Raw Food Or Dry For Racing Lurcher?

[Giro 2,648]

I must admit, its something I have never noticed in my own dogs.

 

I used to feed twice aday & now only feed once.. I even given them a fasting day every now and then..

 

I do feed twice during the season when they are grafting hard..

[sandymere 8,261]

Bit of info

 

 

Sprint/ Weight Pulling Canine Athletes
Dogs involved in sprinting and weight pulling activities such as sight hound racing or sledge pulling competitions undergo short periods of very intense exercise. These types of dogs typically do not have higher energy requirements than those of moderately active pet dogs. A greyhound expends approximately 75 kcal per race6. The energy required for these types of activities is solely anaerobic and comes from the muscle energy stores. Most canine athletes engaged in sprint type activities have an energy requirement of 1.6-2 X resting energy rate1. An appropriate feeding regime for sprint type canine athletes consists of a diet that contains approximately 25% calories from protein, 30% calories from fat and 45% calories from carbohydrates (Table 2).

Greyhounds can deplete up to 70% of their muscle glycogen during a race7. However, it seems that “carb loading” as described for humans does not benefit these canine athletes8. Hill et al demonstrated that greyhounds ran faster when carbohydrate was increased from 30 to 45% ME at the expense of protein but they ran slower when fed 54% carbohydrates at the expense of protein and fat9.

While vitamins E and C provide protection against oxidative damage, they do not appear to enhance racing performance. On the contrary, super-supplementation with these antioxidant vitamins actually slowed greyhounds10. However, many racing dogs are fed raw meat or fish in addition to a complete and balanced dog food. Raw meats and fish, which can be high in PUFA, are susceptible to oxidation. Therefore, the amount of vitamin E included in the diet should be proportional to the fat levels in the diet11.

(Arleigh Reynolds, DVM, PhD, DACVN
Jill Cline, PhD

 

The popularity of lure racing over set race distances on straight or circle tracks has influenced the way greyhounds are selected, trained, housed and fed, as compared with the original coursing bloodlines (Kohnke, 1998). Greyhounds must to be maintained within an established race weight range based on their body weight within ± 1 kg of their last winning trial or race weight. A nutritionally adequate and well balanced diet is paramount to the health, performance and adaptation of the greyhound to the physical and metabolic stresses of racing.

Although diets were traditionally based on fresh red meat and cereal meals, with disease risks such as BSE and Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK and Europe, and the increasing cost of beef and other meat in affluent countries, there has been a change in the staple diet for racing greyhounds to compounded dry foods formulated to partly or fully replace meat, with only a limited amount of meat, offal, meat by-products and processing trimmings added to complete the diet.

A number of extensive reviews on the traditional methods of diet composition and practices for the feeding of racing greyhounds have been published over the last two decades (Grandjean, 1988; Kohnke, 1989; Grandjean, 1991; Grandjean and Paragon, 1992, Grandjean and Paragon, 1993; Kohnke, 1994; Britton, 1994; Blythe et al., 1994; Reinhart, 1995; Kohnke, 1998). However, the feeding of greyhounds remains one of the areas of animal nutrition still heavily influenced by tradition and folklore. Today an increasing degree of science, combined with the ‘art’ of feeding dictated by time honored practices is used in feeding racing greyhounds.


Nutritional aims

The racing diet for successful competitive racing has been refined since lure racing became the industry standard for grading wagering odds relative to body weight and performance. In addition to maintaining health and vitality by the provision of a diet adequate in energy, protein, fat, fiber and other nutrients, as is required by the canine species generally, there are a number of important performance related nutritional and management criteria that should be adopted.


PROVIDE A LOW BULK, HIGHLY DIGESTIBLE RATION

Gut fill and body weight has a large influence on speed and ultimate performance in a greyhound running over distances between 300-700 meters. The traditional meat-based diets with an intake of 1000 g daily containing an average of 50-70% fresh red meat by weight or 500-700 g for an average 30 kg (66 lb) greyhound, combined with 30-50% of a low protein, low fat dry food or kibble (300 g daily) are still popular. However, these feed combinations may be excessively bulky for greyhounds to consume, especially as it is often fed as a single meal daily. The actual dry matter content of raw meat in the fresh state is only 20%, with water contributing the major portion of the weight and bulk.

The advent of low bulk, highly digestible extruded dry foods manufactured on a cereal and oil seed meal base, with high fat (20-30%) and high protein (20-30%) as the major energy and protein sources theoretically distends the gastrointestinal tract to a lesser extent and are digested leaving a minimal bulk of stool. However, low bulk complete feeds have not been well accepted in greyhound kennels because of a preference for traditional meat-based feeding practices, as well as the higher cost of these dry foods (Table 1). Even dry foods processed by steam extrusion that are designed to facilitate a reduced feeding rate of 250–300 g daily for each meal to meet nutrient requirements at a predetermined body weight, have not been widely accepted.

The negative aspect of a high protein, high fat, minimal bulk diet is that many trainers think it leaves the dog appearing hungry rather than full and content when fed once daily on a more bulky meat-based diet. The positive benefit of a low bulk, highly digestible diet is the lower stool bulk, which reduces kennel and turnout clean up time and less faecal odor in kennels when fresh meat is eliminated from the diet (Kohnke, 1998).

In countries with a warm climate such as Australia, the amount of water consumed to maintain hydration can negate any weight benefit obtained from feeding low bulk, high protein and high fat dry foods.

Various studies have found that high protein dry foods may be detrimental to speed and performance. On average, a racing greyhound is able to run 0.1 m/sec faster (about 2 lengths of the winning margin) over 500 meters when fed a moderate protein diet (20-25% crude protein) as compared to a high protein diet containing in excess of 30% crude protein (Waltham, 2000). These studies concluded that a dry food based diet, which contained 42% of the energy from carbohydrates, 33% from fat and 24% from protein, provided the best dietary balance to optimize speed and performance over a standard 500 meter race distance. However, greyhounds on this diet were slightly heavier in body weight than greyhounds fed a diet containing higher protein and fat with a lower content of carbohydrate. This difference in body weight was attributed to a greater muscle bulk in greyhounds fed on the medium protein diet.

The traditional meat-based diet contains a higher level of carbohydrates provided by cereals, rice or bread (Kohnke, 1998). Another study suggested that greyhounds run faster race times when meat was added to a low protein and semi-lean diet, presumably because the meat provided extra fat as an energy source (Waltham, 2000).

(: JOHN R. KOHNKE )

[Giro 2,648]

What's the Abstract Sandy ???

 

Be a ball ache reading all that on a my wee phone

[Vicky Steadman 328]

 

 

dog looks well enough, but i personally am not a great fan of cereal based feeds. a bit to add fibre to the diet, but thats enough for me. when you say training i assume you mean fitness training, so as the exercise increases you will need to increase the protein levels to allow muscle development, and increase the fat to keep condition on the dog

she eats a lot of grass and silage/haylage on the farm so I assumed she wasn't getting enough fibre, what should I feed her to help that?

yeah I mean fitness training as well as lure training - she's already fit but needs to be fitter to have a chance against the proper racers.

 

 

sorry, what i meant was that a handful of cereal based feed added to meat would be enough fibre. some dogs get a bit bound up if they are getting a lot of bone, for example. i give mine a spoonful of bran mixed with cod liver oil if they are having issues in the poop department......

 

ah I see, thanks for the tip although ormally everything that comes out of her looks like ideal dog shit lol

[Vicky Steadman 328]

great extract Sandymere, very informative and lots to take in and understand!

 

I think i'll continue as I am just to use up the supply I have, which gives me some more time to get her ready to race, and then i'll probably get some of that Gain28 or Redmills Racer and try a mix of that and raw meat and see how she goes. i'm a big fan of raw meat for dogs so don't feel like I want to change completely onto dry. I prefer the traditional method of feeding but a full 1000g of feed is a lot for my small lurcher, i'd cut that back and maybe split it into two meals.

 

its all a learning curve really and practice makes perfect, so i'll probably spend a few months playing about and see what my bitch does best on.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Vicky Steadman