Switching Cocker Spaniel to raw food

Moving an older dog from cold-pressed to raw is actually one of the more sensible switches you can make — cold-pressed is a great stepping stone because it's already minimally processed, so the digestive leap to raw is smaller than it would be from kibble. That said, raw feeding done well can be excellent, but done badly it creates nutritional gaps that cause real harm over time — the difference is balance and sourcing. Before I point you in the right direction: you mentioned a Cocker Spaniel — how much does your dog weigh, and are you looking for a complete ready-made raw product or are you planning to mix and balance it yourself?

Good call, especially for a first-time raw feeder. At 11kg and 8 years old she's a senior dog, which means her digestive system is well established but also a little less adaptable than a younger dog's — so a slow, steady transition matters more here than it would for a puppy. One more thing before I recommend: does she have any known sensitivities or ingredients she reacts to? Cocker Spaniels can be prone to sensitive stomachs, and it'll help me point you to the right protein.

That's really useful — and it immediately rules out chicken as your starting protein, which is the right call anyway since it's one of the most common triggers. Given she's already done well on fish and duck, I'd start her on Natures Menu Country Hunter 100% Raw Nuggets in Duck. It's a genuinely complete raw food — BARF-balanced with added vegetables, fruit, and botanicals — so there's no guesswork about nutritional gaps. The nuggets format is also practical: frozen, pre-portioned, and easy to defrost in the right amounts for an 11kg dog. For the transition itself: week one, replace 25% of her cold-pressed meal with defrosted nuggets. Week two, go 50/50. Week three, 75% raw. By week four she should be fully switched. Watch her stools throughout — they'll firm up considerably on raw, which is normal, but any signs of real upset means slow down rather than push through. Duck is a good starting protein precisely because it's novel enough to be gentle on a system that's been sensitised to chicken.

For an 8-year-old at healthy weight you're generally looking at around 2% of body weight per day in raw food — so for an 11kg dog that's roughly 220g daily. Natures Menu nuggets come in 1kg bags and each nugget is around 28g, so you'd be feeding about 8 nuggets a day, which you can split across two meals. That said, watch her condition over the first few weeks: senior dogs can lose weight faster on raw if their calorie intake drops, so if she starts looking lean, nudge it up to 2.5%. The packaging does give a guide too, but I'd trust your eye on her waist and ribs over any chart.

Three things catch people out most often. First, don't rush it — 4 weeks feels slow but an 8-year-old gut needs the time to build up the right bacteria. Second, don't mix raw and dry in the same meal if you can help it during transition; they digest at different rates and that's what causes loose stools more than the raw itself. Splitting them into separate meals — cold-pressed at breakfast, raw at dinner, say — works much better. Third, hygiene: treat raw meat the way you'd treat it in your own kitchen. Cold hands, clean bowls, don't leave it sitting out. None of this is complicated, but people who skip these steps and then have a bad experience usually blame raw when it was really the transition approach. She sounds like a good candidate for this — fingers crossed for a smooth switch.