What we feed our weaning puppies!
Transitioning from mother’s milk to an external food source is always daunting, whether that is our own children or our animals. This is a transition we are extremely methodical about and consider an investment into the future health of the ones we have been placed as caretakers and stewards over. For our Golden Retriever puppies we see their health as a direct correlation to their environments and that includes what food they are transitioning to.
When they turned 5 weeks old the demands on Goldie (mum) became more than she was able to meet for their growing bodies and bellies! We started including twice a day feedings of warm A2/A2 cows milk for supplementation, which subsequently started the weaning process.
After a few days of that routine and making sure that no one had any upset bellies we added a solid component of food. Most breeders will begin to feed “puppy mush” at this time which is just commercial dog food that is soaked in water so that it becomes mush essentially. These foods are full of chemicals, fillers, additives and honestly a list of ingredients so long that you don’t know what exactly they’re eating at the end of it all.
Some might think – what’s the big deal? It’s easier and certainly cheaper to feed a dog that way and they have entire stores committed to selling pet food in bags. It can’t be that bad, can it?
To that, I would suggest we look at the food landscape for people as well and ask the same questions. We have fast-food or convenient foods on every corner and we are more sick as a people group than most others on earth. In our own personal journey of health we have made our best efforts to find what makes us healthy and as well as our animals too. We’ve found that if we let food be our medicine then we and our animals thrive instead of spending most of our days and money on chronic illnesses.
So, all that said! We started adding organic rice cooked in bone broth to the A2/A2 milk for three times a day supplementation to nursing with their Mum. They started to plump up faster than ever! We then added ground beef from our favorite farmer Polyface Farms, fresh raw pasture raised eggs, Bone Meal powder, Spirulina and Chlorella powder and an Omega-3 oil supplement.
The results have been undeniable. This first weaning experience with this type of nutrition and food density has produced all hearty dogs. None are lacking or appear to be getting less than any of the others. We also notice the brilliance in these dogs behaviors and learning experiences. They bound up stairs with no hesitation at only 6-7 weeks old, they have gorgeous coats of hair, their development is at an all time high. None of them have any appearance of allergies, the parents don’t have ear infections or allergies and that should only continue for their offspring should the new owners continue prioritizing nutrition and diet over anything else.
The foundation that we’ve seen given to these special family dogs should produce healthy animals that serve their new families for years to come!
