Hello Again Everyone,
Thanks for all your help in choosing a name for my new Great Dane. My wife and I decided to call him Gunnar and it seems to suit him very well. Now it is time to make sure I am the best Great Dane Daddy ever. So onto choice of food.
Everything that I am reading on the internet advises me against feeding our Dane puppy regular puppy food. Apparently they are too high in fat and protein and that isn’t good for large breed dogs. I went to the local feed supply and they had a few puppy blends for large breed dogs. But, as usual they were uber expensive.
I am all for doing the best for my dogs, but I have to keep things in perspective. We have two other dogs (a Pomeranian and a Sheppard/Chow mix) and it will be hard to justify spending a ton of money on a specialty dog food. The person who I purchased the Dane from was full of great advice and recommended puppy food for big breeds, but another option she suggested was to mix 50/50 regular puppy food and adult food. She said that this mix would be acceptable for the growing puppy and keep the protein issue in check. She did this with her Adult Dane when he was a pup and he looks great now.
So, my question is: Is it acceptable to use a 50/50 mix of puppy chow and adult food for my Dane? Will this provide the necessary nutritional needs while minimizing too much protein? I have thought about it and it seems like this is a great compromise.
To sum up, I am not a cheap person, but I do have a limit amount of money. I want to take care of my puppy the best that I can. If I can do that at a reasonable cost the better. Thanks so much for the help!
I’ve been told to never feed puppy food to Great Danes. http://www.daneoutreach.org/Files/Care_of_Your_Dane_Puppy.pdf You have a GIANT breed dog - not a large breed. Until someone comes along to argue with me, I’d stick to a moderate protein adult food as specified in the attached PDF. All puppies owned by my family have done well on adult dog foods.
This is what I have read, but the only suggestions I have really seen have been to only feed very expensive food. So, should I nix the 50/50 mix and go with straight adult food?
IF you are feeding puppy pellets - which I believe mostly to be a ploy to garner loyal customers - I would at least feed a large-breed-puppy specific kibble.
Did you think Purina One Large Breed Puppy was too expensive? Because it is a perfectly acceptable food for your Dane baby. The most important criteria is that a puppy gets adequate protein, but for a dane you want the calcium under 3%, but the calcium to phosphorus ration less than 1:1 and the copper and zinc need to be right. There needs to be enough vitamin D, too. But do not, under any circumstances, supplement Vitamin D or calcium.
My recommendation is you DO want a puppy food for the first 4 months. If you don’t think that one is a cost prohibitive food, I think it is a good one. Then you can change to a large breed adult food at 4 months, or if his weight is good, you can leave him on the large breed puppy longer, but do not let him gain weight too quickly.
Long bone growth doesn’t stop until 14-16 months old.
So, why stop at 16 weeks? My understanding is that until long bone growth is done, a puppy cannot store nor excrete excess calcium and therefore the window for proper puppy nutrition is open until a year or more (depending on breed and size orf puppy/)
The issues are rapid growth, and rapid bone growth. The adult feed may be less calorie dense, but still provide the protein and nutrition needed to complete growth, albeit at a “slower” pace.
Rapid bone growth has been associated with different bone disorders, of which giant breeds like Great Danes are prone to suffer.
Well sure, but is the rapid growth and growth spurts limited to the first 16 weeks in giant breed puppies? Nothing I’ve read indicates this - in fact from what I read nutrition in the first year or so - while long bone growth occurs - is critical.
Otherwise wouldn’t puppy formulas be limited just to the first 16 weeks, and not 12-18 months of bone growth?
I may have to dig through a painful review article to get more details, but there is a specific period of bone growth, while the animal is still growing, where the long bones are most susceptible to some insults and damage, and the changes that happen in this window have long lasting effects. Meaning, the changes occur way before it is clinically noticeable. This is a multifactorial process, of course, but the two things they could certainly say are involved include genetics and rapid growth.
I don’t exactly remember, and in this FrillyNettle may have more information, if the time window for dogs was around 16 weeks.
Controlling the rate of growth by controlling nutrition is one way to help prevent the skeletal problems from happening.
Large breed puppy chows vary, some still rich enough to produce excessive rates of growth, and others an all life stages food except for the label and price.
The 4 month thing gives puppies a quicker start on puppy chow, but then moderates growth as they start getting bigger by switching to a less rich diet. This is a very common technique with Labs and other similar sized breeds. Some do wean on an ALS. I lack the reliable source for info on Great Danes that I have on Labs. It only makes sense that the larger the dog, the more important controled growth is. I see people in a position to make good decisions both weaning on ALS and going with 4-5 months of puppy chow, so won’t take a stand on that issue.
This is why I brought up the all life stages food. Many adult foods have in the fine print ‘‘suitable for all life stages’’ The adult ones that don’t could have excess calcium. I have read that puppies can excrete excess calcium after 7 months. They can also excrete or burn for energy excess protein from the beginning. High protein means little unless the different amino acids are balanced.
So to the OP, for now. I would continue exactly what the breeder was feeding even if it is a uber expensive, hard to find puppy chow. Then at 4 months make a gradual switch to an afforable all life stages food with the same base, chick, lamb, etc. Keep the puppy lean to for the same reason. Puppies often have digestive upsets if you change diets even gradually.
By the way, there is no evidence that more expensive dog foods are any better for dogs than the Purina 1 Frilly mentioned. You will find a lot of hyperventilating and emotional button pushing, but no cites.
Probably not, but I haven’t been able to find it at our local Wally World or Target. They have puppy food, adult food and I have seen small dog food, but no Large Breed Puppy food. I will try Petco later today. In the meantime I am giving him adult food/puppy chow mix.
And it isn’t all about expense. It is also about getting suckered into buying incredibly expensive food that isn’t necessary. What dog owner here hasn’t been to the vet only to have him recommend something like Science Diet for your 6 year old mutt. I have nothing against Science Diet, however all the dogs I have ever owned have been raised on bargain kibble from the local superstore and ALL have done fine, living long and happy lives. The reason I am asking food questions now is that I do realize that a “giant” breed has special needs and I love the little guy and want to do right by him.
You should be able to find Purina One Large Breed Puppy at the grocery store, or maybe PetSmart. I would stick to Purina or Iams or something that at least has passed a feeding trial and stay away from the “designer” dog foods being heavily touted on television by celebrities. If you think about it, they have to be paying those celebrities, so to keep the food cost down and still pay Rachel Ray or Dick Van Dyke, the cost of the food ingredients can’t be all that high. Of course, if you are one who is feeding these to your dog, and your dog is thriving, then keep on keeping on. Your dog is getting a balanced food. You are just not getting anything better than the person feeding Purina, and I would argue that the Purina is less likely to cause allergy and digestive upset.
As to the age you feed puppies puppy chow, well, I know the recommendations on the bag say one year, but truly, you can transition ANY puppy at 6 months to an adult food, and large/giant breeds at 4 months. But I do think that the extra 2% protein and extra 2-3% fat content in the puppy food is an important difference at this point in the youngster’s life.
I really hate buying dog food. You have to hunt through a hundred or 2 hundred different products that largely differ only in marketing to find what you want. Although most of them contain about the same nutrients, the ingredients differ enough to upset some dogs’ digestions if you switch. So you really need to find the same thing every time. Then they change the bag.
In addition, the fewer different proteins a puppy is exposed to, the easier it is to work around it if a dog ever develops food allergies. I know a couple of dogs that developed allergies that had never eaten anything but Pro Plan chicken and rice. One is on Iams lamb and rice and the other on Pro Plan fish for sensitive stomachs. Neither had to go to some expensive grain free.
I don’t have the technical background of some here, but I have access to the practices of some very good people. I have also spent a ton of time searching the internet for the rare nuggets of reliable information. I have never found any indication that the common brands of kibble aren’t as good as anything for your dog. Just pick one and stick to it as long as your dog does well.