 Barked: Mon Jul 30, '12 10:43am PST |
 | |  | | The "30% various veggies" should be all the fiber you need... Vance was on a very similar diet (more fiber, less extras) for his liver problems, and I had several vets attribute his resilience to his diet.
While they are probably nutritionally sound recipes, there is no nutritional reason to add rice. To me, this issue goes back to why we, as individuals, stopped feeding kibble. I stopped because aside from quality control and digestibility, I didn't want my dog eating so much filler, and, in the case of Vance, if he did have to eat a lot of fiberous filler I wanted something a dog could utilize better than rice and did not have the potential side effects of a grain-heavy diet.
Since the cost of food in general has gone up so much, I have continued adding about 25% filler to the girls' diets (they eat raw) but I still haven't found a need to turn to rice even for financial reasons. Usually I use some sort of bean - especially lentils are very cheap - and whatever frozen veggies are on sale that week.
No, wild dogs are not running around eating lentils, kidney beans and chick peas, but they are better than rice.
On the other hand, if you stopped feeding kibble only over quality control and have no issue whatsoever with grain, then do it up with the rice! FWIW, I know dogs on grain-heavy homemade diets who do exhibit many of the issues of grain-heavy kibbles such as fatty lumps, weight control problems, joint stiffness, yeast infections/hot spots. Not to mention their poop looks like little logs of washed out rice or barley, which to me says they aren't processing it properly at all.Edited by author Mon Jul 30, '12 10:47am PST
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