What makes the best dog food for a healthy dog? Certainly not modern dog food made by Royal Canin, Pedigree and other similar pet food companies making corn-based foods which are Genetically Modified and killing your pets.

See Gypsy's new article on feeding your adult dogs and puppies a healthy diet.

There was a time not that long ago when there were no mills, no bags of dog food, and no milk bone or dog treats.  For thousands, if not millions of years the dog, that was not a pet, but a means for human survival, ate what he found, or found scraps from the table of the humans they worked for.

During this time dogs, like their human counter parts, were healthier and lived longer. Working dogs would eat the faeces of herbivores, such as sheep, horses and cattle.

They found nests of chickens and wild birds, they caught rabbit, and ate healthy table scraps that contained peels and other parts of vegetables we now remove, and toss away. They ate whole grain breads, and raw milk.

Over all we can see the decline of our dogs following the same path as our own human health has also declined in modern times.

The main component in the canine diet is raw foods. It is said the cooking of foods is responsible for 70% of the illness now found in dogs.

Cooked foods are partially digested, leaving the dogs very strong digestive juices to weaken. His strong internal digestive organs cannot work properly and again, weaken.

In the past dogs were left to tear large portions of meat often swallowing them almost whole. This allows the digestive organs to work hard. This hard work also helps greatly with parasite control.

The next thing to remember is that a dog can't digest grains as easily as he can meat.

Meat, raw meat should make up 70% of the dogs diet and is the best dog food to give them. However some breeds of guardian dogs have adapted to easting the droppings of the livestock they guard, and in this case those droppings make up a larger part of the dogs diet.

This may sound gross to some, but when you have several 150-200lb dogs to feed, you will be happy to allow them to eat as much poop as they want!

The last thing to remember is that a dog does not eat every day in the wild. He rests his digestive system. To allow a dog to eat every day is not good for them.

Our guardian dogs have carcass of deer or rams that have been culled from our flocks available at all times. They may chew on the bones every day, but they don't eat it every day.

We do supplement with other food, about every 3 days as they will leave the food to rot if we offer it to them on a daily basis. Dogs are not humans, they don't need to graze and eat constantly. They are predators, they are gouge and fast type animals.

The exception to this is raising puppies. They do need to eat every day and will want and eat grains. We save back rams to be used for feeding puppies so they can have raw meat rather than began life with ruining their digestive systems.

We do not buy dog treats. When we butcher we dehydrate the organs we don't like to eat, kidney, lungs, neck, and so on. This is dried for later treats for the dogs. Because we have Akbash dogs they are large enough to break even the thigh bone in the leg of large animals. The marrow is excellent for them.

If you have a smaller dog you may want to break the bones for them. Never give your dog a whole carcass. Most will leave it to rot. We skin at least half the carcass, so the dog can get into it easier and not eat as much hair.

Most of the time we take the hides for tanning. When we don't, we still skin a bit for the dog. Our dogs love to hunt and I have seen them catch large snakes, mice, moles, and many rabbits. All while leaving our own poultry and livestock alone. They do know the difference.

Feeding your dog naturally may seem like hard work at first, its harder to think about what you are doing then to open a bag of dog food. In the end you will find you don't have to think too hard. Your dog, is after all a dog, and does know what he needs to survive.

Watch him, and listen to what he shows you. He will teach you how to do it best.

By Gypsy, our resident homestead blogger from One Sky Ranch

Gypsy's Wanderings Homestead Blog