As part of our commitment to always giving the best quality food to the TomKings puppies, we regularly review the available options and test the most modern trends. Talking to a panel of experts and the experienced puppy parents in the Tomkings Frenchie Family, we have revised our food policy. Read about the details below and our recommendations about the B.A.R.F. (Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods) diet.
What do French Bulldog puppies get at the TomKings farm
According to the latest TomKings Food Policy, between the age of 2 and 11 months, our puppies get the age-appropriate amount from Hill’s Chicken Puppy Medium. This has an optimal mix of premium ingredients to make sure our babies get the highest quality nutrition and vitamins after breastfeeding and are not likely to develop food allergies.
When our puppies find their forever loving families, we always tell the parents what we have fed them with and what we recommend. Currently, our recommendations are Orijen and Acana, both are biologically appropriate premium-quality dog food with high meat inclusions from superior quality meat, poultry, and produce.
It’s important you ensure a smooth transition when you change their diets. This means a slow introduction of the new food, mixing 25% of the new food with 75% of the old food, increasing the ratio of the new food in a week to 100% if your baby is happy. The same applies to adding fresh food into their diets: change one meal first, and see how they react, and then slowly change the rest of the meals.
An overview of the B.A.R.F diet and why we recommend it
B.A.R.F is the acronym for Biologically Appropriate Raw Food (or Bones And Raw Food). In any case, the main point is that it’s a homemade diet consisting of a combination of raw muscle meat, raw meaty bones, vegetables, and fruit, avoiding processed food.
Why is B.A.R.F. recommended?
Even if our Frenchie pups are lovely family members, their digestion system hasn’t changed much in the past 10,000 years and your cute baby is a wolf inside closer to their wild dog ancestors than you think. They are anatomically carnivores, so they are basically flesh-eaters with powerful digestive juices (which kill bacteria in raw food). B.A.R.F. is all about feeding your dog the way nature intended. From their short intestines to their teeth designed to rip and eat flesh, this is the best way to keep them healthy and well-fed.
What the daily B.A.R.F. diet for French Bulldogs includes
(Please note that these are recommended guidelines, every pup is different, the below ratios are for your orientation only.)
- Raw meat: 70% As we described above, raw meat (with or without bones) should take up the major proportion of your pup’s diet. It can include a mixture of muscle meat, saturated fat, and muscular organs such as heart muscle meat. This provides them with the protein, energy, amino acids, and water-soluble vitamins they need.
- Raw edible bone: 10%. Despite some common misbeliefs, Frenchies do need raw meaty bones. It’s crucial that these are raw, as cooking bones makes them brittle and therefore, more likely to splinter and this is why you should avoid feeding them cooked bones.
- Inner organs: 10% Liver is essential to provide fat-soluble vitamins, the recommended ratio starts at 5%. Other organs, like kidney, give your puppy the essential water-soluble vitamins.
- Vegetables and fruits: 8% While vegetables are not essential in a French Bulldog’s diet, it provides them with the fibres they need to keep their digestive system clean and antioxidants to keep them healthy.
- Seeds and nuts: 1% Raw seeds and nuts provide essential vitamins, fatty acids, and fat-soluble vitamins.
It can’t be highlighted enough that your puppy’s diet should include no chocolate, cookies, sweets, cakes. These are not only unhealthy but can be toxic as in Oscar’s case.
The benefits of the B.A.R.F. diet
We asked the over 3,000 Tomkings Frenchie parents in our closed Facebook group about their experience with the BARF diet. What they said was in line with the benefits generally associated with raw meat diet:
- Cleaner teeth and fresh breath
- Better weight control
- Improved digestion
- Shinier, healthier skin and coat
- Reduction of allergy symptoms
- Harder, smaller, less smelly stools
- Increased mobility in older animals
- More energy and stamina
- Strengthened immune system
- Improved liver, pancreatic, and bowel health
How to introduce the BARF diet to your French Bulldog: slow transition
The major concern about the B.A.R.F. diet is that raw meat contains bacteria. If you store it properly, however, you’ll see no problem. Regarding the transition from cooked food to a raw diet, follow the tips we shared above. Change one meal at a time and step by step you can switch it completely in a week.
Read here our article about How to feed your French Bulldog.
The article was written based on the experience and the services of the Tomkings Team and the feedback from the Tomkings puppy parents. Tomkings have been breeding French Bulldogs for 13 years on their farms. All the pictures in the post belong to them and show puppies from their breed and puppy parents. Check our available puppies here, or if you have any questions or comments let us know below the article.
