puppie food

[Guest valley2010]

i am going to buy a deerhound x grayhound x saulki grayhound. i was just wondering what do you think about puppie food is it a con and can you feed puppies adult food without fu*ing them up and what food to feed the deerhound x grayound as i have always fed puppie food to my dogs over the past 7 yrs thats when they are puppies lol

[rocky1 942]

keep them on puppy food aleast 8 months ,i use gain 28 greyhoundfood and raw a good diet for young dog ,the dry is £10 15kg sack and the raw depending on were you get it from is between 20p/35p IB ,

[sandymere 8,263]

was this not done yeterday in health?

 

 

Maybe to a degree….

 

Two schools of thought, one a puppy needs higher protein than an adult hence most puppy feeds being around 30% and the second high protein feeds accelerate growth, especially on larger breeds such as you are getting, and this leads to problems. There is research to suggest that lower protein diets do not retard growth.

“The basal diet sustained health and a retarded rate of growth in the young dogs. There was a correlation between the comparative gains in body weight and the comparative protein contents of the diets from 12.8 to 17.2% of protein, beyond which point there was no further increase in growth rate caused by additional protein. Since the diet containing 17.2% of protein was adequate for the growth of the pups, their requirements for the 10 essential amino acids apparently do not exceed the amounts that it contained.†(Protein in the Nutrition of the Growing Dog,1C. F. Gessert2 and P. H. Phillips, Department of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Personally I would not feel comfortable feeding a pup 17% protein but this does suggest that 30% is a little high.

 

The other end is the home made feeds based on meat, veg and carbs such as brown bread, pasta etc, these are a good feed but there draw backs are that an imbalance ie to much calcium or such like can also lead to serious developmental growth problems.

 

Until recently I have used puppy mixes with good effect but with my last youngster due to a skeletal problem I was advised to reduce the protein and he has come along well. With him I used a 22% protein as a base with meat and bone a couple of days a week plus plenty of cooked veg, the occasional egg, and table scraps etc, basically what I feed the adults. Using the complete as a base helps to level out the diet so that there is less likelihood of over doing any particular ingredient and the added extras give variety of nutrients, interest and the ability to digest a catholic diet which helps later on. As with most there is an element of personal choice but as a layman I would go for a lower protein diet for larger breeds to hopefully allow steady growth and joint development as there will still make the same final height in the end. In truth it’s probably more impotent to get the amounts right and timely ie a number of small meals daily slower reducing as it matures.