Do You Supplement?

[Steve]

In all honesty I cant see why anyone would need to give anything other than water if they have been feeding a reasonable diet through out whelping. There are all those beautiful minerals in placentas which the bitch eats all the way through as well. Based on how calcium is absorbed and works giving it in liquid form throughout whelping isn't go to do anything to help whelping. By then the bitch needs serum calcium which she can access from her blood stream. If she hasnt had supps and her hormone to access is therefore doing what it needs to her body will supply all she needs.

Sometimes I think we take a little bit of info and basically try too hard.

If we assume that breeders are feeding either a complete dog food or a dog recipe which has the right calcium ratio to other minerals it makes little sense to supplement only one mineral. If you haven't given a supplement the dog can access as much calcium as it needs when it needs it to get through the whelping .Even if the dog was fed a diet which was down in calcium there is enough stored and accessible to whelp.

Nutrition is a truly fascinating subject - there is always something new to study and everyday there is more to learn. When we see bitches who seem to be suffering from many genetic disorders and consider perhaps other variables it gets even better.

Decades ago a guy called Pottinger did some nutritional studies on cats throughout several generations which showed that many things thought to be caused by genetics were in fact caused by nutrition - couple that with the new stuff and chuck in the breeders particular variables and it at least stimulates you into reconsidering what we think we should do or what we think we know about things that run in lines,about diseases and especially reproductive disorders.

For example if we ran a poll here - do whelping problems run in bitch lines - my guess is most of us would agree and put that down to something they have inherited - Clearly they have but the question is how and how do we learn about how to ensure that when someone is looking at breeding a bitch we bred or a bitch which is the granddaughter of a bitch we bred gets to do it easier and that less dogs [ and breeders] suffer?

Is it really something that would have happened anyway because of this magical chemically type thingy called genes - sort of like how the dog gets brown eyes - its in there so you cant change it - or is it caused by how the bitch lines were managed, nutritionally and environmentally? .Does this management actually change the gene - the DNA? if we go nuts and supplement something or miss something out could that impact in a much greater way than just this whelping? How does what we do with this one bitch in this one litter affect not just the litter on the ground but litters which will follow in future generations?

With breeders who dont get too bothered about what they are feeding or what conditions the pups are kept in they can usually put puppies out at 8 weeks which are still reasonably healthy and must have pretty good immune systems to get through living in shit and little comfort and forget about them when the grandchildren fall to bits we blame genetics , in breeding - which is most definitely the case with recessive disorders - thats easy but not quite the whole story either . Colour genes are considered recessives - but - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10518-you-are-what-your-grandmother-ate.html

And when you look at what goes into determining things like longevity the whole thing gets really really interesting . We assume that some breeds live less long and are affected by more problems with their immune systems because of the dreaded in breeding - you know lack of genetic diversity and if that's all you are looking for that's probably what you will see BUT take a look at people who live in Glasgow - the fact that they have shorter life spans than any other isnt because they are in bred or even because they have a horrible environment or nutrition. Its because their grandmothers lived in really horrible times - wars, depression, poverty and loads of viruses and infections. In order for them to survive and their babies to survive they needed a really over active immune system - now 2 generations later that translates into over active immune systems and they die younger than any other population from diseases caused by what we probably would tag as a genetic disorders. Translate that to dogs and how as breeders we can affect not only these dogs but generations to come in a far greater manner than most of us ever guessed - nutrition, stress and the environment that dogs are kept in we can never know enough about this stuff. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/how-to-live-to-101/

So when we are selecting for a longer life span as some neo people are for example the "experts" have told us its about how closely the dogs are related but what if its also about what their grandmothers ate and how they were used and raised ? What if we do something simple like add a bit of this and bit of that to a dog's diet and over do one thing or another, what if we breed em in rotten conditions and the greatest impact of that is in their grand children? what if vets like Billinghurst and Lonsdale, Dodds are right and what we feed grandmothers impacts on hip scores of dogs we breed today? What if the higher incidence of immune related diseases is caused by commercial diets - when you consider the incidence of immune related disorders is climbing in humans who arent on the whole closely related any more - its at least worth considering.

Anyway Im waffling but I reckon if we dont over stimulate their immune systems with over vaccination and other chemicals look after their environment and give them a well balance varied diet and love em their grandaughters might be needing less not more intervention. What a truly wonderful thing it is to breed dogs - so much to learn - so much to chat about , so much to consider to better the dogs as well as the breed.

At the least its things to ponder on and in my opinion supplementing anything on its own is something we should really look at before we follow on like lemmings.