Incoming Lab Puppy - Many Diet Questions!

[missc]

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!

[Bjelkier]

Wow, that's a long list.

Best thing you can do is talk to the breeder of your puppy. If they're a good breeder they will supply you with a feeding guide that will answer most of these questions and a small amount of food to start your puppy on. You don't want to be bringing the pup home and swapping it's feed right away.

Feeding is a very personal thing and it's the source of many a heated discussion on DOL as we all do our own thing. What works for one dog won't always work for another. I personally won't feed Blackhawk, nor do I feed puppy food to my babies. I find it grows them way too fast and we end up with issues later on.

All the best with your pup :)

Edited November 28, 2013 by Bjelkier

[Airedaler]

I raised litters on a RMB diet so at 8 weeks they were well and truly used to eating this. I first started putting chicken wings into the whelping box when they were about 3-4 weeks of age.

[Dogsfevr]

Your breeder will /should give a diet sheet that they have found successful in raisng could healthy/growing puppies.

Many breeders guarantee also includes you feeding there diet or if requiring change doing so with there guidance.

Not all foods suit every breed .

Your breeder should have all these answers in there puppy pack & outline what they recommend & the ages & they should welcome phone calls for assistance.

We give our new puppy owners our diet sheet a week before pup is due to leave so they can get food in & read it & ask any questions if required

[akristin]

If you were interested and keen to learn a little more about raw feeding I've stumbled onto indepth explanations of Raw feeding

Let me know if that helps! :)

[Salukifan]

The most important factor in growing a healthy pup is to ensure that the calcium/phosphorus ratio in the diet is balanced. Unless you know what you are doing, feeding a puppy is not a time to experiment.

You can feed a good diet on all raw, a mix of decent kibble and raw or all kibble - don't let anyone suggest otherwise. IMO the best guidance on diet will come from those Labrador folk who have plenty of puppy raising experience.

Frankly the biggest challenge with a Lab pup will be keeping the pup lean. Fat pups aren't going to have as good a chance of a sound adult skeleton as leaner ones.

I'd be starting by talking to the pup's breeder.

[sandgrubber]

On your #2 point, you've been fed hype. Dogs can digest starch. Recent DNA studies looking at the difference between dogs and wolves found that one big difference is that dogs are better endowed with the genes to produce starch digestion enzymes. One of the evolutionary changes that happened when wolf changed to dog is that the system got better able to handle starch. I wouldn't pay one cent more per pound for foods that substitute roots for grains (ie, sweet potato vs. rice). I still avoid foods where corn is the #1 ingredient.

When I lived in Perth I fed pups (Labs) on a mostly-raw diet cause it's so easy to buy raw in Perth, and they thrive on raw. I've been away from Oz for some years, so you'll have to ask around about where you can buy roo, but I'm pretty sure Leonards still sells chook bones. My vets warned me off feeding chicken bones before 4 mo of age because chicken sometimes carries salmonella and younger pups don't have strong enough immune systems to handle salmonella. I generally adhered to this, but when one of my girls took to barfing up half digested chicken frames to feed her litter, I gave in to feeding raw chook to pups. Never had a problem, but it could be risky.

Now that I'm in the US I'm feeding Eukanuba puppy to my Lab pup, along with eggs, veg and fruit (carrots, all cabbage family veg., bananas, apples). I find it's a lot easier than the raw diet, and, frankly, I can't see any difference in the pup's health. I don't like Science brand. . . have had lots of puking when I feed it ...and avoid the low end brands. But I can't see the value of the most expensive stuff.

The biggest problem I had feeding raw to Labs is the fat problem. This is particularly hard when you feed raw. Chook frames are the cheapest and some say the best raw meat for dogs. But the frames from modern factory chook frames are grossly fatty. So are some of the other red meat cuts commonly sold for dogs (eg, lamb flaps). Even if you trim the fat, you're going to have to be quite careful with portions to avoid feeding too much. It's a lot easier to ensure that your dog is getting more joules from protein than fat when you feed a quality dry food product.

[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!