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Originally Posted by MarkFromSea 
Hey Ashley, my little old guy eats his minimum amount recommended, 1/3 cup of kibble per day, and never his maximum amount recommended, 1/2 cup of kibble per day. What does RC use to stimulate appetite? Apparently, my little old guy thinks Wellness Complete Health Toy Senior sucks. My better half mixes in chopped chicken and broth to get him to at least eat the minimum amount. Yes, the added chopped chicken brings his volume consumed up closer to the 1/2 cup but is there something specific that RC uses? I've read that smell and texture is more important than flavor.
Fifth owners, 11-13 yrs old, 5 pound, currently walks 3 miles 5 times per week. His energy level seems a little lower than when he was on Nutro Toy Senior, but it's tough to quantify.
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Hi Mark,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We had local K9 units in for a plant tour yesterday
Palatability in dogs is multfactorial. The primary areas dogs, specifically, judge palatability on is the smell, mouth feel and very low on the list, taste. Smell is an obvious first choice for dogs, because as we know with their MANY more olfactory cells than humans, they can smell you making a sandwich from miles away! Mouth feel is the perception of how the food feels in the mouth. This involves things like texture, shape, density, size etc. (Think of cereal. Some people like soggy cereal, such as myself, and some people prefer the texture of fresh, crisp cereal). Finally, because they have very few tastebuds (9000 in humans vs. 1700 in dogs), dogs tend to not rely highly on their sense of taste for a food.
For RC, palatability is an extremely important part. Why? No matter how nutritious a diet is, if the dog doesn't want to eat it, all that nutrition is useless because it won't be provided to the body. Same as making the healthiest baby food, if they baby doesn't want eat it, it won't benefit them. We try different ingredients and engineer the kibble in different ways and evaluate it with dogs and cats to see which they prefer. We also Nitrogen flush our bags. Nitrogen is a stable component in the air we breath, as appose to Oxygen which we need, but oxidizes nearly everything it meets (including fats in foods). We pump Nitrogen in, which reduces the level of Oxygen in the bag and helps to maintain the freshness and nutrition.
External factors also play a huge role in palatability.
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Age: As dogs get older, their sense of smell diminishes. Since smell is a palatability factor, if they can’t smell it, their less likely to want to eat it. Adding something “smelly” might help with this, for example adding a small amount of canned food to the dry. Warm food smells stronger than cold food, so that may have an effect as well.
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Dental Disease is very common in Yorkies, and has a double impact on palatability. 1) If they have bad breath, it could block the smell of the food 2) If there are abscesses, the pain may make them not want to eat, or only eat the minimum to get by.
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Nausea; if there’s anything making the little guy feel sick, it may not be that it’s unpalatable, but that he feels bad when he eats. If you haven’t had senior bloodwork done, it might be worthwhile, including a GI panel to be sure there’s nothing underlying.
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Food Freshness; if a food starts to go bad, a dog can sense it much faster than we can because of their enhanced sense of smell. Some key things to look at include buying smaller size format of the food (new bags should be fresher and if you are introducing a new bag more often, it might help with palatability), tightly sealing the food in a cool, dry place (the bag should be tightly sealed or ideally stored in an air tight container. A moist environment can favour mold growth, and a warm environment can encourage the food to go rancid faster), cleaning of bowls and storage bins (a thin layer of fat is distributed onto any surface kibble touches. If bowls aren't cleaned out regularly or bins not cleaned out between new food bags, the fat can start to go bad, reducing palatability but also in the case of food bins, potentially making the new food go bad faster)
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Individual Energy Requirements; keep in mind that the feeding recommendations on the bag are a starting point only, some dogs may need more or less than that, the variation could easily be 50% in either direction. Monitor his body weight and body condition score. If he’s maintaining his weight, it may simply be that he doesn’t need the full recommendation.
When it comes to feeding amounts, that can greatly vary based on the individual dog. The ranges provided on the feeding guidelines, are exactly what they are... guidelines. It's hard to determine your pet's exact needs without extensive measurements of body condition, energy expenditure, exercise level etc. The best you can do is start with an amount based on each formula's guidelines, then adjust over a few weeks based on the how your dog looks (body condition score) and how your dog feels. Some dogs may need the lowest end of the guideline (or below) some may need the highest end (or higher). My labradoodle, for example, will eat her entire meal on days we do a lot more activity with her. On days where she's more lazy, she eats less. She knows how much she needs and adjusts her intake herself (I must say this is RARE, because my Italian Greyhound would probably eat until he was huge!).
Ultimately it's fine tuning the amount of food you feed until you observe that it works the best for your specific dog.
Hope this helps!
Ashley
