Switching Ridgeback to cooked raw blend

Switching from straight raw to a cooked-raw blend is actually a smart move for a lot of owners — you keep the high meat content and digestibility of raw feeding while reducing the pathogen risk and taking a lot of the balancing pressure off yourself. The worry is real though: plenty of blended products lean heavily on starchy fillers or use poor-quality rendered meat, and for a large, active breed like a Ridgeback that's going to show up over time in coat condition, muscle tone and energy. Done well, raw feeding can be excellent — done badly it creates nutritional gaps that cause real harm. The difference is balance and sourcing. Tell me a bit more: how much does your Ridgeback weigh, is he or she generally active or more of a couch Ridgeback, and what have you been feeding on the raw side — DIY or a commercial raw?

That's an honest and sensible assessment — chicken carcasses and beef mince without careful measurement is one of the most common ways calcium-phosphorus balance goes quietly wrong, and in a 38kg dog doing real exercise the skeletal and joint load makes that matter more than it would in a lap dog. You're right to want something more reliable. Before I point you at a specific product, one question: are you looking to go fully commercial, or would you be happy with a complete ready-made base that you could occasionally top up with fresh meat when you have it? That changes which direction I'd send you.

Then the product I'd point you to is Natures Menu Country Hunter 80/20 raw nuggets — specifically the multipack or the larger single-protein pouches. Here's why it suits your situation specifically: it's an 80% named meat, organ and bone blend that's nutritionally complete to FEDIAF standards, so the calcium-phosphorus ratio is done for you. It uses gently cold-pressed rather than high-heat cooking, which sits right at that cooked-raw boundary you're looking for — lower pathogen risk than straight raw, better digestibility than most kibble or wet food. For a 38kg active Ridgeback you're looking at around 500–600g per day depending on her workload, and the nugget format makes portioning dead simple. The 80/20 formulation — 80% meat, 20% botanicals and veg — means no cheap cereal padding, which matters for a large muscular breed. It's widely available on Amazon UK, usually in 1kg or larger packs. I'd suggest starting with a chicken or turkey variety to keep the protein transition gentle, then rotating flavours once she's settled.

Almost certainly yes — Ridgebacks coming off DIY raw tend to transition well to high-meat complete products precisely because the smell and palatability profile is much closer to what they know than kibble would be. The nuggets have a strong raw-meat aroma and a soft texture, so there's no dramatic sensory shift. If she's at all hesitant in the first day or two, thaw them slightly beyond fridge temperature so the smell comes through more strongly — that usually does it. Give the transition about five to seven days mixing in the new food, though honestly most dogs at this life stage on an already raw-adjacent diet switch faster than that. Watch her stools in the first week: firmer and smaller than with DIY is normal and a good sign the digestibility is working.

Good plan. Start with chicken or turkey, give her a week to settle, then you can rotate through the other proteins to keep things varied — which suits an active dog well. If her coat condition and energy stay where they are now, you'll know the balance is landing right. Any questions once you've got her going, come back and let us know how it's going.