Nutrient Analysis help

Are you on K9 Kitchen?  You can get VERY specific answers there.  I'm going to tell you what I did and it may send your head right over the edge.  lol!

For the nutrient information I couldn't find - I just left it.  The important part is balancing the Big Three minerals (copper, zinc, iron), and tracking absolute calcium and phosphorus in relation to how much food you are feeding.  Concentrate on that and then you can go back and start filling in the blanks as you get the information.

I'll tell you a secret.  The only vitamin I supplement is choline.  I've evaluated a dozen versions of my diets now and I never come up short on vitamins if I include the recommended 5% organ meat, an herb, an orange veggie (carrot or sweet potato), and some carb source.

Iodine is the only tricky one.  You can get it from kelp but you have to be really careful.  But again, most every diet I've done has needed between 800 and 1500 mcg of iodine.

Cobalamin is vitamin B12.  If you feed liver or kidney you'll get a good supply of this.  Try plugging in about 4 oz per week. 

Google and Wiki are your best friends.

• Pyridoxine
• Cobalamin Note the link to Vitamin B12

 Oh my........  (head spinning.....lowering between knees)

I have a really impressive spreadsheet now !

I WILL figure this out.  I'm guessing that if I can balance things out over a period of a week, he'll still be OK ?  That seems easier than trying to balance every single day.

Thanks for the tips...I was hoping you'd reply  

 Balancing over a week is TOTALLY fine, and way easier to figure!

jennie_c_d

Balancing over a week is TOTALLY fine,

  Absolutely. It sounds like you're doing great; keep us posted.
 

 Oh, yes, balance over a week, for sure!  So your first column will be the NRC requirements.  The second will allow for you to input your dog's weight and will multiply the NRC value times your dog's weight in kg to the 0.75 power (helpful hint, keep it all in metric, it's easier).  The next column will multiply the daily values times however long you want to track it for.

The more RMBs you use, the longer you want to go out for your convenience.  Two weeks is ideal for an almost all RMB diet.  For combo diets (carbs and RMBs both), I find a week works best. 

The information in the archives on K9 Kitchen should tell you how to set this up (especially the part where you'll have to ask it to "raise" your dog's weight to the .75 power). 

PurplePets22

book says 1 IU = .3 RE......

Let me handle the easy one. To convert to IU take the RE requirement and multiply by .3. So, a compound that is suppose to have maybe 20 RE will equal 6 IU. Or did I miss the point of the question?

 You got it.  So from now on we'll just post the hard math stuff and we'll have Ron do the leg work!  And at some point you'll say, well, heck, I've done all the math already, I may as well plug in the food to finish off a diet plan for Shadow!  lol

Fortunately, though, it's never necessary to do a lot of figuring on the various components of vitamin A.  Half a pound of yellow veggie (even less of something like Sweet potato) will provide more than enough beta carotene (natural vitamin A precursor) for any size dog, in a safe way.  The NRC information on this nutrient is more of a guide for people developing a premix. 

brookcove

Half a pound of yellow veggie (even less of something like Sweet potato) will provide more than enough beta carotene (natural vitamin A precursor) for any size dog, in a safe way. 

That's a good point, too. Out yonder, when a dog catches a mouse or squirrel to eat, the dog doesn't have a gram scale and a gas spectrometer. If it tastes good, they eat it. If they survive long enough to hunt again, it must have been a decent meal. Yes, that's haphazard. And yes, that's evolution. Evolution has "perfected" nothing. And the average lifespan of a wild canid is 4 to 6 years. Many brought in for rehab are malnourished, both from starving and from not having enough of a certain component in their diet. So, even if you bring in a fresh deer carcass and let them have at it, it will contain some veggie matter in the guts, which get eaten. Components of veggie matter in the blood, which will be consumed during the meal. Canids have tremendous reserves and can suffer an insufficiency for years. They can survive long enough to reproduce, which is all that counts in biology.

OTOH, I think it's good to know all these details about nutrition. Knowledge is power. And having some ability to prepare meals for our pets can help during the next pet food recall. Also, many companies are using the seemingly "impending" recession to bail out and cry uncle. That's why I hope companies like Eagle Pack stay privately owned, even if they charge a little more. As long as they keep their assets out of the market.

My head hurts...........

I have the spreadsheet done.  I've joined the K9Kitchen yahoo group.  I have the K9 Kitchen book on the way.   How on earth do you balance out this stuff ???

If I get the calories right, then everything else is way off.  If I balance for fat then the protein is lacking.....balance for something else then the calories are messed up.            ugh!

I'm finding it mathematically impossible to balance everything.   I guess I'm kinda stuck right now and not sure if I'm just getting hung up on things that don't matter.  I'm also starting to think that simply using the recipes I bought from petdiets.com and balanceit.com are the way to go.  Just use the pre-made supplements with some fresh foods and be done with it.  

Oh.........I don't know what to do or how to do it.

 
In the meantime, HAPPY THANKSGIVING !!!
 

You know that fat/protein doesn't have to be exact, right?  and that it's more or less a minimum target?  I don't worry too much about those - they are mostly for the benefit of commercial producers.  Any fresh foods that include plenty of meat will give your dog the protein and fat he needs.

The big thing is the calcium and phosphorus and the Big Three as I mentioned.  Start with those, then chill about the rest until you are comfortable with the idea of your own diets.  Then you'll get the urge to tweak (we all do) and you'll start looking at the rest of the values.

Some tips:

• To bring down total mineral values but maintain calories, add a carb like potato or a grain.
  
• Balance for iron, and don't worry about zinc and copper.  You can add those as supplements - it's super easy and cheap.
• Don't use beef liver - it's too high in copper. Try using kidney, preferably pork kidney, instead.

 Thanks for bringing me off the ceiling.  What about Vit. A ?  Right now I have sweet potato in the mix and it's pushing the vitamin A way up.....unless I have a wrong value in the spreadsheet.  I will double check that.

Yeah, you're getting like 100 times to much "vitamin A" right?  I kinda freaked out about that too but my consultant assured me it's okay.  It's in a 100% natural form that is safe.  Again, the NRC recommendation there is a guideline for those who are putting together a premix to balance commercial foods (usually).

On the vitamins, keep an eyeball on the B vitamins - should be fine if you add an organ meat and for sure if you've got a grain in there.  If you don't have a grain, don't sweat it - that's where your spreadsheet comes in.  When your diet looks like you want it too, and the calcium and the phosohorus and the copper/iron/zinc are LESS than the safe guidelines, then you can either add low calorie items like oysters, egg, lecithin, and herbs to bring up levels of this and that, and finally use pure elemental minerals and commercial forms of vitamins to adjust those.

Are you starting with a diet out of your own head or from a model?  My head explodes if I try to start from scratch so each dog's diet, for all these years, has been "morphed" from either a previous diet or a model diet found online.  This also helps me see that I'm doing the right thing because I've run a lot of those online diets through my spreadsheets and have come up really short on things.

Remember though that at ANY time you can RELAX, feed what is handy, and go back and fool with the spreadsheet later.  The last two nights the dogs here have eaten a crockpot chicken, no bones, a can of veggies that were in the pantry, rice, and an egg with shell.  SO way not balanced!  But for some reason here two weeks out from my hysterectomy, I tried to do one or two things and BAMMO - my body said, "Think again honey!"  I spent today flat on my back, mostly asleep, all day! 

But we had some chicken ready and I threw that in the pot first thing this morning again and so they'll have that and some asparagus for dinner again.  They'll have leftovers tomorrow, and then Friday I'll be able to get the rest of their dinner together (my exhaustion hit literally in the middle of putting their food together Monday, so all the potatoes, the garlic, the rice and oatmeal, are already done!).

Good luck! 

brookcove

But for some reason here two weeks out from my hysterectomy, I tried to do one or two things and BAMMO - my body said, "Think again honey!"  I spent today flat on my back, mostly asleep, all day! 

   It can take awhile to recover from major surgery like that; glad you listened to your body and rested.

  Vitamin A from vegetable sources is perfectly safe because the dog's body only converts it as needed and excretes the rest. About B vitamins; it's fine to have more than the NRC recommendations; they're water soluble.
 

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought dogs can make their own vit A, something humans can't do. They can also make their own vit C, something humans can't do. OTOH, humans make their own vit D, primarily from exposure of the skin to the sun.

I agree with Becca. Get the calcium right and let the other things fall in line. Generally, most foods were hovering a little over 20 percent protein and under 15 percent fat, for a general diet. And before commercial diets, many of which are good and do a great job, dogs ate whatever the humans cast out, cooked or not, balanced or not. Not that such a way is the way to feed the dog. But now that we have modern sources, such as the NRC and even the more general guidelines of the AAFCO, we can do better than the old days, just by being aware of these things.

I will go out on a limb and even take a risk at contradicting Dr. Remilliard, who's expertise I usually refer to and say that, even though, in the past, many homecooked meals were usually out of balance (primarily calcium), even a homecooked meal that is not quite balanced will sometimes be a better quality of food than some of the commercial foods out there but that is just a personal opinion with no facts to back it up. You can, in fact, get back to your perfection in the next meal or two.

I'm no more exact than anyone else. I usually feed kibble. These days, Eagle Pack Lamb Meal. In addition, I have these little baked nothing training treats I buy by the pound at Petco. And bits of meat I have cooked. For the last, we do some NILIF. That is, he doesn't have to do obedience for his kibble meal but he will have to for meat, the highest value treat to him. For him, at other times, I will lightly cook some meat, especially if it's beef. One doesn't usually find E. Coli in regular cuts of meat but exposure to heat for at least a minute or two usually kills off E. Coli. It dies very easily, more easily than Salmonella or Trichinosis. I don't give him much fat. Too much fat can give some dogs pancreatitis but I'm not obsessive about it, either. And sporadically, he kills and eats cotton rats. Whole.

And he seems to be okay.