive to buy raw food at the store? It kind of sounds like they just took regular meat, gave it a fancy name, and charged a little extra for it. We're not to sure if we'll get it or not...living in CT (land of high taxes) we will probably not be able to afford the food AND all the stuff we'll have to add to it. Can anyone tell me what additions we'll have to put in it if it's just raw meat?

 I want to find out soon...we've been putting off getting poor Sam a better dog food, trying to find just the right one.

 Here's the brand's website and another site that sells it, if anyone else is interested:

http://www.omaspride.com/index.htm

http://www.sapetcare.com/brand.html?brand_id=22

There are lots of "raw food" sites but I wonder about farm-raised meats that are not range free..salmonella, bacterias, parasites,and different hormones etc COULD possibly be passed onto your dog. I think cooked meats (esp chicken) is best. Unless you can trust the food source.

A lot of raw foods proponents use "naturally in the wild" reasons, but in the wild, dogs usually don't live to be 10-15 years old. Meats (even fish) have all kinds of bad stuff in them, and you just never know how it was raised and processed..just my 1 cents worth.

This site has a few homemade recipes...I would still add supplements tho.

allrecipes.com/HowTo/Homemade-Pet-Food/Detail.aspx

 That's what I thought, Mary. Kind of like glorified butcher scraps. We might get a little bit and add it to Sam's food, just to see what it looks like.

 As for parasites, it is something to worry about, but a dog's digestive track  is less susceptable to parasites than a human's.