Your goals when feeding your lactating dog are to optimize milk production and maintenance requirements for the dam.
Free choice feeding is especially important for dams with more than 4 puppies.
A simple method to follow when balancing for your lactating bitch:
- balance amino acids,
- balance fatty acids,
- balance minerals and vitamins
- remaining calorie target is as close to zero as possible (-30 to +30 kcal)
Don’t forget to choose ingredients that are palatable to your lactating dog. Remember that meat grinds (ground food) are good for mixing supplement powders, pureed veggies, etc.
Try to weigh your bitch every week. Milk production demands food that is high in energy and nutrients. Add her new weight into the PETS module and then open up her recipe and re-balance. You can also choose to copy a recipe and then re-balance the copy so you have the original recipes throughout the lactation life stage.
Stay away from the following foods.
Alcohol, Apple Seeds, Avocado, Candy, Chewing Gum, Toothpaste & Mouthwash, Cat Food, Chocolate (Cocoa powder, Unsweetened baker’s chocolate, Semisweet chocolate, Dark chocolate, Milk chocolate, White chocolate), Coffee, Tea & Other Caffeine, Cooked Bones, Corn On The Cob, Garlic, Grapes & Raisins, Hops, Macadamia Nuts, Marijuana and other drugs not recommended by your veterinarian, Onions & Chives, Persimmon, Peach & Plum Pits, Rhubarb & Tomato Leaves, Tobacco, Xylitol and foods containing xylitol, Yeast.
Although the database stores copper values for pig liver, it is not bioavailable. So subtract the copper added by this ingredient if you use it in your recipe. Our Pet Diet 365 line of products handles this automatically.