Protein preference?
I posted this in another topic, but I'm curious about the results, so I thought it might deserve its own topic.
Another Shikoku observation...
While Ronan will eat the regular chicken Orijen, he's not bonkers about it. Not like he
was with the EVO RM. I think it all comes down to the fact Ronan
prefers red meats over foul. When I give him pieces of chicken from
my plate or pieces of steak, Ronan always gobbles the beef, but licks
the chicken before eating it.
Anyone else's dog have a meat preference? Just trying to figure if it is an overall Shikoku preference, or just a Ronan thing. Duck and turkey don't do it for him, either. He'll eat them, but doesn't show the same interest.
Tasha will devour anything and seemingly has no preference. I steered
clear of chicken when Jack was alive because he was highly allergic to
it, so it'd also be interesting to know what your other dogs prefer and
what breed they are. Jack only ate beef, lamb, venison, salmon, or duck because of allergies, so Tasha was always limited to those as well. She's also a rescue, and in my experience, rescues aren't usually particular about their food.
I still need to see if Ronan prefers salmon over beef, and which of the red meats he favors. Just an interesting experiment to see if the Japanese breeds have a protein preference or two.
I've never fed Ronan pork or rabbit since I'm reserving those in case he ever develops allergies. I've heard it is always good to keep a couple proteins aside for this reason.
Comments
Tenji is currently on a good eating program. He is cleaning his dish daily. He doesn't appear to have a preference but he does love the Halshan's raw meat and vegetable mixtures. I buy their ground chicken necks and add a bit of that to the mix as well. I give him the Halshan's about twice a week. The rest of the time I alternate between different kibble,(he currently has six different choices), Evanger's canned whole chicken, Evanger's hunks of beef, Evanger's whole mackeral, Some Trippet's green tripe, Nature's Variety Rabbit, Lamb, Venison and Duck (canned) and some frozen raw Nature's Variety medallions. He gets vitamins and fish oil daily as well. I gave up on Honest Kitchen as he was hating it and I was ending up tossing it. I couldn't even disguise it with extras. I also buy good size beef or buffalo marrow bones. I would venture a guess that fish is his least favorite.
Jen
One thing about you want to be careful about is feeding the raw salmon. I purchased a few books about holistic medicine and raw diets for dogs with recepies and what not; it says in both those books the one fish you should never feed raw is salmon because they get parasites when they go from salt water to fresh water, and it can make dogs and people extremely ill if injested, sometimes fatal. I get canned salmon for my guys now.
My dogs will eat anything you put in front of them except veggies. I try to feed them food with fish, chicken or turkey protein sources because theoretically they evolved in Japan hunting and eating animals like birds, fish, boar and deer. I tried Kohji on a venison and potato kibble a long time ago, and he had pretty bad diahrrea from it, so I haven't tried it since. If i tried that again, it would have to be fresh raw.
Not more than 2-3 times a week I add raw eggs to their Orijen kibble. More often I add raw chicken, low fat cottage cheese, canned sardines, salmon, tuna, 3V fish oils caps, and The Honest Kitchen supplement Invigor.
For the people who use Orijen kibble whether it be the Adult formula or the 6 Fresh Fish, we need to find out if they use any Ethoxyquin to preserve the fish in those diets. I read at DogFoodAnalysis.com that they could use it to preserve the fish, but not list it on the ingredient list. I think I'm going to give the company a call on Monday and find out, I'll let you guys know.
Nevermind, I answered my own question:
Q: ETHOXYQUIN: Does ORIJEN contain ethoxyquin?
A: No. ORIJEN fish meats arrive FRESH; which means they are never frozen and have no preservatives what-so-ever. We work directly with our fish meal suppliers and pay them a premium to have ORIJEN fish meals preserved naturally with Vitamin E, Citric acid and Rosemary extract instead of the commonly used ethoxyquin preservative.
Return to top
I posted this to the Orjen thread [I have added to it here tho].
========================================================
In the past Ahi has had bad reactions to beef - it makes her rather sick. So we have done the opposite and avoided beef and bison. Ahi loves raw Lamb, she is not a huge fan of raw chicken, and she seems to like raw turkey. Also Ahi seems to like raw rabbit a lot, but she hates the Prairie frozen rabbit. She loves Duck too - all of our dogs LOVE duck. Ahi is very picky - even picky about the texture of her food. All of our dogs have done well on Venison.
The Shibas love raw chicken and turkey - Maui REALLY likes beef.
Also - Ahi has stopped liking Prairie frozen raw - any type - but she LOVES the freeze-dried Prairie and HK. We have had to scale back on the HK tho because it makes all our dogs have to do "number two" way to much.
Ahi really just wants plain old kibble most of the time.
========================================================
For this next part - let me say that I am not being argumentative, when we got Hilo [our Akita], we re-researched a lot of foods to make sure we where giving him the best possible nutritional balance [Akitas are more prone to health issue steaming from notional imbalance]...
We have read that you shouldn't give canned Tuna or Sardines because of the high levels of Mercury, because of this we try to only feed raw freshwater fish since those fish have the lowest levels of Merc. Really tho, we have pretty much weaned out fish in the dogs diets because there are some many different things you have to watch out for when feeding it. I would be very interested in hearing what you find out form Orjen regarding the fished based kibble.
We have also read that raw egg can be dangerous - specifically the egg whites - we where giving our dogs raw egg like once a week but have stopped because of risk of the effects of the avidin protein. Here is some info:
"Egg yolks are generally safe, but raw egg whites contain a protein called avidin which can deplete your dog of biotin, one of the B vitamins (though some research indicates that it would take large quantities of egg whites to cause this condition). Symptoms of biotin depletion are: weakness, hair loss, retarded growth, and deformity of the skeleton."
========================================================
We have never fed Pork to our dogs either, for fear of parasites, but I have read that if you freeze Pork for more than 10 days any of the parasites / worms will die off... We still don't feel comfortable enough to feed pork tho. Pork would probably go over well with Shikoku since they hunted bore tho.
========================================================
We also fast our dogs [not the puppies] every Sunday so that they have a day to absorb all the supplements we give them. I have read that the day of no food forces the dog's body to use the nutrients they have stored in their body over the week of feeding. We will do the same with Ahi once she is a year old - same for Hilo.
The Shibas would actually not eat one day of the week if we feed them every day - that is really why we started fasting them, then I read all the good things about it.
Brad,
Thank you for the information. You know what? There is a boarded Internist that works with me and in one of her discharge letters for a dog she suggested 3 raw or cooked egg yolks per day(I can't recall the dog's disease), but she definatly did not mention the whites. I should probably boil the eggs from now on, and only feed the yolks once in awhile.
I had read other people on the forum feeding canned salmon/sardines so I decided to try that as well. I was worried a bit about the salt content of both when reading the labels, after scouring the shelves for 15 minutes to try to find ones with the lowest amount. Now that you told me about the mercury content though, that's kinda scary. Makes me wonder about salmon being used as an ingredient in the Orijen dog food. I'll greatly reduce the amount of that I was feeding them.
I fast Kohji on days that he goes to rally class(once a week) or if I take him tracking, he will fast the day before. Dogs will work for you soo much better when they're hungry!
I appreciate any and all comments and thoughts about what everyone feeds, what not to feed, etc. because it really is a learning process, and I want to gain as much knowledge as possible about what's best for my dogs. I try to take everything in to make informed decisions and I think that you are very helpful Brad! Thank you!
We do give our pups canned Mackerel [not king Mackerel], they are canned in water and are on the list of the fish w/ the least amount of Mercury concern - tho they are saltwater fish they are usually found in areas with the least amount of Mercury [like brackish areas].
From what I've read, salmon is one of the safest as far as mercury
levels. I read about that a lot while I was pregnant because they
really tell you to watch your mercury levels while pregnant.
Apparently, if you eat too much tuna, your child could have
defects.
Does anyone know if there's a difference between
farmed and wild caught fish? I've been thinking about whether I
should go with farmed or wild caught in general, mostly because I read
a national geographic article about how overfishing is killing the
ocean and it urged people to buy farm fish, although that's from an
environmental standpoint, I don't know which is better in regards to
health.
My property has a spring with fish in it, I wonder if those are safe to feed the pups. I wonder how I'd even find out.
Before I was into dogs I was REALLY into aquariums - I completely pulled out of that industry because of the destruction it's doing to the oceans. I also rarely eat fish because of the same reasons. There are just not enough laws applied to the fishing industry for things like over fishing and pollution, not to mention cruelty [like boiling a live lobster or cutting the fins off a shark then tossing it back in the ocean still alive].
To my original point tho... As far as Tuna goes, Albacore should be white, most other Tuna meat is red [like Yellowfin and Ahi]. Yellowfin Tuna is the most environmentally safe Tuna to eat because there are very few "over fishing" concerns.
I have [also] read that Salmon is the lowest in Merc., but you can't give a lot of it to your dogs - and now they say women shouldn't eat a large amount of Salmon either.
There really is no way to win - it's kinda a crap shoot. I have decided not to buy any foods I know are made/grown/raised in China - I am kinda staging my own boycott of Chinese goods.
Here is a good link for finding Merc. levels - and you will notice that some of the info at this link contradicts what I posted yesterday...
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/sea-mehg.html
Feeding RAW to your dogs is kinda a moving target - there is so much conflicting info out there it's very hard to get a good plan put together. It's frustrating sometimes.