Veggies
 

I started giving my puppy a small handful of chopped raw carrots everyday. Is that good? How much should I give? For those that gives veggies, do you do that the same time you give your meals? Or as a side item?

I give them all kinds of veggies for treats. I tried mixing them in with their kibble, and they would eat the veggies and leave the kibble.

You can do it however you want....with meals or on the side. However, dogs lack the necessary enzymes to break down veggies, so for him to get any nutrients from them (if that's what you're doing it for), the carrots either need to be cooked or pureed I think??? I know some give carrots for something their dog can chew on for their teeth, and in that case raw is just fine. I don't think the raw will hurt them, it will just pass right on through.

I'm not sure about amount.....veggies are high in fiber, so watch out for stool changes. You may notice they become too loose, then you'd want to back off of them a bit. :)

Ohhh thats good to know about nutrients. I give them to Charlie because he doesn't like kibbles, so I have to grind the kibbles to powder and mix them in with the wet food. So I want him to have something hard to eat in order to get rid of plaque. Thats why I give him carrots.

I chop the carrots up to kibble size and give him about 6-8 a meal.

I hope Im doing the right thing.

6-8 baby carrots?? How many meals do you feed, and how long have you been giving him those? If you've been doing it for a few days, I think you would have noticed if his stools weren't ok, so it's probably fine. You just want to make sure (if he's a puppy?? for sure) that you aren't filling him up on carrots when he would otherwise be eating more kibble, which is where he gets the nutrients (calories, fat, etc...) he needs to grow and develop.

Instead of grinding up the kibble and mixing it with wet, have you tried just soaking the kibble in water? I have poured water in a little dish with the kibbles Bella would be eating at that meal and left if for ~20 min or so...the longer you leave it, the more water will soak in, and they would plump up and be nice and soft. Maybe he'd eat kibble like that?? (If you leave them soaking for several hours, put it in the fridge with a lid so it won't spoil since you are basically re-hydrating food.) Then you could just give him a few baby carrots to chew on after....or whatever you want to do. Just an idea....might save you some time??

I think what you're doing is probably fine, although if he's getting 24 baby carrots a day, that may really be too much because if he has room for those, he'd probably be eating more real food, if that makes sense.

To 6-8 kibbles of carrots.

Ahhh! I re-read what you wrote and don't know how I thought you meant carrots.....geez! That sounds just fine to me!

hahaha that's okay. I am trying the soaked kibbles method tonight. Do I still try to mix the soaked kibbles with wet food?

Vegtables
 

Am I feeding to much. I feed kibbles/green beans/chicken broth. My babies are 1-1/2-Jack 11-mts-Bella they like carrots also but not peas/carrots I can't feed them green beans all the time. I try other they stools are fine.

But I have noticed that if I give them peas they pick. what else can I put in there kibbles?

thanks

cheryl:animal-pa

Nah, you don't have to. Some people prefer to feed wet, others do not. Some dogs prefer wet and shun the dry, others are totally fine with the dry alone. Personally, if she would eat the soaked kibble alone, that's what I would do...then maybe start throwing some dry in with the soaked as she gets older, then just gradually make your way to the dry if she'll do that. If she refuses soaked kibble alone, go ahead and mix the wet in with it and see if that does the trick unless you'd rather keep on pureeing the kibble instead of soaking it. It would be better for her teeth if she could eventually eat dry kibble (and easier for you too), though, so maybe you'll eventually be able to do that. Good luck!

(I have a nutritionist and home cook for Bella....she has a liver problem we think, so until we know more, I'm playing it safe. But oh do I miss the days of dry kibble!! What she is eating now is probably much better for her...probably?.....but it's a LOT more work!)

Why not just give canned if he likes it?
If you are feeding more than 10% homecooked, you will need to add supplements or the diet may be unbalanced.

If the extras you add to their kibble make up more than 10% of the food they eat every day, you really need to rebalance the cal/phos ratio (don't ask me how...I leave that to my nutritionist!) You want to make sure adding that little bit in isn't changing the amount of nutrition their getting. How much kibble, green beans, and chicken broth are they getting each day and how many meals? Also, do you make the chicken broth yourself? If not, it probably has WAY too much sodium in it! The store bought kind, even the lower sodium one, is way way too much sodium for them. And too much sodium throws the electrolytes off balance and I'm sure does more things that I don't know about.

Cooked/raw carrots are fine to add in. Be careful of using too many green beans...they have a low pH and can change their urine pH which could cause them to develop bladder crystals or stones. (A little bit should be fine, though, especially if it isn't every day.) Other veggies you can feed that I can think of offhand are cooked summer squash (also has a low pH, but not as low as green beans), broccoli (I'm not sure about its pH, though I do know broccoli is a gas producer, so if you notice gas you should decrease or eliminate it). You can also give them boiled potato bits or mashed potatoes....sweet is better than white because the white can spike their blood sugar a bit. And you can also give them cored and peeled apple chunks or seedless watermelon chunks, and I think peeled and cored pear chunks would be fine too.

Crystal, do you think kibble is better for them in the long run than canned, or is it just a preference? I know some prefer to do it and others do NOT, but I always had the impression that dry kibble is much better for their teeth overall. I'm not sure where I got that, so maybe that's totally wrong?? I guess I need to find out how old the OP's baby is.....I was under the impression that it was young still and so the kibble was just hard for it to eat so it didn't like it. If that's true, I just figured she could soak it so that making the transition to dry later would be easier....if she's wanting to do that anyway.

I preferred canned. All dog food is over processed but canned is less so. Kibble cleans teeth very little unless it is specifically made for that. It breaks before it can do much cleaning. Whatever you feed, it is important to brush regularly. Canned is pretty much the same consistency as homecooked. A kibble that would clean the teeth is SD T/D (not recommending it;)).

The research done on this is questionable and hopefully better studies will come out but I would stiill feed homecooked to Ellie. :)

Good to know, thanks! A lot of them profess to clean teeth, but it's good to know that's just not true. I try so hard to brush Bella's teeth regularly, but it's so hard to get into a routine! I hope I can do better about it...I've noticed that her breath is worse since I switched from the kibble she was eating to homecooked.

mina0710......Ok, so I retract my previous statement.....if you don't mind feeding canned, just feed only that! That would be a win-win for you and your baby!