missc

Thank you everyone! I also discussed it with my mum (the carer when the rest of us are at school/uni/work!) and she already has a lot of it figured out, apparently when we had a lab years ago they had it all sorted with dry food, raw meat, veggies etc. I was too little to remember. And apparently she even discussed it with the breeder and they use a very similar diet on their dogs! Both parents look fantastic. And I have made the mistake of swapping a puppy's food too quickly in the past so I definitely wasn't going to make that mistake again if we wished to change from the breeder's diet. I'm just getting ahead of myself and letting all the information clutter my head. :) Also thanks for the point about the starch, a lot of people are very anti-carb out there!

Hello, I'm sure all of this has been covered before in various posts, and I hope I'm not being a pest by compiling it all together in the hope of having an easy reference from a bunch of dog lovers and experts. Or if you have a link to another post or site that answers these questions in a straightforward manner, just give me that. :) My family of 6 (adults and a teen) is expecting a female black Labrador just after Christmas, and yesterday I started looking into diets. And there's a lot of info out there! I came up with the following questions: 1) I've been recommended Black Hawk dry food by other people, would you agree? They also recommended pawsforlife but they charge too much to ship to Perth so the cheap factor doesn't count. Still, $107 for 20kg from City Farmers seems ok. 2) Black Hawk still uses brown rice/sweet potato as a filler, I understand dogs have no real use for that sort of thing? 3) how long would we feed her on the puppy dry food? Up to 12 months of age? 4) how many times a day would we feed her on a dry diet? Apparently pups need 3-4 meals a day? 5) I really liked the sound of a raw diet, particularly Raw Meaty Bones. While I'm not sure how well that would suit us as an entire diet (we barely have the freezer space for our own groceries, as a start), I really like the sound of it for things like dental health. What do you think of a primarily dry diet with RMB supplements? Or would it be a waste of effort? 6) what do you think of supplements such as fish oil liquid/caps, if we don't eat seafood therefore wouldn't have opportunities to feed her fish products? Or would the fish and potato Black Hawk food provide enough? Are there any other supplements to take note of? I work in a large pharmacy and get my staff discount soon, hehe. 7) If I were to feed her some raw/RMB products, I understand you need to introduce it slowly, even as a treat? 8) when is it safe to give a puppy a RMB? They have such little teeth and tummies at first! 9) Is it true that too much protein can cause problems just as too little can? How much is too much? And any other advice you can give would be much appreciated! I want to give her the best diet we can, I know bad diets can cause all sorts of problems. It's proving to be more work than I anticipated, but this is why it's good that we have time! Next is behaviour and training!