A cheap way to feed my dog a B.A.R.F. diet.?

I have been looking online and I can't find a good site that tells me exactly what goes in a BARF diet.All I know it that it's healthier. (she is allergic to regular dog food) I want her to lead a long life but I don't have a lot of money, so I want to know the best items to get for my money, and what items go into a BARF diet.She's a seven year old mutt, who's pretty healthy as is, I would just like to make her quality of life better.Those who think BARF means literal barf, please don't answer this question.

Cheapest way is too...Feed it something it dosen't like. It can eat that over and over for a week or so !!!

Barf is pretty easy and can be fairly cheap. Most of what you want (85%) is raw bones with a fair bit of meat still on them. The dog will eat some of the smaller bones and this is perfectly ok as it keeps the calcium to phospherous ratio correct. I use turkey carcasses from a slaughter house, which consist of the backbone and ribs with meat still on them. I also use beef neck bones and other similar types of things. In a pinch raw chicken wings work great. As for the myth about dogs eating chicken bones....this only applies if they are cooked. If they are cooked they shatter into sharp shards that can hurt your dog. When they are raw they are soft and will not hurt your dog.The other 15% of the diet is vegitable and eggs...things like that. For hundreds of years, maybe even thousands, dogs ate left over table scrap. Modern day dog food has only been around since the 1950's. While dogs do best on a diet that mostly meat, they can thrive on just about anything you eat.

1. Get a freezer- this enables you to buy food when you can get it for a lower price and to buy in bulk2. Make friends with ALL your local butcher shops- my butcher saves all his scraps and his stock that hasn't sold, freezes it each night and then when he has enough he grinds it while adding some liver and heart. I buy it for 59 cents a lb for 100+ lbs. Normal price is 89 cents a lb. He also saves big game bones for me during hunting season and gives them to me free.3. Find a wholesale poulty /meat dealer... I go to a place that simply requires I buy in quantities of 100+ lbs... and can mix the order.. so I'm able to get chicken backs for 43 cents a lb. Pork necks at 50 cents a lb, and chicken quarters at 79 cents a lb... turkey necks etc......4. Think things through and be willing to do a little work. Recently whole chickens went on sale for 69 cents a lb... My family likes chicken breasts and my son was craving a batch of grandma's recipe for chicken wings... so I simply did a bit of my own butchering (removing breasts and wings) and basically fed the HUMANS for free.5. Be creative- When I lived in the great north woods I was on a list, with other mushers (dogsled) to get fresh venison roadkill... 1 deer=$15... nearly free meat. Also.. 50 bullheads per person (the fish) could be taken from a lake per day- another basically free meal. The $1 store often has mackeral..I don't feed my dogs vegies... but, I do clean out the fridge once or twice a week... and they get THOSE vegies as well as most everything else.Here's a good website with more suggestions...http://www.eastwooddanes.com/Getting-Started-101.htm(one thing I like about chicken backs is that they balance out the ground meat I feed and they have organ meat attached)Remember, raw feeding is about balance over time, not balancing every meal.Edit: Vet Tech... You make wonderful and valid points that need to be considered before making the leap into raw feeding. In my case the Samoyeds I've been working with are between 19 and 23 generations out of the arctic where I'm pretty certain the Samoyede people were not wasting fuel cooking meat for dogs.. nor was there grain available. The stomach and intestines are not consumed before the vegitation is shaken out. Feeding green tripe is a fairly normal thing by people who feed raw. FWIW.. if I still lived in the country I would be raising rabbits and chickens and using more of a prey model diet.I've only been feeding a raw diet for about 15 years. My grandparents did it for 50 plus years because they could not afford to feed kibble (they fed chicken heads and feet, offal, hog trimmings and scraps from the house that weren't good enough for the hogs).... funny thing is, their Sams regularly lived to 16-18 years of age... and now Sams are dying at 12-15. I firmly believe its due to diet and over immunization.There are pluses and minuses for EVERY form of feeding.

Please, for the sake of your dog, check into this a bit more! It is NOT healthier for your dog! Bones and raw foods (or Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods) are not a "natural" diet for dogs any more than gnawing on a raw meaty bone is natural for us. The BARF diet is hard to do correctly and the risk of foodborne illness is not to be discounted. I have personally seen 2 dogs come in that were impacted due to partially digested bones - both of which required general anestesia to fix the problem and one of which required abdominal surgery to fix. The one was manually evacuated - as in we slid the pieces of bone out of her rectum with forceps - the first dog's obstruction was higher up. We have also seen a couple of malnutritioned dogs (one was a Dobie who was in for breeding whose coat was one of the worse I have ever seen - the owners attributed it to her thyroid condition - yeah, and this dog was bred...ugh...and we wonder why so many Dobies have thyroid issues.....anyways....) from it as well. Not very good evidence considering that it is not a popular diet choice and very few dogs in this area are on it. Also keep in mind that dog food companies have to periodically test their food to make sure that their ingredients contain the nutrients that is on the label - there is no good way to tell exactly what is in the foods that you are feeding with the BARF diet, or a good way to test that it is bioavailble (able to be used by the dog) and balanced for your particular dog. Dogs have been domesticated for centuries, and selective breeding has led to dogs that are no longer capable of digesting raw foods and bones. People that feed this diet are also a lot of times unaware that in the wild some wolves do die of impaction and that it it theorized that the hide that is ingested along with the bones help to cushion the intestines from perforation. They are also unaware that the vegetable matter that wolves and other wild canids is partially digested by the prey animal. The stomach and intestines contain the enzymes to help break down the cellulose and nutrients found in the vegetable matter that the wolves lack. Without these enzymes, wild canids would not be able to use most of what they are ingesting. In short, you can measure and balance all you want and you may still be unable to provide your dog with proper nutrition using this approach. Now - ask me how I know all of this? Well, I was suckered in by all of the hype and considered it for my dog.... a bit more resaerch and talking to some of the vets that I work with and I came to the realization that my dog is as far removed from her wolf ancestors and to ignore that fact would be doing her a great disservice. Now - for your dog - have you had her allergy tested? Do you know what she is allergic to? Most often it is the protein source, second is the carbohydrate source. Until you know what she is allergic to, you can't really help her unless you want to do a trail and error - which is a great way if she has mild allergies and money is tight. First - look at the ingredients in the food that she is reacting to. Check the protien source (most often it is beef or chicken) and then the carbohydrate sourse (most often it is corn). Then, find a good that has an alternate protein and carb source....so if you are feeding a food that has beef as a protein and corn as a carb source, try a lamb and rice diet. If that doesn't work, try chicken and rice. You can also get VERY novel protien and carb combos from your vet...Kangaroo and Oat was the one that surprised me the most! Also available is duck and potato, rabbit and potato - basically you are trying to find something that her body has not been exposed to and has not mounted a defense against. You can also look into some of the holistic diets or organic diets. Sometimes is is not the protien or carb source, but the additives that makes them react. Good luck and let me know if you have any more questions! It is a frustrating thing to deal with, but easily fixed through trial and error if you have the patience! :-D****Animal_Artwork***I wanted to add a bit to my answer, but I figured it was so long that I had to stop somewhere! LOL...IN any case - I also wanted to say that in some VERY specialized cases it can work. With a dedicated owner who has read everything possible and is aware of the risks, AND one that owns one of the few breeds that seems to tolerate this diet well (Sammies, Malamutes and Huskies are the only breeds that come to mind that I have seen do well on this diet long-term) it can work, but I would never recommend it to the average owner - there is just too much room for error and most people start out with good intentions, only to fall was short in a short time span. I would never presume to tell you that you are feeding your dogs wrong, they are obviously thriving. I just cringe when people hear about only the benefits and don't realize that it takes a very special situation for it to work. For most owners I believe that high-quality kibble supplemented with whole,fresh cooked foods is the way to go but most people even have trouble with that - most people can't even manage to feed themselves correctly! I agree that a lot of times we get too fussy with our animals and over-feed, over-supplement and get too worried about things. My aunt had 3 dogs when I was growing up that lived on a little kibble and table scraps, never visited the vet and ran loose on 2 acres and came in only for feeding and at night. Her chow (mix? I doubt he was purebred) lived to 16 years, her collie mix was 15 when she died and she just lost her golden mix at 2 months shy of 17 . Now, I wouldn't suggest this type of hands off situation, but she was obviously doing something right! What works for one person may not work for another. The best we can do it gather all of the info that we can and do the best we can for our pets. Oh, and BTW - I LOVE Sammies....I could just never own one : ( They're too smart for me! LOL