My Thoughts

TCM Seasonal Food Rotation

Fri, 5 Feb 2010 14:30:34 -0700

January-February
MM: pork, beef, yogurt,
O: lamb or beef liver
RMB: chicken, five minute egg with shell, fish
Kibble: feed beef or lamb flavor, there are pork kibble out there, mix a small bag in
Grains: Oats or 1/2 oats with brown rice, millet, buckwheat groats
Vegetables: Collard Greens, parsnips, beets, broccoli, leeks, kale, mustard greens, carrots, green beans, lettuce, radishes, celery, cucumbers
Fruit: 1/4 to 1/2 whole watermelon, instead of one meal, skin, seeds, and fruit.

March
MM: Beef, turkey, lamb
O: beef liver
RMB: chicken, whitefish
Kibble: feed beef flavor, buy a small bag and feed for this month.
Grains: millet, brown rice, spelt, quinoa
Vegetables: sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, parsnips, cucumbers, squash, pumpkin, green or yellow beans
Fruit: Dates, apricots

April-May
MM: Rabbit, chicken, eggs
O: Turkey liver
RMB: chicken
Kibble: feed chicken flavor, buy canned rabbit and mix in
Grains: sweet brown rice, millet, quinoa, amaranth
Vegetables: leeks, beets, radishes, asparagus, kale collard greens, carrots, romaine lettuce
Fruit: Plums, Peaches, raspberries, blackberries

June
MM: Beef, turkey, lamb
O: beef liver
RMB: chicken, whitefish
Kibble: feed beef flavor, buy a small bag and feed for this month.
Grains: millet, brown rice, spelt, quinoa
Vegetables: sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, parsnips, cucumbers, squash, pumpkin, green or yellow beans
Fruit: Dates, apricots

July-August
MM: lamb, pork, cottage cheese,
O: lamb liver
RMB: chicken, whitefish
Kibble: feed lamb flavor
Grains: Millet, brown rice, oats, buckwheat
Vegetables: corn, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, celery, chard, asparagus, cauliflower, radishes, okra, broccoli, kale, squash
Fruit: Apricot, Black currents, blackberries, shredded apple

September
Muscle Meat (MM): Beef, turkey, lamb
Organs (O): beef liver
RawBones (RMB): chicken, whitefish
Kibble: feed beef flavor, buy a small bag and feed for this month.
Grains: millet, brown rice, spelt, quinoa
Vegetables: sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, parsnips, cucumbers, squash, pumpkin, green or yellow beans
Fruit: Dates, apricots

October-November
MM: Game meats (venison, phesant, duck etc.), beef, yogurt
O: beef or turkey liver
RMB: chicken, if available I feed game meat bones and beef bones also
Kibble: Feed Venison, elk flavors
Grains: brown rice, oats, buckwheat
Vegetables: Carrots, beets, celery, cucumber, parsnips, green or yellow beans, radishes, garlic
Fruit: peaches, black currants, blueberries, blackberries

December
MM: Beef, turkey
O: beef liver
RMB: chicken, whitefish
Kibble: feed beef flavor, buy a small bag and feed for this month.
Grains: millet, brown rice, spelt, quinoa
Vegetables: sweet potatoes, yams, carrots, parsnips, cucumbers, squash, pumpkin, green or yellow beans
Fruit: Dates, apricots

Spay and Neuter Considerations

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:24:17 -0600

Clink on the links below to open up the articles.

Long-Term Health Risks and Benefits Associated with Spay / Neuter in Dogs
Laura J. Sanborn, M.S.
May 14, 2007

Early Spay-Neuter Considerations for the Canine Athlete
One Veterinarian’s Opinion
© 2005 Chris Zink DVM, PhD, DACVP

Talk To Your Vet

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:17:45 -0600

Maintaining Ada’s weight through hunting season

Fri, 2 Jan 2009 19:16:54 -0700

Over the last 2 hunting seasons I have learned a few tricks to keep up on Adas weight. She has often looked like an starvation victim when she gets back home from a long trip.

I keep her at about 3% of her body weight to figure her amounts of food. Yes I still weigh out my dogs meals. Im just comfortable with doing it that way.

Her Raw diet gets adjusted to the fattiest foods I can buy: Duck, lamb, hamburger. I am also lucky enough to usually get something seasonal for organ meat, this year it was antelope liver.

I feed muscle meat, ground or chunks in the AM. Tends to be red meats.
At night they get bones, usually poultry.

I supplement with Fish oil at 180EPA/10lbs twice daily, with 400u Vit E at night. I mix up a blend of Greed Foods, probiotics, and Immune Blend. Its different each time. Mostly its to just cover my bases.

During Hunting season I add in a few supplements to keep her going.

I add intestamine to the powder mix. Helps with any diarrhea she may get from traveling. I also usually up the probiotics in the mix.

I wanted to add fat to her diet and that posed some interesting questions. Like what are the best oils to go with the foods I feed? Will they help or not? What about canned foods? How long will I need to feed these items to see any results?

That last question was the easiest to answer. Thanks to all the sled dogs out there the scientists know that it takes at least 4-6 weeks for a increase in fat intake to make a difference in endurance levels.

Also important here was a blip about carbs in the diet. I began to add in about 1-2 Tbls per day, of grains to Adas diet. I know I know, the big evil! But overall it helped. I rotated between, oats, barley, buckwheat, and millet. I fed these at home but did not send them on hunting trips.

Here is what I settled on for the fats:

Supplemental Oils:

Coconut oil, virgin (unrefined, in glass jars,if possible)
I gave her 1-3 tsp daily at night. You can give up to 1 tsp per 10 lbs of body weight daily, but start with less and build up.
Why? Coconut oil is a saturated fat, and beef is quite high in saturated fats already, so I wouldn't add coconut oil to beef meals, but add it to duck or other poultry meals.

Olive Oil
I fed 1 tsp daily in the AM, for about 6 weeks mid season.
Why? Olive oil is a monounsaturated fat. It will compete with the other
forms of fat, such as fish oil, so I wouldn't give it all the time.
Duck and chicken are also high in monounsaturated fats, so I wouldn't
add it when feeding poultry of any kind.

Borage or Evening Primrose oil
I rotated between these over the season. Giving her 3 capsules in the AM.
Why? This provides the GLA her diet may be lacking.

Flax oil
I added in 1-3 tsp of ground flax seed in the PM.
Why? To balance the types of fat in a poultry (RMB) meal.

Hemp oil
I gave 3 capsules in the AM. (1 tsp oil/1lb meat)
Why? to balance the types of fat in a beef meal.

Fat as Food:

I started out thinking that I wanted to feed her raw at home with a touch of Honest Kitchen. Then as she went on trips I would send her with Honest Kitchen and high fat canned foods. But what is a high fat canned food? First you have to start with some math:

Dog food math: by Mary Strauss, Thanks Mary!

You can use the percentage of fat to get a rough estimate of the
amount of fat in various canned foods, but the best way to compare
them is to calculate the grams of fat per 1,000 kcal. To do that, you
need to know the percentage of fat and the number of kcal per kg,
then just divide the percentage of fat by the kcal/kg and multiply by
10,000 (move the decimal point four places to the right).

For example, Canine Caviar Gourmet Beaver is 6% fat and has 2,052
kcal/kg; 6/2052 = 29 grams of fat per 1,000 kcal.

If you only know the calories per can, you can get a rough estimate
of the kcal/kg by multiplying the kcal/can by 35, then dividing by
the number of ounces per can.

For example, Canine Caviar Gourmet Beaver has 768 kcal per 13.2 oz can, so 768 * 35 / 13.2 = 2,036. If you divide that into the 6% fat, you get the same 29 grams of fat per 1,000 kcal.

25 grams of fat per 1,000 kcal is considered low-fat. I'd look for
something that is over 40 grams of fat per 1,000 kcal.

So the math proved to be a challenge in itself but finding those high fat foods even worse.

What I found was the Evo canned foods are the best, with Natures Logic and California Natural (salmon and sweet potato only) a close 2nd an 3rd.

What I also found out is that for Ada, the switch to these cooked high fat foods was too much. It just gave her diarrhea.

So after a few rough weekends we kept up the Honest Kitchen and sent ground meats on her hunting trips. Diarrhea solved.

What I learned

Research only gets you so far. Your dog will tell you if its working.

In this case adding in the grains, changing up her oils but keeping her overall diet the same did the trick.

Ada has maintained weight better than ever, her coat looks great, and she preformed amazingly well over the season.

Just what do you feed your dogs?

Sun, 7 Sep 2008 21:48:44 -0600

The subject of Canine Nutrition causes a complicated, often heated discussion. Topics range from the definition of a “good” or “premium” kibble (dry food), what specific ingredients actually are (chicken digest anyone?), home cooked diets, pre-made raw diets, home made raw diets, dehydrated foods, canned foods or not, veterinary endorsed foods, and my favoriate “my breeder told me to feed X. ”

What I can tell you about, is the path I have traveled:

My first job as a kid was feeding the dogs dinner. Sonja and Shep our 2 GSD ate Alpo canned for dinner. I remember walking downstairs to the bowls and dumping out the foul smelling chunks into their bowls. As a college kid I found my way to a dog mushing gear and food store. Here the concepts of so called quality ingredients and performance diets for working sled dogs crossed my path. There was a lot of trust in the big companies at that time. They had the research to prove their foods worked. My next job in a vet clinic further programed my brain to accept that these big companies had the foods we should all be feeding.

After moving to Denver, going to Tech. school and continuing to work in a vet clinic. I still believed the big guys had our dogs best interests in mind. It wasn’t until I got my first “Breeder” and mentor that I began to question what was a good dog food. So after several foods, including some of the big names, and still having a sick dog, I made a jump. Reaching toward a holistic tendency I had been harboring for years, I went to see the local holistic guru up in Boulder. What I was told was shocking! Feed a raw diet to my dog. Add in supplements and herbs to support him! Well I took the supplements (that was practically medicine and I could do that,) but feed my dog meat and bones! HA!

A few days later, when I calmed down about all the expense and time I put into seeing that vet. I realized that if I was willing to go all the way up there, I should listen to him. So I did, but in my own way. Raw diet umm...

I began reading every book on raw diets I could find. My “breeder” made the jump to a pre-made raw right away and started seeing the benefits for herself. I read books, researched on the net and basically became obsessed with canine nutrition.

I need to give credit to the sites and books who truly helped me see the light. Please see my links page and the nutrition references I list there. But the “Ultimate Diet” and the “Switching to Raw” books truly spelled it out for me and made it seam possible to do this diet myself. By this point I was going broke feeding one 90# dog a pre-made raw diet. Then there were the websites, raw dog ranch, dog aware, and b-naturals. All invaluable in there abundance of information.

I want to think all who paved the path before, so I could learn easier and take better care of my dogs faster.

What does all this mean? I feed a home made raw diet now, with occasional canned foods, dehydrated diets, and even kibble. I have learned what foods work for my dogs. Not what will work for every dog. And I have done endless hours of research to get here. I write all this down now to make a point that if you are interested in changing your dogs diet in any way, do your own research and listen with a open mind. You just might learn something to help your dog.

So just what do I feed my dogs?

Right now my 4 dogs get a varied diet of Muscle Meat in the AM, Organs and Raw Meaty Bones in the PM. On occasion when I don’t thaw enough food out, I feed a meat based canned food or a dehydrated food by The Honest Kitchen. Each one has their own list of supplements, more on that later.

Thats it. The Carnivore Restaurant that is my kitchen twice daily.

Just what is the Carnivore Restaurant?

Its what I jokingly have come to call the diet I feed my dogs. Just a hair off of the Prey model and farther from the BARF diet.

What's the difference?

The whole prey model is based on what wolves would eat in the wild. Often whole large parts or sections of the animal are fed, sometimes with hair and feathers still attached. Prey model devotees, feed portions found in a whole pray animal. So, build a chicken in your dogs bowl: a portion will be meat, then some bone, and last a portion of organs. Prey model feeders believe dogs are carnivores and do not need carbohydrates (veggies, fruit, and grains.)

An important note on bone: The pray model accounts for bone as a weight all by itself, with no meat attached. So when looking at say a rabbit (about 10% bone) or an elephant (about 25% bone) its important to keep in mind the weight of the typical Raw Meaty Bone (RMB) will be more. Example: I feed very close to the pray model and feed about 40% RMBs, knowing that a huge portion of the weight I feed is muscle, and tendons. 
The BARF diet (biologically appropriate raw food or bones and raw food) has been around the longest and followers believe that dogs are not carnivores but are omnivores. Much more bone is fed (up to about 60 %) and Barfers feed lots of supplements and raw vegetables and fruit.

I consider both methods a lot better than kibble, but prefer to recommend a easier raw or home cooked diet to my friends based on my many hours of research.

First I recommend reading some books:
These 3 are the easiest to read in my opinion.

Natural Nutrition of Dogs and Cats; The Ultimate Diet, by Kymythy Schultze

Raw Dog Food; Make It Easy For You And Your Dog, by Carina Beth MacDonald

Switching to Raw; A Fresh Food Diet For Dogs That Makes Sense, by Susan Johnson

Second, get on the internet:

www.dogaware.com
www.rawdogranch.com

Yahoo groups K9Nutrition and Colorado Carnivores

Special attention in the newsletter section of www.b-naturals.com
Lew also did a Canine Nutrition Course that is an absolute must read:

http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/history-of-feeding-part-i/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/history-of-feeding-part-ii/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/vintage-recipes/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/vegetables/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/history-of-dog-food/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/digestion-anatomy/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/protein/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/fats-fatty-acids/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/minerals-in-canines/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/vitamins-supplements/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/cooked-diet/
http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/raw-diet/

Third, build your menu, buy some food and feed your dog!

Just like that, if you have done your homework above, this whole raw process will make sense to you.

The Carnivore Restaurant

Muscle Meat
(chunks or ground)
Beef (hamburger, tongue, heart)
Poultry (usually ground or gizzards) (chicken, turkey, duck)
Lamb
Pork (tongue, heart)
Rabbit
Game meat (venison, elk, bison)
Goat
Eggs (chicken, Duck, One large egg 3-4 times a week)

Organs
(Same sources as above, whole or ground/chopped)
Liver
Kidney
Green Tripe - avoid white or bleached tripe has no nutritional value
Pancreas
Lungs
Eyes
Thymus

Raw Meaty Bones
(whole or ground)
Beef (ribs, small bones)
Poultry (necks, wings, backs, whole carcasses)
Lamb (necks, ribs, riblets)
Pork (ribs)
Rabbit (usually whole carcasses)
Game meat (ribs, small bones)
Goat (ribs, small bones)
Fish* (canned mackerel, or salmon)
* Fish is the only food that can also be fed cooked, as the bones remain soft and the meat keeps much of its integrity.

Extras
(cooked, juiced, ground)
Yogurt (goat, sheep, water buffalo)
Cottage Cheese
Veggies
Grains/Starches (barley, quinoa, rice, potato, sweet potato)

Supplements
(as needed per dog)
Digestive Enzymes
Probiotics
Green Foods
Fatty Acids (EPA: Fish or Salmon Oil) (GLA: Evening primrose oil, black currant oil or borage oil)
Vitamin E
Joint Supplements
Nettle Blend
Vitamin blend

Copyright 2008