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advice on this diet please


Guest Anonymous

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Guest Anonymous

Barf is way over my head right now.

I have an eight month old german shepherd puppy.

She eats wellness super five mix (kibble--chicken).

For dinner she gets raw ground meat; a spoonful of yogurt, and a sliced whole apple. I have also given her a cup of kibble with this which is moistened with water.

Once a week I give her a raw beef back bone.

At night or when I want her to settle down I give her a raw whole carrot which she plays around with or eats. I don't believe in giving a rawhide of any kind, so the raw carrot is as close as she gets.

I can't go all the way with barf, so now I have to settle with supplementing her wellness kibble.

Any feedback on the diet I have her on now would be very much appreciated.

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you are on the right track. :)

i would not stick to apples and carrots exclusively tho - give all kinds of fruit and vegetables so you cover the full range of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients the dog needs. short of onions and grapes you can feed pretty much everything, but go easy on cabbage-type veggies because they can cause gas. :oops:

if i were you, i'd also email old mother hubbard and ask if the wellness kibble you feed includes enough calcium to balance out the phosphorus content of the fresh meat you add. it contains far more phosphorus than calcium and the growing body of your dog requires a specific balance and high enough amounts of both to develop properly.

fruit and veggies are only nutritionally useful to dogs when they are either overripe, you finely grate/pulp them, or steam them lightly. dogs lack the enzymes to break down plant cell walls like humans or ruminants, so if you give fruit and veggies whole or just coarsely chopped, your dog doesn't get much out of it except the "entertainment factor".

take a few different veggies and/or fruits, chop them into chunks and then toss it all into your blender. you might have to add a little water to process everything, or you can add a whole, raw egg. divide the batch into servings and freeze what you aren't going to use within the next 2 days. for that i use the yogurt and cottage cheese containers from the dairy products i buy for the dog.

here are some combo exampless i use for veggie mash:

* green beans, yellow squash, apple
* parsley, red bell pepper, carrots
* broccoli, sweet potato, zucchini
* dark green lettuce (NOT iceberg), tomato, turnip

you can be really creative, find out what your dog likes and dislikes and work from there. mine isn't very fond of kale and other fairly bitter greens, so i don't use them.

it's a good idea to vary the meats too, beef does not have a complete amino acid profile. commecial diets are formulated to offer a sufficient amount of all the essential amino acids, but if you feed half kibble and half homemade food, you might risk an imbalance if you don't rotate your fresh protein source now and then. it doesn't even have to be meat - eggs, cottage cheese and fish are great too! :)

home made diets are an excellent way to feed your pet, just don't fall into a routine of feeding just the same things all the time. especially during the growth period it is critical that your dog does not develop any deficiencies.

i hope this helps! :)

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well, there's nothing wrong with it in terms of being harmful or anything, but iceberg lettuce doesn't contain many nutrients. green leaf lettuce, butterhead and romaine are nutritionally much more valuable. red leaf lettuce isn't so great either.

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