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Dog Breeding: Should A Dog's Diet Change After Getting Pregnant?
Dogs, like small children and older people, require easily assimilated foods in their diets. Meat should not only be palatable but nutritious. Stay away from those tinned foods designed for the owners' palate, such as canned doggie stews. Doggie stews are only good for diets because the corn, peas and carrots, of no real food value for your dog, take up room in the stomach to make your dog feel full.
Cottage and other cheeses are also excellent sources of protein. If you live near a dairy distributing center, you normally can purchase day-old (past the expiration date) cheese at a terrific cost reduction. Cheese purchased in bulk can be frozen. Almost all dogs find frozen cheese a real treat during the hot "dog days" of summer! Cold weather requires that a dog's caloric intake be increased.
Calories are used to produce heat, keeping the dog warm. The nutritional support offered a pregnant dog is first utilized to keep her warm. "Leftovers" are then turned into nutritional care for the puppies. If a pregnant dog's feeding is insufficient in quality, and/or volume, she will lose body conditioning through prenatally supplying her offspring with nutritional support.
If your matron has been maintained on a premium diet from puppy hood, and her health has been excellent, there is no reason to change her food either by type or volume during her first few weeks of pregnancy. The optimum diet for your matron during her early gestation is normally the same as that which maintained her peak condition throughout her early adult months. A well-balanced diet is composed of a variety of ingredients, more than adequately nutritionally supporting the dog.
There are breeds and families of dogs that do, however, require extra nutritional support from day one. Too much of any one thing can prove detrimental to the fetuses. Moderation is always a good focus when contemplating changing or supplementing diet. Some breeds require a lower protein, fat or vitamins and mineral intake than others. Providing food to a breed type or family line that has special dietary requirements can be critical to the maintenance of the unborn puppies.
Objectively look at the diet you fed your matron prior to the breeding. If you question a diet's nutritional value, refer to friendly established fanciers, the breeder of your female and the stud's owner. These people would know if there is anything in either family's genetics that requires early nutritional support.
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