Jump to content
BC Boards

Grain free


Donald McCaig
 Share

Recommended Posts

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1952593284998859/ 

I've been following this.  The vet cardiologist at UC Davis that is doing a study is an admin on this facebook page.  Lots of info here including a table of taurine test results and what food the dogs were eating.  Predominantly Goldens but he is seeing other breeds and others have been tested.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This has been going around the internet for at least a couple, few weeks. At least one source that I think is reliable (one half of the team is a vet, and it may even have been her website that addressed it) says it's too soon for panic based on what they're seeing so far and that right now it seems to be happening most in a fairly limited number of breeds.

It honestly wasn't too surprising to me when I first read about it. I've been reading that legumes have a certain chemical in them that can essentially be an anti-nutrient in humans too. Most of the grain free kibbles are legume based for their starch, though potatoes (can't recall if it's both white and sweet) seem to be having the same effect in dogs.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought this article was helpful. The author clearly explains the essential points of the research in terms folks with little science background (like me) can understand.

https://thesciencedog.wordpress.com/2018/08/30/the-heart-of-the-matter/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Terrecar, thanks very much for that link. It is the most rational and helpful thing I have read so far on the topic. All of us here want to do the best we can for our dogs, and I am always interested in the most recent information. I have been feeding grain free dog food, canned and kibble both for years, so was concerned when the first (rather hysterical) words came out on the topic. It seems to be a wait and see topic, one in which I will continue to be interested. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I read that if you want to be safe just ck the ingredients and make sure that peas, pea meal  potatoes and legumes are not in the 1st 5 ingredients.  So I ran out of my dog food and my pet store is closed today so I ran up to Petsmart.  I started reading ingredients on different brands of grain free.   I couldn't find one single brand that didn't include those ingredients in the first 5.  Most of them had pea or pea meal as the 3rd ingredient. 

I just bought a small bag of Nutro to mix with my Fromm until tomorrow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Tommy Coyote said:

I read that if you want to be safe just ck the ingredients and make sure that peas, pea meal  potatoes and legumes are not in the 1st 5 ingredients.  So I ran out of my dog food and my pet store is closed today so I ran up to Petsmart.  I started reading ingredients on different brands of grain free.   I couldn't find one single brand that didn't include those ingredients in the first 5.  Most of them had pea or pea meal as the 3rd ingredient. 

I just bought a small bag of Nutro to mix with my Fromm until tomorrow.

Mine are on ACANA, and lentils aren't mentioned until the 7th ingredient. I spoke to my vet, and they said at this time, there is no point to change food. Store bought food always has some negative news. Guess we all have to get a loan and make their food at home haha!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, GentleLake said:

I feed my 2 dogs raw, all from meats I buy wholesale or on sale in supermarkets from human sources on an income provided by Social Security disability.

No loans required.

Not much is a good price in the Chicagoland area where living expenses are through the roof. Local butchers even sell scraps for a premium. I have looked into it, and price wise it wasn't an option at the time. I moved recently to another city, so I'll have to ask around and see what's available. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Laura, I would imagine the larger the population of a city or area, the more opportunities there would be. Have you looked for meat wholesalers? That's where I get a lot of my meat. You'd have to have a larger freezer because you have to buy by the case, but that's a small inconvenience.

And talk to supermarket meat managers. They can often order things they normally don't stock from their suppliers in case lots.

Discount supermarkets are also good places to watch. That's where I buy most of my pork and chicken.

Also do a search on Yahoo Groups to see if there's a raw co-op in your area. Not only do most of them buy as a co-op, but often people will travel a bit for group purchase and/or split cases.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, GentleLake said:

Laura, I would imagine the larger the population of a city or area, the more opportunities there would be. Have you looked for meat wholesalers? That's where I get a lot of my meat. You'd have to have a larger freezer because you have to buy by the case, but that's a small inconvenience.

And talk to supermarket meat managers. They can often order things they normally don't stock from their suppliers in case lots.

Discount supermarkets are also good places to watch. That's where I buy most of my pork and chicken.

Also do a search on Yahoo Groups to see if there's a raw co-op in your area. Not only do most of them buy as a co-op, but often people will travel a bit for group purchase and/or split cases.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

 

I'll look into that! Like I said, I moved to a different suburb, second largest city in the state, so there is probably more opportunity. 

My biggest fear is not knowing what foods to put together to make sure they are getting all their needs met. I know there is probably lots of information out there. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, LauraV said:

My biggest fear is not knowing what foods to put together to make sure they are getting all their needs met. I know there is probably lots of information out there.  

There is. And it's not the rocket science a lot of people would have you believe it is. If you follow the money a lot of the fear mongering originates with the kibble manufacturers who'll lose revenue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, GentleLake said:

There is. And it's not the rocket science a lot of people would have you believe it is. If you follow the money a lot of the fear mongering originates with the kibble manufacturers who'll lose revenue.

Gotta love those kibble manufacturers...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not much. I add fish oil daily and a bit of cooked veggies here and there if I have some left over. And I add a bit of a green superfood supplement (grasses, greens, some veggies, etc. that seem like they might be fairly species appropriate in small amounts) that I use fairly often and blueberries. But that's about it.

One vet I used to see said you can give dogs one Centrum vitamin a day to cover micro-nutrients. I did for a while but haven't bothered for years.

Tilly lived to be almost 18 on it and Bodhi's doing well at an estimated age of 12 1/2+ (could be as old as 15 by original vet estimates of his age when I adopted him, but I really doubt he's more than about 13). He'll go in for a check up soon and I'll have blood work done. But it's always been good in the past so I'm not anticipating any problems.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What kind of meat.  Aren't you supposed to have muscle and bone and organ.  Plus some fruits and veggies? Do you give them any yogurt?  My dogs love yogurt. 

How much do give each dog and 2x a day?

I wonder if that diet might help Joey's epilepsy? He just had another really mild seizure.   Happens once in a while but it isn't anything like his grand mal seizures.  He just kind of stiffens up and his head shakes for about 2 or 3 seconds.  And he snaps right out of it.   Scares me.

Would it work to feed raw the main meal each morning and then feed their kibble in the evening?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Tommy Coyote, sorry it took me a while to get back to this.

While I'm sometimes skeptical of Modern Dogs Magazine, sometimes they publish some very good stuff. This article is one of of those times that's relevant to your questions: https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/raw-feeding-primer/

It's a good primer, though some might argue with their percentages. People who follow a prey model diet generally use an 80/10/5/5 ratio of 80% meat, 10% edible bone, 5% liver and 5% other organs. Others like the original BARF diet can feed up to 50% edible bone. So this seems to be a pretty middle of the road approach, though higher in organs than many other models.

I personally feed essentially prey model but will often go up to 15-20% or so bone and shoot for a little over the 5/5% organs, though I don't always manage that. I rather like MDM's recommendation for more than only 10% organ, though I'm not convinced it needs to be 30%. (Caution: Organs can cause loose stools, so introduce them or increase them slowly to avoid this. Bones tend to harden stools, so helpful to offset higher organs with bone and vise versa.)

As the article says, fruits and veggies are optional. Some people feed them; some never do. Fruits like berries are probably most species appropriate, as are leafy vegetables on the veggie side. But dogs have no known nutritional requirement for fruits and vegetables, so they're not necessary. Plant cells are encased in cellulose, which dogs can't break down, so veggies should be either lightly steamed or pureed to make them more bioavalable.

The general rule of thumb for feeding quantity is to start with 2-3% of the dog's ideal body weight and then adjust according to the individual dog's body condition. Some dogs are very easy keepers and may require the lower amount, or occasionally even lower still. Other active dogs with high metabolisms may require significantly more than 3% of their body weights.

Most people will start in the middle. So if a dog's ideal body weight would be 40 lbs, you might start with 16 oz. daily. That's 40 x 16 (to convert lbs to ounces) x 2.5% = 16 oz.

Puppies are fed using the same scale, based on their ideal adult body weight and divided into several meals, again adjusted for condition. Because it's not always easy to guess what size our border collie pups will end up being, I make my best guess using an average of about 35 lbs for a female and 40 lbs for a male and start out with 2.5% of that. As with any puppy feeding, increase if the pup's too lean and decrease if it starts getting pudgy.

So essentially, puppies are fed the same amount in a day that they'll end up eating as an adult. Their nutritional needs are very high during the growth phase but then taper off proportionally as growth slows down and hits its lowest point for adults. So starting off at the anticipated adult requirement and staying with it through growth works out just fine . . . as always, adjusting for the individual dog's needs and condition at any given time, which we all know can vary with activity level, season, even age and health.

Small amounts of yogurt or kefir are optional, and fine.

Feeding once or twice a day is personal preference. I usually only feed once a day, but my dogs are in the easy keeper category so feeding twice a day resulted in such small meals that they weren't satisfied by them. Feeding only once a day gave them a larger meal to fill their bellies and they seem fine with it. So do what works for you and your dogs.

Yes, it would be OK to feed one raw meal and one kibble. There are differences of opinion whether or not raw should be fed at the same time as kibble anyway, and if it's your choice to feed both and feed them separately you eliminate the possibility that it's not a good idea. But the jury's out on that, so again I'd say go with whatever works for you. If you do go this route, I wouldn't be surprised if you end up going completely raw eventually anyway. ;)

Unfortunately, I  think it's unlikely that switching to raw would do much for epilepsy. It's not a panacea for everything. If I had an epileptic dog I'd be adding CBD oil. I've been reading some pretty amazing things about it's use with epilepsy and other seizures. The rescue I volunteer with had a dog with severe epilepsy that the foster home worked with for a long time, but she wasn't willing to try any complementary modalities. She finally got the seizures reduced enough that the dog was put up for adoption. He was adopted by an integrative vet who added CBD (and maybe some other things? Homeopathy? Can't remember for sure) and he's nearly seizure free now.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you.  I need some time to go ovet all if this.  And I will definitely look into the CBD.  I think I saw something at the pet store I go to on this just this morning .

I really appreciate all this information.  I am going to look into all of this.  

Can bone meal be used for the bone part?  Two of my dogs would be ok with some raw bone.  Tommy has terrible teeth.  I gave her a raw bone once and one of her teeth fractured.  I think it might be due to all the strong meds she had to take when she had polyarthritis.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All of mine are noise sensitive.

Now, let me ask you this.  If I go up to the butcher and have him grind up a couple of pounds of chicken and have him add some heart and liver (not a lot) and maybe throw in an egg and just give them a little with their food at first so they don't get the runs, will that be ok for a start?

Then I can figure out the rest. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sure, you could do that. Both chicken and turkey are readily available ground, though they usually contain the skin when pre-packaged and so are higher in fat.

You can also do the same thing with ground beef, pork, lamb, etc. for variety. Red meats are more species appropriate for dogs than poultry too. One of my go to sources for beef is a relatively local butcher who trims the neck meat off cattle. Apparently it can't be sold for human consumption, though I have no idea why not. He mixes it with some heart, tongue and liver, grinds it and sells it as dog meat.

Some people like Dr. Becker and Rodney Habib are saying that substituting as little as 20% of a dog's kibble with fresh foods can be very beneficial. And at 20% I wouldn't worry a whole lot about not having the calcium, though obviously it would be ideal to have at least a little calcium. But I'd start to worry about calcium deficiency if it goes above that amount.

If you have access to home or farm raised eggs, you can use eggshells for calcium, just let them dry then grind them up in a food processor or blender. Keep in mind that if the bowl's plastic doing this will cloud it because the shells are so abrasive they'll etch the plastic. But it's purely a cosmetic issue; it won't hurt the functionality at all.

I'd avoid using shells from commercially raised eggs; most are sprayed with mineral oil to seal the shells to extend shelf life.

1/2 tsp. of ground egg shells added to 14 oz. of meat provides sufficient calcium.

Raw eggs can also cause loose stools, so introduce them slowly as well.

Also remember that because commercially raised chickens are fed an all grain diet that's highly species inappropriate for them (as are most commercially raised livestock of all kind in the US) that the Omega 3 and 6 ratios will be skewed way out of balance. Omega 3s are anti-inflammatory and so are desirable, while Omega 6 causes inflammation and is only desirable in small amounts. This is why I supplement with fish oil. or other source of Omega 3.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...