Nutrition

Your dog’s nutrition needs will always depend on different factors. Weight, age, activity level and calorie consumption all come into play. This feeding guide is geared towards adult dogs – from about 2 years and older.

- If the dog got to choose himself -

You might guess that meatballs and chocolate would be high on the list if your dog could choose his own food. But the fact is that dogs are smarter than that. Even if they are eager for treats, a powerful instinct for foods that meets their energy needs is hardwired into their genes. This comes from their age-old natural survival instincts, and a dog’s natural desire to be the biggest and strongest in the pack.

For thousands of years, fresh meat has been at the top of the list for dogs. When they felled their prey, they would get all of their required nutrients – fresh proteins, fat, vitamins, and minerals. And even today this is what suits a dog’s digestion best - animal fats and proteins.

- Don’t forget the vitamins -

Dogs can’t live on fats and proteins alone. They need a supply of vitamins also. In the wild, dogs always ate the soft innards of the prey first – that is, the stomach and inner organs. By eating the innards, dogs insured themselves an excellent supply of important vitamins.

For practical reasons, these elements are rinsed away in modern VOM production. This is why you must make sure you add vitamins to your dog’s diet of meat and VOM .

You can do this in two ways. Either blend dry dog food into your feeding routine, or add a vitamin supplement, such as Vitabena. If you don’t do this, you risk a calcium deficit in your dog.

- Dogs need natural fats -

Fat is important for all dogs. This is a dog’s natural energy source, taken up easily in the bloodstream and carried quickly out to the muscles. Fat is also important for a dog’s coat and paws. In most dry dog foods there is not enough fat. This is why one is often recommended to supplement dry dog food with oil, B-vitamins and the like.  But if you include a little meat or VOM in a dog’s diet you don’t need these extra supplements. You notice this right away in your dog’s coat.

Lets look at a simple calculation that shows this clearly. In VOM / meat there are 3 times as many calories to be had from fat as there are from protein. Meat/VOM from beef contains: At least 16 grams of fat for every 100 grams of beef. If we translate this into calories we can use the following rule of thumb: 1 gram of fat = 9 kcal. 100 grams of beef (containing 16 grams of fat) therefore contains (16 x 9) 144 kcal

- Natural, fresh proteins are best! -

Each and every processing step proteins go through has a negative effect on their nutritional quality. The digestive value for dogs decreases. This also leads to increased and more frequent elimination.  One must distinguish between vegetable and animal proteins.

Dogs cannot digest raw vegetable proteins, because their stomachs don’t have the necessary enzymes to split vegetable proteins, like plant-eating animals have. In order for a dog to benefit from vegetable proteins, these must be processed – for example, by heating. This is a common process in dry dog food production. A far better choice is raw meat or VOM, which preserves the natural proteins and their benefits.

This is why VOM is delivered frozen and should not be heated or cooked! We calculate protein content in the same way as we do for fat, but with a different formula: 1 g protein = 4kcal. VOM and beef contain 14 gram of protein in every 100 grams. If we convert this to calories we get the following result: 100 g of beef (containing 14 grams protein) yields (14x4) 56 kcal.