Homemade Liver Treats & Vit. A Toxicity

[Longblades]

An internet search did not turn up a clear answer. How much is too much? I boiled a pound of beef liver, cut it into small bits and dried in the oven. Puppyboy got half a cup of these bits on a training walk this morning.

The internet searches are not clear. Three servings a week is pushing the limits, it seems, but a serving size is not defined. Probably varies by age and breed, wouldn't you think? And most sites say use extra caution if Vit. A is added to the food, well, it seems to be added to most foods. And even if the amount is not enough to cause death it can cause bone damage.

Anybody know or able to point me to a good site? I even put the word, "Veterinary", in my search and still did not get conclusive information. I have called my own Vet. but they haven't called back yet.

[jealma]

What do you mean, careful with the liver ? I got tired of paying out for treats for abby durring her trainning and picked up pork liver which I boild and dry out in the oven for her. Mostly like like you do. I didn't add the garlic like it said because I read garlic isn't good for her, now your saying I should watch the liver???????????? Abby is a small breed so I now am wondering if I'm killing her with what I thought was a better choice than buying stuff. This food thing is going to drive me crazy. OH and I'm getting pork liver not beef,, is that ok? or am I killing her 2x faster,, ahhhhhhh I"m ready to go back to just get the food and spoil her with table scraps,, cause this is getting insane

[want4rain]

jealma- why dont you try cooked chicken?

in raw feeding, liver should make up roughly 5% of their diet of which is 1.5-3% of their ideal body weight. does that help?

-ash

[Reality]

I have been giving Taz liver treats for most of his life, but I didn't know about the body weight thing. I'll have to keep that in mind.

[Longblades]

What I Do Know, and any of you can easily confirm on the internet: Too much vitamin A is toxic. It can kill you. It can kill your dog. Non-fatal amounts can cause serious bone damage in your dog. (toxic does not mean fatal, it means it makes you sick)

What I Don't Know: The safe amount. Some Vit. A is good. Too much is very, very bad. I'm trying to find out how much is too much. I don't know how cooking impacts the Vit. A. For now I have suspended the liver treats. My Vet still hasn't called back.

What I'm Guessing At: Pork liver is Ok. I only bought beef because the store had no pork.

in raw feeding, liver should make up roughly 5% of their diet of which is 1.5-3% of their ideal body weight. does that help?

Umm, no, sorry, it doesn't help me. It doesn't say how often to feed that amount. Once a week? 3% of my six month old puppy's body weight would be 1.26 pounds. Can you provide your source for that information? And, I fed cooked liver, not raw. What's the difference?

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?aid=1046 This website gives some information on toxicity levels of several vitamins. I do not warrant the accuracy of the information, I don't know the people, have not checked their credentials etc. As you all know, information provided on the internet must be examined and checked carefully. It is all too easy for people to pass themselves off as experts when they are not, or at the very least provide out of date information. It would be good if information such as provided in this link could be confirmed by an acknowledged Veterinary site, such as the University of Guelph or the Ont. Vet, Med. Assoc.

[pitgrrl]

Originally Posted by Longblades

Umm, no, sorry, it doesn't help me. It doesn't say how often to feed that amount. Once a week? 3% of my six month old puppy's body weight would be 1.26 pounds. Can you provide your source for that information? And, I fed cooked liver, not raw. What's the difference?

What want4rain was saying was that if you were feeding a raw diet the daily portion of food would be 1.5-3% of your dog's body weight (1.26lbs). 5% of that (28.57g) would be the appropriate amount of liver to include in the diet. Obviously that is fresh and uncooked, so once you dry it out the weight would be far less as the water has been removed.

The "source" for these proportions is the typical/approximate makeup of a whole animal that a dog would eat.

Benny Bully's liver treats (it's just dehydrated liver), as an example, indicates to feed 1-2 treats per day. Each square is about 1-1.5 inch x 1-1.5 inch.

Honestly, I wouldn't freak out about it, I would just not feed 1/2 cup of the treats everyday. I use liver treats from training, but I break them up into pieces the size of tiny peas, so we go through a very small quantity.

[Longblades]

Oh, OK, got that now with the percentages and weight. But that is raw, as you say, and I fed cooked. If you checked out the link I provided you will see that it gives safe and toxic amounts in IU. But now I need to find out how many IU of Vit. A are in cooked liver. And I would still really like to see some good background research to back up the amounts of raw feed. WHO says you can feed 5% of 3% of the body weight in raw liver, daily? A Vet. School? A canine nutrionist? That's what I meant by source. Can you give a source with credentials? A website link?

P.S. there is a significant difference of 100% between 1.5% and 3%. How is it determined which it should be?

[want4rain]

http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20tw.html
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20tx.html
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20ty.html

those are the differences in nutrition between raw, braised and pan fried. i didnt look to see if there were any differences. you can do that yourself.

you know what my advice is? you feed kibble?... find some other source for treats for your dog.

-ashley

edit- to also say... considering you are feeding an alternate source of food of which shouldnt require an addition of vitA, i personally, using a little common sense, would feed less than 5% of 1% your dogs total weight. to err on the side of caution. if you are concerned you ahve already done damage to your pup, go talk to your vet. lastly, google is at your finger tips.

[want4rain]

http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20ZQ.html
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20ZP.html

thats for pork liver. again i didnt look at the differences.

here is another site to look up the nutritional information of various foods in case you wanted to compare them for inconsistencies. im sure you could also check most of this against one of the USDA sites-

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

-ashley

[pitgrrl]

The issue, I think, is that you're not going to find studies on raw feeding because really, who's going to fund them?

The "source" people are looking to is the aprox. proportions of an animals body. Like a chicken, for example, is a mostly muscle meat, the organs making up a small % of the body and the liver, specifically, being even less than that, hence the 5% guideline. I'm not sure where you'd find an exact measurement of how much liver to feed a dog of X size per day

As to measuring raw vs. cooked, why not just weigh out the liver before it's cooked?

The reason for the wide variation in amount to feed (1.5%-3%) is exactly like kibble, some dogs need more to maintain a healthy weight, others need less. The proportions stay the same though.

I'm confused though about why this is causing you so much stress. Can the dog only have liver as treats or are you concerned that you fed far too much at once?
Perhaps you could just calculate on the lower end of the spectrum (5% of 1.5% of the dog's body weight) to give yourself a guideline and try switching it up with cooked muscle meats cut into cubes.

[Longblades]

Thank you, want4rain. The links are GREAT. From the first two pork links I got:

80624 IU in one pound of cooked (braised) liver

97852 IU in one pound of raw liver

pitgrrl, that's why you can't just weigh the raw liver and expect to know how much is in the cooked. What you need to know is how much of the Vit A was destroyed in the cooking.

From the site I found we have this:

Recommended Minimum Daily Dose (of Vit.A) for Dogs - 50 IU/lb. or 2225 IU per lb. of food consumed

Toxic Dose - 2500 IU/lb.

Since the recommended dose is given per weight of dog and per weight of food it is not clear what the toxic dose refers to, weight of dog or weight of food. That's why websites can be dangerous to use, however it's the best I've found so far.

If I am reading this correctly puppyboy, at 42 lb.s, can have a minimum of 2100 IU of Vit A a day. 105000 IU per day would be toxic (assuming it is per weight of the dog, not of the food).

I don't have a kitchen scale so I don't know what the one half cup (he got two days in a row) weighs. I did up pork liver last week.

pitgrrl, it didn't start out being stressful. I simply wanted to know if I was doing the right thing and when too much was too much. The liver treats are very easy to make but I did not want to be lazy and make too many of them. It became stressful when many, many google searches turned up such inconclusive information. I know a lot of people on this board prepare their own dog food, whether raw or cooked, and I wondered if any of you had got further into researching the topic than I had. Why reinvent the wheel if some of you already know the answer?

For now, I will suspend the liver treats and make up one of the recipes I found on this board. It involves measuring, mixing, baking, cooling and cutting into bits. If I do all that baking the OH will want me to make cookies for him too. See why the liver treats are easier?

[want4rain]

hmm... for a quick and easy solution, try cubing chicken and baking it?? or potato cubes with a little rosemary sprinkled over it? you can probably bake the potatoes to a harder consistency than the chicken. i wonder what you could combine egg into to get a thicker, less greasy consistency?? maybe potato and egg?? (im not much of a cooker!!!) or maybe under cooked noodles?? egg and rice??

-ash

[Catherine Lane]

Hi guys,
Your dog's Vitamin A requirement is related mainly to his weight and lifestage.

To find the safety zone for VitaminA, you need to follow these steps:

1) Find your dog's weight in kgs

2) Using your Microsoft computer, take that number to the power 0.75 (if you aren't sure how to do that let me know, it's easy)

3) Multiply THAT number by 50 for the RA (recommended allowance) and - get this - 2,099 for the SUL (safe upper limit). This will tell you how much you should aim to feed, but it also demonstrates that you have to really OD on A before it becomes toxic.

To sum up: You have to feed a lot of liver to get anywhere near the safety margins. However, liver is also high in phosphorus, copper and other nutrients that can unbalance a diet (especially in the area of mineral balance).

Ues it carefully, but don't panic.
Cat

[want4rain]

Originally Posted by Catherine Lane

Hi guys,
Your dog's Vitamin A requirement is related mainly to his weight and lifestage.

To find the safety zone for VitaminA, you need to follow these steps:

1) Find your dog's weight in kgs

2) Using your Microsoft computer, take that number to the power 0.75 (if you aren't sure how to do that let me know, it's easy)

3) Multiply THAT number by 50 for the RA (recommended allowance) and - get this - 2,099 for the SUL (safe upper limit). This will tell you how much you should aim to feed, but it also demonstrates that you have to really OD on A before it becomes toxic.

To sum up: You have to feed a lot of liver to get anywhere near the safety margins. However, liver is also high in phosphorus, copper and other nutrients that can unbalance a diet (especially in the area of mineral balance).

Ues it carefully, but don't panic.
Cat

id like to say in really big words here....

Mac's and Linux boxes (among many many others) can do exactly the same thing!!!

-ashley (who is a Mac user )

[Longblades]

Arrggh, Catherine. Thanks for your input, and welcome by the way. I see you just joined.

I followed your formula. Puppyboy weighs 42 lbs = 20 kg (rounded up, he's growing). That raised to a power of 0.75 = 9 (reduced to zero decimals from excel).

Using your formula (9 x 50) the recommended daily dose of VIt. A in IU (you ARE using IU, I hope, as you didn't say but have assumed you are following along from where we started.) is 450. WAY less than in my calculation from the website I found. And that website gives the minimum daily amount not the recommended daily amount. I have no idea if that means they are two different amounts. Would the recommended be the same as the minimum? Or more? For some reason I would guess more. Of course I would prefer not to guess or assume, the whole reason this post got started in the first place.

Your formula gives the safe upper limit amount (9 x 2,099) as 18,891. WAY less than what I obtained from my math work based on the website I found for the toxic amount. I do wonder why the RA obtained from your formula does not fall in between the amounts from the website I found. I do ASSUME the safe upper limit would be less than the toxic amount. But your safe upper limit is lower than the other site's mimimum.

To refresh, I found the minimum daily amount of Vit A, in IU, to be 2100 and 105,000 is toxic from that website. For my puppy weighing 42 lbs.

Arrggghhh. Is my math wrong somewhere along the line? If not can you explain why your numbers are different? And, most important for me, can you provide the source of your information? I know you learned it somewhere; you didn't just absorb it by osmosis out of the air. By source I mean accredited scientific research on nutrition for canines by Veterinarians if possible. BTW, I have now searched the U. Of G. Veterinary website and the OVMA site without success. And my Vet still hasn't called back.

P.S. It is rainy and gloomy here so I have no better things to do on a day like this than fry my brain with math problems I forgot long ago.