Switching Food

[Poblondie]

I have finally smartened up and am switching Babe's food. Babe is a 5 1/2 yr old Rottweiler, she weighs between 85-90lbs. I bought a bag of Canidae and I know that you have to introduce the new food very slowly. She was eating Eukanuba Large breed. Any suggestions would help.

[JD102175]

When we switched Brodie from Science Diet to Nutro we took about a week to 10 days to do it. For the first 2-3 days we mixed 3/4 SD and 1/4 Nutro, then we did a 50/50 mix for the next 2-3 days and then 3/4 Nutro and 1/4 SD mix for 2 days. After that it was all Nutro.

Some dogs do not have problems switching cold turkey, but I like to make it gradual just to avoid upsetting the tummy.

Jaime

[kanada]

When we switched from whatever bad smeling food resque was feeding to Canidae we mixed 3/4 and 1/4, but we got a surprise. Food was not inhaled, but sorted carefully and all Canidae pieces eaten with other food left in bowl.,
Next feeding was canidae only :)

[Greg_1111]

I switched mine about 9 days ago from large breed Eukanuba (she wasn't eating it, losing weight) to Canidae. I did it cold turkey and she had no adverse reactions. She gobbles up thhe Canidae now, and it's already time to put her on a diet, she's gettin chubby. THe Canidae has much smaller kernel size than the Eukanuba therefore there is less air between the kernels in the measuring cup which means a cup of Canidae is actually a lot more food than Eukanuba. Three cups a day should be plenty to feed

[Poblondie]

That was my next question. We currently give Babe 3 1/2 cups of food a day. When we make the total switch, should we continue to give her 3 1/2 cups of Canidae?

[AngelBunny]

Poblondie:

In many things, I believe in cutting to the chase.

Changing foods is one of them.

I change foods, cold turkey, and have never had a problem. Of course, I've had healthy dogs--never had a dog with IBD (touch wood).

I'm involved with Rottie rescue. Many of the shelters with whom my group operates are strapped for funds and feed whatever they can. In most cases, this means awful food.

When I pull a dog from a shelter, that dog gets Wellness for the dog's next meal. I don't know what the shelter fed and I don't want to know. Even if I did know, there's no way I'd go out and buy the food the dog was being fed to slowly wean Fido from garbage to what we feed.

Bam-O! Dog gets served Wellness.

If the dog is of a normal weight and isn't interested in his or her meal, that's fine. The only dogs I persuade to eat are those who're grossly underweight from being starved--all other dogs are offered their meals for a brief period of time (the time it takes my girls to suck down their food!) before the food is removed. The next time the dog sees anything to eat is at the next meal.

If your dog is healthy and has no problems with her stomach, you'll do no harm in making the switch completely.

The only thing I would advise is if she's not interested in eating her new food, *don't* add goodies to it in an attempt to get her to eat. She'll eat when she's hungry enough.

And if this means she misses a couple of meals and doesn't eat for a couple of days, so be it. She won't starve.