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Originally Posted by PrincessDiana  Ellie May, to answer your question, I'm not entirely sure but from what I understand, the 80/10/10 guidelines are formulated from two things. The first is that real life prey are roughly 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, and 10% organ. I know that if you are feeding whole prey over a week's time (for instance), then it is balanced and you don't need to provide anything else. Second, I know the all the nutrients, minerals, and vitamins are accounted for in this guideline. I can try to find the literature. |
if you find the info. can you please also post the link here as well? thank you.
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Originally Posted by QuickSilver My feeling is that generally if an animal can eat it, it's a legitimate part of the diet. Humans can live healthily as both vegetarians and carnivores. Our digestive systems have evolved to allow us to get nutrition from a wide variety of foodstuffs.
So my dilemma is: dogs can also eat a wide variety of foods. A dog can live as a vegetarian. If done correctly, it will be healthy (though probably pretty grumpy). Cats, OTOH, cannot. They are true carnivores. So I have a hard time believing that dogs CAN eat vegetable matter, but get no benefit from it.
Sometimes I toy with going prey with Thor, but I am never certain enough to really commit to it. |
someone else will be able to answer this question a lot better than i can, but i will try to answer it anyways! your question about dogs eating plants and if they can get nutrition out of it. i have read in other posts that if you want to feed dogs vegetables, you must cook it or cut it up because dogs don't have the ability to get the nutrients out of the vegetables otherwise. because the only time they really eat vegetables in the wild is from the contents in their prey's stomach, which are partially digested... sorry i didn't do a very good job of explaining, but does that make sense? (can someone else explain this?)
i know someone's dog whose health improved dramatically after his owner put him on a veg. diet. but i really don't think this is typical, i think that most dogs will do best on a meat based diet.
maybe you can try pre-made raw with thor first, and see what you think. it's easier than just jumping into prey model diet. it's possible that thor doesn't like raw. my dogs do not like to eat raw.