I feel the need to preface this post with the fact that I break all the rules when it comes to feeding our dogs. But the way we feed works for us and has proven successful over decades of breeding and competing with our dogs. For years we have entrusted our dogs to two key sources of nutrition and more recently we have integrated greater portions of raw feeding into their diets as well.
Generations of our dogs have thrived on Purina Pro Plan kibble and free feeding. Free feeding works well for us. Our dogs are very active with our family and maintain healthy weights with free feeding. To reduce the risk of developing a protein sensitivity, we feed our dogs all three protein varieties of Purina Pro Plan. (Chicken and rice, the beef and rice as well as the lamb and rice). In an effort to raise our dogs more naturally over the years we have progressed to feeding a greater percentage of their diet from raw feeding. Raw feeding felt very daunting at first and slightly overwhelming. But with proper education and creativity, we easily integrated raw feeding into our lives. One of my favorite ways to feed raw is to use an ice cream scoop to freeze raw patties for our dogs. It is easy to portion out that way and requires making just one large batch of food per week. Our dogs raw diet incorporates a great variety of fresh vegetables, fruits, muscle meat and organs from a variety of protein sources including; beef, venison, pork, chicken, turkey and fish. We also add raw goats milk and whole raw fresh eggs (shell and all) to their diet. Our dogs are fed two raw meals per day as a portion of their daily intake. We highly recommend raw feeding over feeding conventional kibble. But we understand that with busy lives, kibble feeding has it's place. If feeding a raw diet, we highly recommend seeking the assistance of a canine nutritionist to formulate recipes that properly meet the dietary needs of your dog. If feeding conventional kibble, incorporating a percentage of raw into their diet will have great nutritional benefits. When it comes to feeding dogs, we understand that the needs of individual dogs and their families vary. But in the last few years we have seen a rise of boutique dog foods and grain free dog foods have received the spotlight. Many years ago, we tried several of these foods in our program including Orijen and Earthborn. What we discovered is these foods did not meet the dietary needs of our dogs. We found our dogs had issue maintaining healthy weights and noticed changes in their coats that were bothersome. Many of these foods have been linked to a lethal cardiac enlargement. If choosing to feed a kibble other than Purina Pro Plan, please do your homework on the risk of dilated cardiomyopathy and the correlation with grain free dog foods.
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AuthorI am the owner of Prodigy Farms and only second to the love for my dogs, is my love for educating dog owners on canine care and behavior. I am the stay at home mom of three amazing boys that are active in the rearing of our puppies. With a background in nursing and years spent competing in the dog world, I have a few tips and tricks up my sleeve that I like to share with others here. So welcome to my blog, I hope that you are blessed by your visit and will find tools and information here that will enable you to raise and train a happy healthy dog to create a lifetime of joy with! Archives
May 2022
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