While some dog owners feed their dog a vegetarian diet, others only feed their four-legged friend meat.
While some dog owners feed their dog a vegetarian diet, others only feed their four-legged friend meat.
However, many people move between these two extreme diets and you may also be wondering how much meat your dog really needs. Here you can find out what a balanced diet looks like in dogs and what role the meat content plays in this.
“The dog needs meat!” - you have probably heard this sentence from other dog owners. It is true that the dog is descended from the wolf and that wolves feed largely on meat. But it is also correct that today's domestic dogs are no longer wolves. Because between the development from wolf to dog lie many tens of thousands of years in which the organism has adapted to other conditions and needs.
Most dogs are very different from their common ancestors, especially when it comes to energy requirements. Most likely, your dog no longer has to travel 50 kilometers a day to roam its territory or to look for prey. A typical family dog rarely runs more than seven to eight kilometers a day. Therefore, your dog is more likely to need one moderate energy supply with less fat and more protein . The most important thing is a balanced ratio of meat, carbohydrates and fiber.
At Happy Dog, we ensure a varied supply of high-quality, animal proteins from meat and offal. With regard to the protein, your dog gets his money's worth: The proportion of purely animal protein in Happy Dog dry food is up to 90 percent of the total protein, which is significantly higher than in dog food from many other manufacturers.
So that your dog gets a balanced meat meal, we supplement it with the optimal amount of carbohydrates from potatoes or grain, important fiber and essential vitamins and minerals . We take nature as our model and based on the dog's descent from the wolf, that became Happy Dog Natural Life Concept® developed and adapted to the demands of the modern dog.
Scientifically proven, it offers the dog a nutritionally sensible combination of all vital substances. In this way, the metabolism and the entire organism are optimally and species-appropriately supported. For this reason, we also add natural products such as herbs, apples, mussels or linseed to our food, because we at Happy Dog want to offer your dog the prerequisites for a long and vital dog life.
Did you know that the term meat content is not scientifically defined? This leads to significantly different declarations on the packaging. But how does it come about? In addition to the underlying amount (pure meat or total amount of fresh ingredients from the animal), the decisive factor when specifying the percentage of meat is whether fresh meat or dried raw materials are used.
Whereas, with dried food most of the water is removed by the heating during the production of dried meat. This leaves about 30% dried meat left. This can be transported and stored in a more environmentally friendly and sustainable manner.
This makes the comparison between recipes a bit complex. When a dog food contains 'fresh meat' in the recipe, you must first take out the percentage of water to give yourself a more reliable comparison.
When looking at a popular 80/20 diet if the diet contains 80% fresh meat then on a dried basis this is only 24% meat content.
An easy way to work this out is to times the fresh meat % by 0.3, so for the above calculation it would be: 80 * 0.3 = 24%.
To add the water back into a dried food you can revers this calculation to: 24 / 0.3 = 80%
At Happy Dog, we only name the real proportion of dried meat. Thus, the meat content in our products is actually much higher than it seems at first glance.
Composition:
Duck protein* (26%), sweet chestnut meal (26%), pea starch, poultry fat, beet pulp* (desugared), fish meal from deep-sea fish (4%), hydrolysed liver, sunflower oil, linseed (1.3%), apple pomace* (1.2%), potassium chloride, rapeseed oil, yeast*, sodium chloride, seaweed*, mussel meat* (0.1%), yeast extract*, milk thistle, artichoke, dandelion, ginger, birch leaves, stinging nettle, camomile, coriander, rosemary, sage, liquorice root, thyme (total dried herbs: 0.15%); *) dried. Metabolisable energy/ME: 1550 KJ/100 g; 3700 Kcal/kg
If you add the water back into the 26% dried Duck protein you end up with a meat content on 87%
We use meat and nutrient-rich offal from freshly slaughtered and food-grade animals for our pet food. We pay attention to the best quality in our animal raw material sources. It is important for the dog that the proportion of animal proteins or meat is significantly higher than the proportion of vegetable proteins. At Happy Dog, animal protein accounts for up to 90% of the total protein. Discover the variety ofHappy Dog dry foods here.
Of course, our wet dog food is also made with a high proportion of meat and provides your darling with everything they need. Our Happy Dog wet food with lots of meat is available in 10 different varieties. So there is sure to be something suitable for your dog's taste.
Does your dog has a very sensitive stomach or has your vet diagnosed him with a feed intolerance? Then the numerous grain-free varieties from Happy Dog could be the right thing for them. Of course, we also make sure that your dog is supplied with sufficient meat with our grain-free dry food.Many varieties are based on an animal protein source (monoprotein) and are made with potatoes without grain.
Does your dog has a potato intolerance? We can help here too: at Happy Dog Sensible Piemonte and Mini Piemonte we use Italian chestnuts as an exclusive source of carbohydrates. Discover our grain-free dog food here.
As already mentioned, the difference in the water content of dry and wet feed makes it difficult to compare nutrient contents, such as protein content. A meaningful comparison is only possible by determining the so-called dry matter (DM) - i.e. the amount of nutrients in a 100 percent dry state.
The calculation example shows you how you can compare the nutrient contents:
Comparison of the protein content of two kidney diets, A (dry food) and B (wet food)
Kidney diet A (dry food) contains:10% moisture, 12.5% crude protein.
100% original feed - 10% water = 90% Total State (TS).
12.5 (crude protein)/ 90 x 100 = 13.8% crude protein in the Total State
Kidney diet B (wet food) contains:61% moisture with 6.8% crude protein.
100% original feed - 61% water = 39% Dry matter.
6.8 (crude protein)/ 39 x 100 = 17.4% crude protein in the Total State
The example shows that the wet food contains significantly more protein than it initially appears. It is therefore important to convert accordingly if you want to compare wet and dry food with one another.
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