Does Your Dog Need a Vitamin and Mineral Supplement?
Saturday, November 14th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
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We dog owners are always told that dog food provides everything our pet needs to lead a long and healthy life—but what if that isn’t true? Dog food, particularly the dry sort, can lose a great deal of the vital nutrients that your dog needs to remain in optimum health simply by how the food is produced. This article is going to open your eyes to the reality of the dry dog food preparation process and help you understand why it is important that you determine whether your dog may require a supplement of vitamins and minerals in his diet.
There are two main ways in which dry dog food is produced. The first consists of blending ingredients and feeding them through an extruder. The typical “main ingredient” is usually meat by-products (such as meat and bone meal), flour, or grains. Not the healthiest choice for a base ingredient, eh? A dough is created and fed and fed through the screws of the extruder, which will use steam and pressure to help it take shape. After the dough has been cut into bit-sized pieces and given time to harden, it is sprayed with fat or other composites to make it tasty. After the kibble has cooled it is bagged and shipped off. The other common way to product dog food is to subject the food to high temperatures and then broken up into edible pieces. This production style usually does not require that additional fats be sprayed on.
As you can see, high pressure steaming and baking at high temperatures doesn’t seem like the best way to retain nutrients in food, right? Besides, it isn’t as if meat by-products, this sometimes including animals that have been put down in shelters and veterinary offices, provide the best quality of nutrients in the first place! Dry food does still provide some vitamins, but how can you be sure that it’s enough to help your dog keep up a healthy immune system?
Vitamins aren’t the only thing that your dog may not get enough of from dry dog food. Your dog needs minerals like calcium, magnesium, sodium (just a little), and potassium—just like we humans do.
When we mention supplementing your dog’s food with vitamins and minerals, we’re not talking about feeding him a pill or an injection. We mean that you should start adding certain foods to your pet’s diet to make sure he is getting enough vitamins. This could mean adding a variety of chopped or pureed vegetables to his food (make sure they are raw, as cooking vegetables causes them to lose vitamins and minerals). We recommend you consider switching your dog to the BARF diet (also known as the Raw Food Diet), as mentioned in Dog Food for Life.
If you are not giving your dog a vitamin supplement, take a good hard look at him. If you see he is losing weight, has skin lesions, or is losing his fur, then it is possible that he could have a vitamin A deficiency. Vitamin D deficiency is apparent when your dog loses some of his muscle tone. If you notice your dog might have a vitamin deficiency, talk to your vet to find out for sure. Your vet will either suggest that your dog begins to take the necessary vitamin or for you to change his food.
For more information about what nutrients should be part of a dog’s diet and what brands of food might not be providing them, visit Dog Food for Life.
