All clients of Bentons Road Vet Clinic have heard about the health benefits of feeding their pet a fresh and healthy real food diet, yet some people just really struggle to be able to commit to preparing a home cooked or a raw diet for their pet. I too have small children in my life, I work full time, I run a family owned business…. I get it. It is not always easy! Sometimes it is all we can do to put nourishing food in front of our family. To then have to prepare for the dog too requires more time, energy and motivation than some of us have.
So what can you do to improve your pet’s diet simply and quickly? Let’s consider our pet’s diet similarly to our own for a moment and think about what is lacking if we eat only convenience foods for a while. A diet of only cereal for breakfast, cheese sandwiches for lunch and McDonalds for dinner would leave us lacking in vitamins and minerals from vegies and fruit, fibre from vegetables, and omega oils from oily fish or pasture raised meats. And we would also really need to brush our teeth! If you feed your pet a dry food diet, add the following to quickly and inexpensively supplement their diet and improve their health:
1. Vitamins and minerals from vegies
Add these to your pet’s food. If you cook vegies for your family, cook a little extra and mix it in with the dry food. Easy for dogs, cats will take a little convincing but even mixing a small amount of cooked cubed zuccini in with their canned food will help greatly.
2. Fibre
Carnivores need bone in their diet to act as the fibre and firm their stools. Feeding chicken wings, frames or necks will add important bulk to their stools as well as providing calcium, other minerals and joint supplements to them. Bones can be fed at every meal but at least 2-3 times per week will still help.
3. Omega oils from oily fish
Fresh, raw wild caught salmon is of course the best source of essential omega oils but let’s face it, this is expensive. You can buy canned mackeral or sardines for a fraction of the cost. Add this to the food bowl 3 times per week and you have the omega oil box ticked!
And tooth brushing – you did that when you fed the chicken bones!
To recap – adding left over vegies from the family meal, a chicken frame a few times per week and canned ocean fish on the other days and your pet’s diet is already heaps better from the dry food you started with.