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What's the best food to feed to labs as a pup and then food as they transition to adults? I want to do my very best at keeping my pup as healthy as she can be.
Are there any supplements y'all would suggest to help further there health? If so, what brands and where to buy them.
Lastly, I'm going to be buying the complete smartworks package with all of the books and DVDs. Where's the cheapest place to buy?
thanks everyone!
Personally i feed victor. Not sure of where you are located or if you even have the brand available. I know a lot of people on here strongly reccommend Purina Pro Plan, but whatever you do, please make sure it is a food formulated for large breed puppies. I dont use supplements but i feed a 30/20 food. Best places to shop would probably be to do a google search or check out gundogsupply.com.
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Originally Posted by Dallas2256
Find yourself a good vet from the get go...just like you would get a good pediatrician for a newborn....the time to find a good vet is when the dog is a puppy,so you can be pro active in the dog's health, having to scramble and find a vet in a crisis can be a shot in the dark...form a good professional and personal friendship with your vet...your dog and your wallet will thank you later
I would certainly ask the breeder your buying the pup from as to what they recommend. Poster (ndk) confused me with stating "please make sure it's a food formulated for Large Breed Puppies and that he uses a 30/20 food. I hope he meant that the 30/20 food is for working adults well out of the growing development stage.
I personally have used Canidae All Life Stage since it hit the retail market for weaning puppies well into adulthood. It may be 24/14 but is 466 ME k-cal for energy. I prefer to grow pups slower than most and not hurry the process. I am picky not to feed any food with wheat, corn, glutens, but by-products from organ meat is fine with me. I am a fan of Animal Naturals products distributed by K9 Power Products. http://www.k9power.com/ Look for Animal Naturals on the left side of the page. all their products are made to help support the health of all working dogs. Just something to research.
Feed your dog a quality Large Breed Puppy food only, until dog is approximately age one.
After that feed dog a quality 30/20 Performance food like Purina Pro Plan Performance or Eukanuba Premium Performance or similar
You do not need to feed puppy any supplements. Later you may add a few things to your dogs diet but you'll learn about that later.
For a new puppy Large Breed Puppy food 3x/day to start then 2x/day.
Download this document from Eukanuba which contains a lot of valuable educational info on how to feed a sporting dog. Worth it. Download it.
This link will start pdf download......
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...Y4LiiSjchclF1g
Sorry for the confusion, I feed a 30/20 to my adult dogs but no supplements. I use a large breed puppy food for pups.
Okay thanks for the help everyone. I was thinking of doing the pro plan puppy then switching over to the normal pro plan later. How fast do you suggest I switch the pup over to 2x meals a day?
You can play that by ear, give it several weeks if you can. Make sure you feed "Large Breed Puppy" and not any old puppy food. The reason and goal is to insure puppies bones to not grow to rapidly. So don't feed puppy so much that he looks like a chunky monkey. Error on the side of feeding to little.
I generally agree with Breck. But right at first the individual kibble in the large breed puppy food may be too big. I generally start with a regular puppy food but switch to a large breed as soon as they can crunch the larger kibble. I think this was three months for Rowdy. I switch from 3x to 2x at four months, as I recall. Then to 1X somewhere around 10 months.
My problem with Rowdy is that he developed an allergy to the large breed puppy food. So he is on a special vet food, Hills DD Vension and Potatoes. I double checked with the vet that it had the appropriate joint control stuff before I switched. Plus he is a little guy and is growing slowly. At a little over 7 months he only weighs 55 lbs. I think he is going to max out at a little over 60 lbs. Which is great as I like small dogs.
If anyone sees this..what type of training equipment would I need for using the full smartworks program? I'm thinking bumpers, maybe some wings, maybe some dokkens once he gets a little older. What else?