Supplements with Raw?

[tasham]

I have my 3 boys on Raw now. I'm mainly concerned with additional supplements I've been adding, especially for Charlie, who is 5 months old. I've had him on raw for about 2 months now, so since he was about 3 months old. I have been adding a vitamin D tablet, vitamin E along with 1 fish oil capsule, and sometimes some CoQ10, maybe a couple times a week.

His diet consists of:

Turkey and chicken necks, backs, and legs with bone.
Ground beef or lamb.

For added stuff I put in pumpkin, yogurt, pureed brocolli and applies, and he gets a raw egg with shells once or twice a week.

Every now and then we do sardines or cooked salmon or trout.

Is adding those vitamins good or bad for him? Is it too much of one of the vitamins? I'm worried about him not getting enough vitamins from his meats and don't know how much vitamins are in the pureed vegetables, so I've been adding these just to make sure he's getting these.

I read that excessive vitamin D can lead to orthopedic issues like hip dysplasia, so now I'm concerned I've been giving him too much of that.

Can anyone tell me if the regimen I have him on is healthy or do I need to change, remove, add anything? Thanks much!

 

[bhboxer]

It sounds like you have him on a good feeding plan. Like us, dogs would be better off getting their vitamins and minerals from the food they eat, not supplements. In the wild they would not get any supplements. Here is a small guide on raw and other feeding concerns - http://www.rawmeatybones.com/diet/exp-diet-guide.pdf

 

[Caney Creek]

I'm not an expert on raw diets but I have done a little research here and there, so I'll share my opinion and hopefully someone more knowledgeable will come along and be able to add to it

- It looks as though bones in the diet are only coming from two sources, both of them poultry. I'd add in bone from other meat sources for more variety.

- Are you feeding any organ meat?? That's where MOST of the nutrients in a raw diet come from -- the organs. Liver, kidneys, tripe, heart, lungs, etc. The meat sources of the organs should be varied as well.

- I think that more than 1 fish oil capsule daily would be beneficial. The vitamin E is good, and 1 pill daily will still be sufficient even if you increase the fish oil. I'm honestly not sure about the D and CoQ10 :confused:

- The added stuff is fine IMO, I personally think that more variety is a good thing. Commercially-raised meat sources are lacking a lot of the nutrients and omega-3's that you would normally find in organic or wild-caught meat. Plus, we can't just go out and buy ALL the parts of the prey that would normally be consumed by a dog in the wild (eyes, brain, all the gross stuff). I don't know the nutritional values for each and every little body part of every animal that wild dogs eat, but I do know that they eat most of it, so unless you are feeding the entire (organically raised/wild caught) animal to your dog, inevitably SOME nutrients are being left out, right? That's what I would think anyways, so IMO it's not a bad idea to supplement CERTAIN nutrients and occasionally throw in some "extras" for nutritional variety.

 

[tasham]

Thanks for the info!

Yes, we do feed organ meat, although I'm not sure if it's enough. I usually add a couple large pieces of lamb heart or chicken or turkey livers in the morning.

I do give them other meat bones, like beef ribs and lamb bones, but they don't really eat too much of those bones because they are so big. The turkey and chicken bones they crunch right up and swallow, but they always have at least some sort of larger bone to chew on. Occasionally I've bought a rack of beef ribs and given them the meaty ribs and once they chew off all the meat and fat, then they gnaw on the bone for a week or so, but I don't notice them actually eating any of those bones. Same with the lamb bones. We give them leg bones and they eat as much of the meat off of those, but these are really tough bones and they don't crunch through them like a poultry bone. Any other good bones to feed them that they can actually chew up?

I'm really big on supplements right now because of Cyrus. He was the whole reason behind our change to raw in the first place because he was diagnosed with subcutaneous hemangiosarcoma a couple months ago, so we immediately took him off commercial food (even though he had been on a high-quality food all his life until this...Innova and Blue Buffalo Wilderness). So we've been doing a lot of research on good supplements for dogs with cancer and I have him on things like echincea, fish oil, dandelion, astralagus, and green tea extract and then antioxidants like CoQ10. I figure these are all very healthy, so why not give them to Charlie as well, but since he's so young I don't know if that's a good idea or not. So much to know!

Anyway, thanks again for the article and the info! This is very helpful!

 

[Caney Creek]

Found this about Vitamin D and puppies

Raw meaty bones should comprise around 30 to 50 percent of the diet. Be careful if you supplement with cod liver oil or another form of vitamin D. Vitamin D increases the absorption of calcium, so if you feed high amounts of bone and vitamin D, you increase the likelihood that too much calcium will be absorbed. Never add calcium to a diet that includes appropriate amounts of bone.

Home-Prepared Raw Diets for Dogs

That link has a TON of great info, as do these:

Balancing a Homemade Diet
Raw Food Products
Canine Cancer

 

[Please Work]

We feed alot of Kangaroo (I know you probably can't get it over there) but in looking at the health benefits of Kangaroo I found that it is high in Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) and that it is a Cancer fighting substance. CLA can be found in ruminant animals, so even though Kangaroo may not be available to you, animals that have been grass fed instead of being grain fed would have CLA (there are also supplements I believe).

"In animal studies, as little as one half of one percent CLA in the diet has reduced tumor burden by more than 50 percent."
from here:
Health Benefits of Conjugated Linoleic Acid

Conjugated linoleic acid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

not sure if it will be of any help to you but thought I would put it out there just in case.

Also just a few boney type things my that my girl handles well are lamb necks (my girl LOVES them) pork ribs, brisket, rabbit

 

[gmacleod]

Do you feed any oily fish? Thinking of things like sardines and mackeral (rather than big oily fish like tuna, which are rather too high in mercury) fed a couple of times a week. Vitamins and minerals are much more bio-available when fed in natural form than as supplements, so if you can give your dog the things he needs in natural food, it is far better than supplements. Save those for the things you can't manage to provide regularly the natural way