When do yall start your puppies on solid food? - Page 1

When do yall start your puppy's on solid food?  how should i go about it,  how many times should i feed it to them a day.?

when eyes open or  around 3week old

I think 4weeks of age is best. See this discussion about weaning: http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/bulletins_read/48309.html

i start at 24 days when they are a lot steadier on their feet and i take the mother away at 5 weeks as by then they are all eating and no longer needmums milk

jim h

I started at 4 weeks, soaking puppy food and then blending it into thin gruel. I gradually made it thicker, then stopped blending it and just mashed it up a bit. Then I just went to soaked kibble.

At 3-4 weeks pups can handle chicken wings, and it is a natural process as they develop the ability to chew more off of the drumette and move up to drumsticks, leg quarters, etc. The mother will easily clean up whatever they can not chew, and she will most likely wean them on her own when their teeth begin to annoy her.  Kibble, far from the natural fare of any canid, should be softened slightly, and fed carefully, since they can choke on small pieces. I would use warm chicken broth to make the kibble soft and tasty. Jonah

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 I usually start at 4 weeks old, and I pretty much do the same as KCzaga. I Just have my own little recipe on top of the puppy food. The only thing I don't do is wean them off of their mother. I've always let the mother make that decision and she's always done it around a good time frame. Mother's know best IMO.

Kel

www.boeselagerkennel.com

This study was based on puppies from 2 weeks through 20 weeks......this is for Labs, but GSD's must be simmilar.

At present, the strongest link to contributing factors other than genetic predisposition appears to be to rapid growth and weight gain. In a recent study done in Labrador retrievers a significant reduction in the development of clinical hip dysplasia occurred in a group of puppies fed 25% less than a control group which was allowed to eat free choice. It is likely that the laxity in the hip joints is aggravated by the rapid weight gain.

If feeding practices are altered to reduce hip dysplasia in a litter of puppies, it is probably best to use a puppy food and feed smaller quantities than to switch to an adult dog food. The calcium/phosphorous to calorie ratios in adult dog food are such that the puppy will usually end up with higher than desired total calcium or phosphorous intake by eating an adult food. This occurs because more of these foods are necessary to meet the caloric needs of puppies, even when feeding to keep the puppy thin.

http://www.woodhavenlabs.com/chd2.html

With respect to the published scientific literature, we found nothing in Medline (an online listing of medical and biological articles) referencing any journal article addressing the subject of surfaces and their effects on the incidence of hip dysplasia. While we know of breeders who write into their sales contracts that animals must be kept on a specific surface and fed a specific feed, these demands seem to be without scientific basis.

There is some evidence that preventing rapid growth reduces the extent to which the adult dog will manifest hip dysplasia. Decreasing the dog's food consumption during its growth period seems to correlate well with normal hips. ²The Kealy study published in 1992 was based upon 48 8-week-old Labrador Retriever puppies. These puppies were sex-matched littermates randomly assigned to two groups: the first group was fed ad libitum (as much as they wanted, when they wanted to eat); the second group was fed the same feed until they were 2 years old, but in amounts of only 75 percent of what the first group consumed ad libitum. Thus for every puppy fed ad libitum, there was a same-sex littermate on a restricted diet. This rigid protocol gives this study great respectability and credence. The accompanying chart gives the findings in tabular form. Note the tremendous increase in normal animals at two years of age when kept on a restricted diet for those two years. This ought to more than suggest that overweight animals are at risk for phenotypic expression of canine hip dysplasia.

Many researchers conclude that early fusion may lead to bone and cartilage deviations which then could predispose the animal to future dysplasia. An important point that these studies illustrate is that it is possible to improve the individual phenotype of dogs whose parents carried the gene for hip dysplasia (genotypically dysplastic).

In the first article we alluded to joint laxity as being present whenever there is canine hip dysplasia. Given that joint laxity is at least one of the factors governing the onset of hip dysplasia, then any process that retards this condition could possibly minimize the severity of the disease. It also is conceivable that retardation of joint laxity could delay the onset of the physical appearance of the disease.