View Single Post
  #169  
Old February 26th, 2009, 02:43 PM
MerlinsHope MerlinsHope is offline
Chow Pei Rescue
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Prescott
Posts: 237
Quote:
another stupid question. If raw is a dog's natural diet, then why do we have to add probiotics to help them digest it? Is it just in the begining that you add these? I've read alot Raw feeders don't add any supplements to their diet... So are these supplements mandatory, or just recomended ??
Not stupid at all and very valuable!!!

Please be careful with additives. I know a lot of people have a tendancy to supplement, but if your dog is eating quality food there is no real reason to ever supplement, and if your dog is on a quality commercial food, it is balanced to offer their required amounts of minerals and vitamins and you'd again be 'over supplementing".

Cod liver oil should not be considered for dogs, it is too high in vitamin A and dogs do overdose on high levels of vitamin A and does not offer any viable source of Omega 3+6, which is why we feed fish pills in the first place.

Fish oils or fatty fish are good because they contain badly needed Essential Fatty Acids - this generally comes in the form of 3-fish oil, salmon oil, krill oils, and do be careful because you get what you pay for. There are a great many differences in the quality of these types of supplements and the poor quality ones should be avoided at all costs.

Dogs should never have brewers yeast. It's yeast. It causes candidae albicans in dogs.

Vitamin C. Healthy dogs produce their own vitamin C and don't require it the same way humans do. Unless your dog is sick and has osteo issues, and requires copious amounts of Ester C, it should be avoided because vitamin C is also an inhibitor and inhibits the digestion of other badly needed vitamins and minerals.

Probiotics, a canine's probiotic is green tripe. Not white tripe, but active, live green tripe, which is available in better pets stores in cans or frozen. If all else fails, natural, un flavoured, un-sweetened yogurt.

Flaxseed, again, this is great for people, but is poor source of omegas for dogs and contributes to hotspots and hepatic issues in many dogs. A better source for dogs is foods with EFA's (Omegas), the fish oils or fatty fish.

Interesting Read Source:
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/128/12/2641S

It's been my own experience that as much as we can, if we offer species specific foods like Mother Nature does, we rarely make mistakes with our dogs and with ourselves of course. If your dog is eating a quality diet there is little or no need for supplements.

One of the prime reasons raw feeders used to think that way was because they limited their diet to lesser quality meats, had all kinds of vegetable slurries going and didn't really try to emulate a complete diet through prey model feeding, so the addition of all these supplements was an attempt to try to ensure a safe level of vitamin content in the raw diet.

Times have changed and so has our knowledge of raw.

Best of luck
CHeers
MM
__________________
www.MerlinsHope.com

Last edited by MerlinsHope; February 26th, 2009 at 02:50 PM.
Reply With Quote