Quote:
Originally Posted by rachelanne820  |
Yep, it is all life stages. You can begin feeding it after they are weaned from their mother's milk if you wish.
A baby wolf would not eat anything different than an adult wolf, and I personally feel that
most puppy, large breed, senior dog, etc foods are not all that much different and pretty much marketing. All dogs, including Yorkies, pretty much are wolves. They are taxonomically the same species, and physiologically and anatomically the same and actually share 99.8% of the same DNA. Size and appearance are in the less than .2% differences. So yeah, while a Yorkie probably could not
survive in the wild, their DNA is nearly exactly the same, meaning they can eat what a wolf would eat.
There is not that much difference between a puppy food and an adult food if you go look at the guaranteed analysis and the ingredients. A caution to large breeds is often given for high protein, grainfree foods, not because of the fact that it's grain-less or high protein but it's the calcium and phosphorus levels in the food, which is why a warning is often given to wait until 1 year of age to feed. Large breed dogs grow at a rapid rate and it can affect their growth. Too much calcium has been shown to cause bone/growth problems. Calcium levels, ideally, should be around 1.4 and phosphorus around 1.0 but I would probably look for the same levels for a Yorkie puppy just to be on the safe side.
But honestly, it's totally whatever you feel comfortable giving your dog. I didn't know about raw food when Jackson was 16 weeks old, so I don't know what I would have done at that age, etc. I put him on adult food at 6 months old, he was already 12lbs. Then we switched to all life stages.
I know I was uncomfortable with raw for a long time. And I still wouldn't want to feed prey model raw (where you go out and buy meat from the butcher or stores, etc, and have to properly balance it yourself, etc), I'm not comfortable with that. It would just gross me out, lol. It makes sense to me... because that is what they would eat in the wild.... but for now, just giving him these pre-made patties a few times a week, is so easy. It's not gross, they just look like little hamburgers and he enjoys the crap out of them. I don't even hardly cook for myself so I am not about to prepare loads of meat every day for my dog, sorry. I really enjoy being able to buy $14.99 bags of Acana that will last us almost 2 months. Basically, it's easy. So I like kibble feeding and will probably always continue to do it. I don't consider myself a raw feeder, he just gets about 3 patties a week as a treat/replacement meal.