Feeding   

Does a wolf in the zoo eat dog food?

I have tried all sorts of commercial dog foods. Everything from Epol to Eukanuba, some better than others but none as good as feeding a balanced raw meat dog food such as Nordic Hundfoder, the one that I am currently using. It is easier in just about every way to just feed them commercial dry dog food but.. Raw meat has a lot of positive sides that make it is increasingly popular here in Scandinavia and you quickly see why when you start using it. Dogs get leaner and their coats glossy + their energy level is higher. You will also find that they defecate very little as opposed to eating the standard dry dog foods. They also don’t drink quite as much water which of course means less peeing in your yard or kennel.  Back in the -80’s in Botswana, I used to feed in a similar way, going to the butchery buying scrap cuts and sawdust from the meatsaw. I then mixed this 50/50 with regular dog food and fed twice a day in small amounts. When I first moved to Sweden in -93, I started buying frozen mink food. Minks are quite similar to dogs in needs and the food that the mink farms used worked 100% for my PitBulls and the Greenlanders I had at that time. Polar dog racers have always fed dogs like this, giving it to them in frozen chunks.. I thawed mine though. It is a bit messy with the raw stuff but with the climate here in Sweden there are very few bugs around at least.

If training very hard I add more fat + an egg.   Fat being a dog’s best source of energy as opposed to carbohydrates for humans. Dogs fed high fat diets store twice as much glycogen in their muscles compared to dogs fed high carbohydrate diets as canine muscle tissue only has small depots of this compared to humans and therefore cannot be carbo loaded the same way as us. An egg from a free-range chicken like mine can have a omega3 level as high as salmon + also contains vitamins A, D, E, B6, B12, selen, folic acid, iron, calcium, protein and more.

Works for me anyway.