Understanding ingredients
Understanding the ingredients of your dog's food items is a must for
the dog lovers or dog owners. Whenever you feed the dog with different
kinds of food items, you should always read the label and understand the
contents about the dog feed types that are being used in such commercial
preparations.
You should understand the ingredients while buying food for
your dog and also know what to look for.
Feed items include dry and fresh food. The fresh dog food that is
prepared in homes generally consists of ingredients like freshly cut chicken
pieces in addition to the cranberry juices, blue-green algae, etc.
If you come across any different kinds of preservatives and if the
dog develops all of a sudden signs pertaining to the food allergy, suspect
the unwanted ingredient in the feed items given. Similarly, understand
about the moisture status. If the food item is having more moisture, then
the dog may prefer this as well.
Beet pulp, pasta, Soy bean oil, wheat middlings, calcium carbonate,
magnesium oxide, copper sulphate, iron sulphate, zinc oxide, choline
chloride, etc. are often the ingredients in case of vegetarian based diet
items offered to the pet animals like dogs.
Raw egg, chicken, beef, mutton, fish, quail etc. are often the
preferred ingredients in case of dog diets that are prepared on the basis of
the non-vegetarian items. Taurine is one of the essential ingredients for
the dog’s nutrition. Like wise, in the case of dogs feed with frozen fish
items, the vitamin called thiamine needs to be supplemented as an
ingredient.
Many premium type of dog food preparations contain essential fatty
acids, carbohydrates with adequate fiber contents, vitamins like A, D, E
and B complex vitamins.
Furthermore, minerals like zinc, is an essential ingredient for skin
health status and calcium, which is an essential ingredient for bone
growth, tonicity of muscles. They should be enriched in these food items.
However, the cost of those food preparations are comparatively more
expensive than the food preparations with general ingredients. Though it
may be better for your dog's health.
Dogs need different diets at different ages
Dogs need different diets at different ages. Yes. This is true.
For example, the puppy needs milk as the major food item while an adult dog
may need beef or chicken in addition to the boiled egg and milk.
So depending on the age factor, the diet schedule varies in reality for the
dogs like any other species.
Puppies need greater amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrates
than an adult dogs. Furthermore, puppies need more frequent feeding
schedules in a day, unlike an adult dog. The movement based
requirements of diet are more in the case of puppies, since they are often
more active than the adult dogs.
Elder dogs need restricted protein but the protein needs to be easily
digestible and easily assimilated in the body.
The diet schedule should
have ample supply of water for them. Feeding aged dogs too much protein
may finally lead to over burden to the renal structures and ultimately, the
dog may end up damaging filters in the kidney.
This is true especially when the immune system of these dogs is
compromised due to many factors. Similarly, the elderly dogs need less
food only because the movements of the adult dogs are highly restricted
and hence, they have to spend a limited of energy.
Female dogs in the pregnancy stage need not be fed a full stomach
since it may cause some discomforts to the animal. However, the pregnant
animal and the nursing animal need special type of food items that deliver
a balanced type of nutrition with proper supplementation of vitamins and
minerals.
The nursing animal with puppies need to be fed with enough
amounts of calcium and hence, there will not be any calcium based
deficiency and the bones of the puppies will be strong without any curving.
