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Hoping for another response from someone at Vet's all Natural. Puppy is now 6 months old and 34kg, 50-60% of his final adult weight. I'm think the advice you gave me is not quite right. The vet has said that my puppy is now slightly overweight and I need to watch this. When I compare other large breed puppy dog food feeding schedules, the amount fed goes down as the puppy gets older (even as they become heavier): For comparison look at: http://www.eukanuba.com.au/en-UK/product/puppy-large-breed.jspx and click "Feeding Guidelines" on the right Following your advice, he should be eating more and more food. Following other brands advice, he should be eating less progressively. The recommended quantity of Vets all natural and meat for adults is dramatically lower than the puppy schedule. However he still has much growing to do. Should I cease increasing his food intake as his body weight increases? Could I have some clarification.

That's a mighty big dose of imidacloprid there. Confidor pesticide for use on crops has 0.125g per litre. Our government mandates that you can't eat the foods for 1-7 days after spraying. Advocate + Advantix each have 100g per litre imidacloprid. Using the three 4mL tubes of the monthly combination you suggest contains 1.2g of imidacloprid. This is the same amount of imidacloprid as in 9.6 Litres of Confidor pesticide - in a month! That's 13 bottles of Confidor. Monthly on one dog. http://www.yates.com.au/products/pest-control/insects-ready-to-use/bayer-confidor-insecticide-ready-to-use/ Why not try and target the ticks specifically, rather than unintentionally trebling the dogs dose of imidacloprid?

Thanks for the advice. He's a Black Russian Terrier. 4.5 months old. Now at 26kg

I hope someone from VAN can respond, as puppy will hit 30kg in two weeks...

Thanks for that large breed advice. I'm really happy with this food and we're going to stick with it for a while. The feeding chart runs out at 30kg puppies, where do I go from there... Do I double the smaller figures for larger puppies like this: 32-40kg: 400g mix, 400 ml water, 1200g meat 42-50kg: 500g mix, 500 ml water, 1500g meat 52-60kg: 550g mix, 550 ml water, 1700g meat Is that right?

Actually, I have looked at my pack instead of the online PDF and it has the qualification that it was calculated using lean kangaroo mince! All is good. So it's only that online document that isn't clear.

That sounds great, if that is the case then I can rest easy now. The reason it is so unclear to me is how are they giving precise values of fat and protein content for the meat that isn't included. The packaging should clarify this. Suggestion: If this is the case, then please change the packaging so that "Nutrition Guide Per Serve" is qualified. For example: Nutrition Guide Per Serve* * When prepared as directed using 95% fat free Kangaroo mince. That would have saved me running around today looking for bone meal unnecessarily!! I still would like clarification how the "per serve" values were calculated. It's a bit of a mystery with the lack of information.

The raw76 has much more Calcium, it's at a level that seems right. However mixing Complete Mix with meat won't reach that level. Meat alone has very little calcium (850g of minced beef has just 260mg of Calcium), so mixing Complete mix and meat isn't enough.1 I think the assumption is that you mix Complete mix with meat and give bones every day that must be chewed and swallowed to get the Calcium up to required levels.2 Or use with a calcium supplement like Vets All Natural Health Booster.3 I hope someone from VAN can help clarify. Sources: 1 US Govt Dept of Agriculture, http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR17/wtrank/sr17a301.pdf 2 Vets All Natural, http://www.vetsallnatural.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=88&Itemid=103 3 Vets All Natural, http://www.vetsallnatural.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101&Itemid=110

I'm feeding my Black Russian Terrier puppy complete mix mixed with meats - he loves it - first thing he's really enjoyed eating. I'm wondering about its suitability for large breed puppies and its calcium levels in general. This site: http://www.vetsallnatural.com.au/CMsheet.pdf Indicates that a 22kg puppy gets 250g of complete mix per day, mixed with meat. This has 2400mg/kg of Calcium, for a total daily calcium intake (apart from the trace amounts in meat) of 600mg. However, the recommended intake of calcium for a large breed puppy is 210mg per kg per day. (Solid references listed here: http://skeptvet.com/Blog/2010/01/nutrition-in-large-breed-puppies/ ) 2400mg/kg is 0.24g/100g, so Vets All Natural is = 0.24% Calcium, which will get lower when mixed up with meat. That's a very low calcium diet.

Eggs and sardines are quite poor sources of D, if the dog is mostly indoors during the day. See this US government chart1. In fact the discovery of Vitamin D was made with using dogs. It's quite a story, the researcher inadvertently had the dogs hidden from sunlight and they developed ricketts2: Most noteworthy was the work by Sir Edward Mellanby, who demonstrated that he could produce rickets in dogs by feeding them the diet characteristic of Scotland, ie, oatmeal; unknown to Sir Edward Mellanby was the fact that he deprived those dogs of sunlight. Because of the work of McCollum and Davis in discovering fat-soluble vitamin A, Mellanby attributed the ability of cod liver oil to cure the rachitic condition in dogs as being another property of vitamin A3. McCollum very cleverly destroyed the vitamin A activity of cod liver oil by bubbling oxygen through the solution and heating it, but the ability to cure rickets remained in the preparation. McCollum correctly concluded that this represented a new vitamin, called vitamin D4. Huldshinsky5 and Chick et al6 independently demonstrated that rachitic children could be cured with exposure to sunlight or artificially produced ultraviolet light. The puzzle was ultimately solved when Steenbock and Black7 discovered that irradiation not only of the skin of animals but also of the food they consumed imparted antirachitic activity to either the animals or their food. Cholesterol exuded from the skin of dogs (and humans) converts into Vitamin D in the presence of UV radiation. Skin absorbs this into the bloodstream, and other animals lick their fur. Hence my concern at Vitamin D deficiency for a dog sheltered from UV. While excessive Vitamin D risks skeletal malformation such as hip dysplasia8, insufficient Vitamin D also prevents growing bones from developing properly. References: 1 US Government, Office of Dietary Supplements. Health Professional Fact Sheet - Vitamin D http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/#h3 2 DeLuca, H. Overview of general physiologic features and functions of vitamin D1. Am J Clin Nutr December 2004 vol. 80 no. 6 1689S-1696S http://www.ajcn.org/content/80/6/1689S.full 3 Mellanby E. An experimental investigation on rickets. Lancet 1919;1:407–12. http://www.ajcn.org/external-ref?access_num=10.1016/S0140-6736(01)25465-8&link_type=DOI 4 McCollum EV, Simmonds N, Becker JE, Shipley PG. An experimental demonstration of the existence of a vitamin which promotes calcium deposition. J Biol Chem 1922;53:293–8. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/ijlink?linkType=PDF&journalCode=jbc&resid=53/2/293 5 Huldshinsky K. Heilung von Rachitis durch kunstalich Hohen-sonne. (The healing of rickets with artificial high altitude sun.) Dtsch Med Wochenschr 1919;45:712–3 (in German). 6 Chick H, Dolyell EJ, Hume EM. Studies of rickets in Vienna 1919–1922. Med Res Counc (GB) Spec Rep Ser 1923;77. 7 Steenbock H, Black A. Fat-soluble vitamins. XVII. The induction of growth-promoting and calcifying properties in a ration by exposure to ultraviolet light. J Biol Chem 1924;61:405–22. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/ijlink?linkType=PDF&journalCode=jbc&resid=61/2/405 8 Richardson DC, The role of nutrition in canine hip dysplasia. Vet Clin North Am Small Anim Pract. 1992 May;22(3):529-40. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1687006/pdf/canvetj00345-0036.pdf

In a couple of weeks am going to switch over to VAN. Like humans, now days dogs spend much more time indoors. What would be the source of Vitamin D in a Vet's All Natural diet? I am a little worried about this.