German Shepherd Dogs Diet: The single most asked question about my dog is; what do I feed them? Well, it’s complicated! Owners having more than 3 dogs might understand what I am indicating. Actually, the problem with me is not the quantity or even the quality of feed that I provide my German shepherd dogs but it is a headache that they give me with their choosy tongue.
German Shepherd Dogs Diet: Choosy Tongue
I faced this problem ever since I started keeping multiple dogs. One prefers one thing to eat other prefers something else. How would you get them to eat satisfyingly and not burn the hole in your pocket? Or; how not to kill your precious time feeding your dogs?
This problem is more prominent in small toy and companion breeds but believe me, if you are exercising your German shepherd dog properly and adequately you are not going to face this problem with your GSD. They will consume homemade food or commercial food with same enthusiasm but I am again pointing out that you need to get them exercised adequately. Neither over nor under exercise is going to help.
German Shepherd Dogs Diet: Exercise and Morning Diet
Now if you exercise your GSD to exhaust them of their physical and mental nervousness they will be relaxed to a great deal. This actually helps with the overall wellbeing of your dog and definitely with the German Shepherd Dogs diet and feeding habits. All you need to do is to balance their diet. Personally, I prefer a disciplined approach towards everything involving my dogs. I have made a routine of 21 German Shepherd Dogs diets a week with 14 treat slots. That translates to 3 full meals, and 2 treat a day. Further, morning diet after running and training is fixed for dog food. I have tried many brands and I personally don’t have a following for any one particular brand but I have mostly fed pedigree milk and chicken to my adult dogs and best in show puppy and performance to my pups. I prefer to give them 6-8% of body weight equivalent quantity of food for the whole day. Most of my dogs weigh in the range of 35-40 kg so this translated into 2-2.5 kg of food every day. For the morning German Shepherd Dogs diet I give them 300 gm commercial dog food. Sometimes when a dog is having stomach trouble I add a little amount of water to food also reducing the amount of dog food to 50-100 gm. If any of my dogs is having diarrhea then instead of water I add fresh rice starch to dog food to help them digest it. It’s really up to you to make variations in quantity and combinations but this have worked for me for over 2 decades of living with dogs.
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German Shepherd Dogs Diet: At Night
Second big meal of the day comes in the form of dinner for them. I always prefer non-vegetarian food for my dogs in the night. I always give them properly cooked meat. There are some people who give you the advice to feed your dog with raw meat. This might be good for dogs and they always have some research study to back up but I never feed raw meat to my dogs. The reason for this is I don’t want to take risk of infections transferred from uncooked meat. I also mix rice, pumpkin, carrots, sweet potato, cauliflower, cucumber and some other vegetable in their meat. Sometimes I replace rice with cooked oats. Additional to this I give 10 ml of calcium and multivitamin liquid and 5 ml of omega 3-6 mixture to each dog. I don’t have a strict choice of brand for calcium and multivitamin also but for omega oils, I prefer venkey’s . Sorry I didn’t mention the timings here. Morning German Shepherd Dogs diet is provided to my German shepherd dogs by 7 am, not later than that. The night German Shepherd Dogs diet is give before 9:30 pm.
Lunch for my dogs comes in the form of dairy and eggs. Here I allow them to have a little choice of their own. Some of my dogs like milk some like buttermilk, although most of them love cottage cheese. I always throw in some eggs for them at every alternative day. This diet come in the afternoon at preferably 2 pm. Apart from these main diets I feed them with dog biscuits, chicken jerky and other treats also. But these are not provided on regular basis in the same disciplined manner as that of the three major diets of the day.
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For me the German Shepherd Dogs diet is really a big thing in 10 things you must know about German shepherd dogs maybe because of the number of dogs that I kept at one time. I have to manage the finance and provide good nutrition to all my dogs. I feel that preparing a wholesome diet or even providing a variety of commercial dog food won’t be a problem for anyone having one or two German shepherd dogs.
