Understanding What Dog Like To Eat
In our opinion the best diet is the home one that allows us to use quality products at acceptable prices without neglecting the pleasure of a truly palatable meal for our dog. Cooking for large or multiple dogs is certainly challenging but you can organize yourself by preparing many meals together, freezing the individual portions and using them if necessary. In addition, the meat must have just been blanched and we can bake the fish when we eat it too! The vet will help us define a balanced and complete diet according to the needs of our dog.
The caloric needs of the dog vary in relation to age (puppy, adult, elderly), to physical or work activity, to particular conditions such as pregnancy and lactation. Subject to the variable proportions according to the aforementioned aspects, in general, the nutrition of an adult dog must include animal proteins for about 50%, the other 50% is composed of carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and mineral salts. In industrial food, on the other hand, the use of cereals, corn, soya and wheat has soared, some of which are considered mere fillers.
Many think that the sharp increase in allergies with the emergence of the pet food industry is due precisely to this type of incorrect diet, resulting from eating a food that is not appropriate for its own characteristics.
For those who cannot devote themselves to home cooking and want to find their way around industrial products on the market, there are specially packaged croquettes. The croquettes are the result of a manufacturing process that cannot maintain the nutritional values ??of the starting ingredients, whether they are excellent or poor.
There are many companies that produce animal feed and the products are of different quality, how do you find your way around choosing a good croquette?
First of all we must keep in mind the proportions of the nutrients that should respect 50% of proteins. When the percentages are not shown on the label we can base ourselves on the fact that the ingredients must be reported in descending order of weight, so if as first item we find "cereals" we already know we are in front of a poor quality product.
On labels we often find items that are difficult to interpret:
For meat derivatives we mean the slaughtering waste, such as the entrails of cattle, pigs, sheep, horses, chickens, hens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, paws and heads, lungs, breasts, spleen, liver, kidneys, stomach and tendons, but also beaks, nails, feathers.
With meat derivatives, we identify a mix of unspecified animal waste, of which we cannot know the nutritional value.
The vegetable protein extracts are corn gluten or wheat, economic sources of vegetable protein.
Meat flours indicate that the raw material is obtained from a process of recycling carcasses of livestock, through fusion. It is clear that the nutritional value depends on the quality of the proteins: a chicken breast will be more nutritious and healthy than a flour obtained by recycling a carcass.
Other useful information, but hard to find on the labels, are not only the type of meat (chicken, beef, rabbit, ...) but also the cut, if it is a muscle or offal.
Replies