Vary that tinned food

Press, 28 April 1981, Page 12

Vary that tinned food

Consumer watch

Anne Ingram

Feeding the dog these days can be expensive. Fresh meat, in the form of gravy beef for example, is no longer an affordable option for most people to feed to their pet all the time. Tinned food is slightly cheaper, and television advertisements persuade us that we pamper our pet by buying him a particular brand of tinned food. In fact, if we feed our dog only tinned food, we are not caring for him as well as we might. What then can we feed our Rover or Rex in order to get the best value for money’? The dog is a meat-eating animal, and can live on meat alone. However, this would be a costly diet and the dog may have troubles with diarrhoea.

The best compromise is a diet which includes meat, biscuits and table scraps. Meat can be given raw, cooked or from tins.

Tinned foods vary slightly in quality in that some have more meal than others, some are designed to be fed alone,, and some to be fed with biscuits. In most cases, the tin tells you — so read the instructions. The choice of tinned food for dogs is enormous. Stacks of various brands line the shelves of a supermarket aisle. They contain fish, poultry, meat, meat with marrowbone jelly, ■ and have added to them all manner of mineral and vitamin supplements.

Your choice may be determined by what your pet likes. The different brands do not vary a great deal in price; a 425 g tin of meat costs about 63 cents, with poultry slightly more expensive, and fish a little cheaper. This size tin would provide one meal for a medium-sized dog. Tinned dog food does provide good nourishment for your pet. Manufacturers are

aware of the balanced diet required for dogs, but tinned food should only be considered as part of your pet’s diet.

This is because dogs must have something to chew. Unused teeth soon acquire an accumulation of tartar which

pushes the gums away from the roots of the teeth. The tooth sockets then become infected and the gums soft and unhealthy. This is a common problem in dogs, one veterinarian told me, and is usually caused by feeding them only tinned foods which are soft.

Giving your dog a piece of raw meat (beef) and hard biscuits will clean his teeth as well as provide him with nourishment.

The vet I spoke to, considered biscuits to be a better toothbrush than bones which are all too often given cooked with the goodness boiled out of them. Bone bits can irritate the stomach and cause vomiting. Small bones should not be given as they can stick on the way down. If a piece of biscuit is swallowed whole then at least it will dissolve; a bone will not.

The best bone to give your dog is a big raw bone that he cannot swallow or break up. The variety of dog biscuits on the market is steadily increasing. Some of these contain all sorts of goodies — livermeal, fishmeal, wheatgerm, skim milk powder, bone meal, egg yolk, yeast, and various vitamins and minerals.

Dog biscuits are reasonably priced, a 2.5 kg pack costing about $2.60. These make a good addition to a diet of tinned meat. There is also a new type of dried dog food available. A one kg pack of Roly’s Dog Food is said to provide the same number of meals as eight 425 gm cans of dog food or 2.5 kg of fresh meat. Priced at $1.90 this is an economical alternative food. Chef K 9 is another high protein dry dog food. A one kg pack, the label says, will feed a dog, depending on its size, for 3-5 days at a cost of $1.79. These dried foods have the advantage that once opened they will keep for long

periods if stored in a drj’ place. As with tinned foods they provide excellent nourishment for a dog but again should not be given solely as the pieces are small and do not require much chewing. Gravy beef is an ideal food for dogs. So are cuts like ox heart and ox cheek, if you can get them. The price per kg varies depending where you shop, but is usually in the vicinity of $2-30 to $2.70 for all three cuts of meat.

Generally 25-50 gm of meat per kg of weight of the dog each day is sufficient. But this is only a guide. The smaller dog will eat proportionately more than the large dog, and puppies of course will need more.

Note that if you feed your dog offal or sheepmeat, the meat must be treated by boiling for 2Vi hours. This ensures that any hydatid cysts present in the meat are destroyed.

Another main type of food bought for dogs is the dog roll or sausage. This is a popular alternative because of its price, a 2.5 kg roll selling for between $2 and $2.60. Some butchers make their own dog sausage and this tends to be cheaper than the supermarket-bought variety. The Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals uses and recommends dog sausage as a pet food. Most dog rolls are made up of such ingredients as beef and muttom trimmings, cereals, meat and bone meal, skim milk powder, polyunsaturated vegetable oil and added vitamins and minerals.

Again, while dog rolls provide good food value, they should only be given as part of the diet.

Variety is obviously the keynote in feeding your dog. Diet can be broadened by feeding table scraps. One danger is that too much of the wrong sort of leftovers could make a dog obese., Crusts, bits of pie and too many potatoes are all fattening foods. But cooked vegetables in gravy are tasty and nourishing and will provide bulk without adding too many calories. They will also provide vitamins and minerals to the dog’s diet.