The founder with their dog in Tasmania
Our story

A Tasmanian business, feeding dogs properly.

We started Ancestral Raw to make real raw feeding easy, honest and built for the way we live now. Made in Tasmania, from Australian ingredients.

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Why we exist

Feed the food dogs evolved to eat.

Built on evolutionary biology and designed for modern convenience, here is what sets our freeze-dried raw meals apart:

  • Ancestral philosophy: focuses on an evolutionary, whole-food diet of meat, organ, bone and plants, rather than synthetic nutrient profiles or processed diets.
  • Species-appropriate ingredients: meals are built on raw meaty bones, offal, low-GI coloured vegetables, and whole extras like eggs and ferments.
  • Whole-food nutrition: uses natural, human-grade “superfoods” like organ meats and goat pluck, instead of synthetic supplements or powders sprayed on after processing.
  • Solves raw feeding hassles: takes away the common friction points of traditional raw diets, such as freezer storage, prep time, mess and rapid spoilage.
  • Convenient freeze-drying: low-temperature freeze-drying preserves nutrient integrity while creating shelf-stable food that rehydrates in seconds with warm water.

Real food, not pills or powders. Why buy supplements when the food already has it? Organ meats and goat pluck are nature's nutraceuticals, the same nutrients you'd pay for in a tub, delivered as whole food. No synthetic powders sprayed on afterwards. Just the real thing. Human-grade, the standard you'd set for your own table.

Formulated with

Dr Ian Billinghurst

Veterinary surgeon and originator of the BARF diet

Dr Ian Billinghurst is the Australian veterinarian who developed the BARF model, Biologically Appropriate Raw Food, and put evolutionary nutrition on the map for dogs. Our recipes are built on that model.

More about Dr Billinghurst
Why Ancestral Raw

Real ingredients. Real raw. Made to travel.

Ingredients good enough for your own kitchen

We start with whole, traceable, 100% Australian single proteins. No “meat meal” or by-products here, just quality cuts good enough that you could cook and eat them yourself. That is the standard everything is held to.

The evolutionary food model

Our meals follow the natural diet dogs evolved to eat: raw meaty bones, offal, organ meats, and low-GI coloured vegetables. We use nutrient-dense whole foods mixed in balanced proportions aligned with species-appropriate feeding.

We remove the water. We keep the rest.

Freeze-drying locks in raw nutrition without heat or harsh preservatives. Just add water and it’s ready in minutes, giving you fresh-style raw feeding without the freezer space, long thawing times, or messy prep.

Why freeze-dried

Freeze-dried, so the protein and nutrients survive.

Freeze-drying preserves raw protein without heat, ensuring your dog gets usable nutrition rather than high-carb fillers. It's real, protein-rich food that makes it effortless to keep your dog at a healthy weight.

Peer-reviewed: van Rooijen et al., Nutrition Research Reviews, 2013.

How much nutrition survives
Freeze-dried rawLow-temp vacuum-dried
Protein stays intact and available
Air-dried / dehydratedLow heat, still cooked
Gentle heat drives off the moisture, but heat still cooks it, so it is not raw
High-heat kibbleMaillard reaction
Up to ~60% less available lysine in heavily processed foods
Made in Tasmania

Made in Tasmania. Where good food is a way of life.

There's something about Tasmania. We embrace the seasons, value where our food comes from, and believe quality is always worth the effort. That's why every batch is freeze-dried right here in Tasmania, using Australian ingredients, sourced locally wherever we can. Because when pets are family, nothing less will do.

Tasmanian owned and operated · 100% Australian ingredients

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