Appropriate feeding duringpregnancy is not only important for the health of the mother. In addition, it makes a decisive contribution to ensuring that the unborn puppies can develop optimally.
In the following you will find out what dog keepers have to consider when feeding a dam (a pregnant dog) and what is important with regard to postnatal feeding.
If you are planning to have your bitch mated, you should, if possible, ensure optimal conditions beforehand. Your four-legged friend should have its ideal weight before pregnancy, as both being overweight as well as being underweight can lead to problems.
If the animal is too light, it makes sense to slightly increase the amount of food and to feed the four-legged friend with high-energy dog food, such as Bellfor Premium Pur Aktiv.
If your four-legged friend weighs too much, this can affect fertility and milk production. The energy intake must therefore be slightly reduced in order to bring the weight of the dog to a normal level. A suitable dietary supplement such as Shiimun Slim can help support the dog's diet.
A breeding bitch should of course always be fed appropriately and the dog food should be of the highest possible quality.
In addition, to promote fertility, it can be beneficial to supplement the food with suitable products. With Shiimun Vitalizer, we have developed a very special preparation based on shiitake for exactly this purpose.
Shiimun Vitalizer provides your dog with a multitude of valuable nutrients to improve the physical performance and fertility of the animal in a natural way.
Get to know Shiimun Vitalizer.
The dam's diet does not need to be adjusted at the beginning of gestation. You can therefore feed her as usual for the first four weeks. In small breeds, which often have large litters, it may make sense to keep normal feeding only for the first three weeks of pregnancy.
If the dam has gotten over the first few weeks of pregnancy well, from the fourth or fifth week it is finally time to take the increasing energy requirements of the four-legged friend into account.
In order to optimally supply the dam and the puppies with energy and nutrients, you should now switch to an energy-rich dog food. It is a good idea to feed the dam good puppy food during pregnancy. It is particularly rich in protein, which is also important with regard to the growth of the unborn young dogs.
The additional administration of mineral supplements is not necessary, neither during pregnancy nor for the lactating bitch after birth. In the worst case scenario, overdosing on certain nutrients can actually cause serious harm.
In addition to food for adult dogs, our range also includes puppy food that you can use for both young and pregnant dogs.
Bellfor puppy food is characterised by an optimal blend of carefully selected raw materials to provide the animals with all the nutrition they need in the right amount. The food is rich in high-quality animal proteins and contains a mineral content adapted to the needs of growing dogs.
Our puppy food is easily digestible, wholesome and optimally supplies the dam and the unborn puppies with all the essential nutrients.
Get to know Bellfor puppy food.
The switch to puppy food should go hand in hand with a gradual increase of the amount of food for the dam. Increase the amount by about 30 percent up to the ninth week of pregnancy. Your four-legged friend should now have gained around 25 percent in weight.
It is important that you take care of your dam (and thus the unborn offspring) continuously as required. We therefore recommend that you do not portion the food by intuition, but rather weigh it with a kitchen scale.
Apart from that, it makes sense to divide the daily amount of food into three meals so that your four-legged friend can digest its food more easily. Inevitably, the bigger the puppies get in the dam's belly, the less space there is for the food and its digestion.
In the week before giving birth, dams often eat very little and sometimes not at all immediately before.
It is therefore not uncommon for your four-legged friend's food bowl to be barely touched. Normally this is not a cause for concern. Provided that you have fed her properly in the weeks before, she will be well supplied.
Dams tend to become constipated towards the end of gestation. In this case, we recommend supplementing their food with Shiimun Gastro.
Shiimun Gastro is a natural and wholesome product that, thanks to its special composition, promotes healthy digestion and counteracts problems such as constipation in dogs during pregnancy or diarrhoea in lactating bitches.
In the first few weeks after birth, the puppies are supplied with energy and nutrients exclusively from their mother's milk. Suckling puts a considerable strain on the mother's organism and leads to a significant increase in her calorie requirement.
While suckling, continue to feed the puppy food that she has already received during pregnancy. Depending on the breed of dog and the size of the litter, the needs of the four-legged friend can be three to four times higher than normal during this time.
When the puppies start to consume solid foods in addition to their mother's milk, you should begin to slowly reduce the food ration of your nursing bitch. This is necessary so that the milk production of the four-legged friend decreases.
Finally, the day before the puppies are finally weaned, the mother should fast and on the day of weaning only receive about 25 to 30 percent of the normal amount of food. In this way you help the animal's body to stop producing milk.
In the days after the suckling has ended, you can gradually adjust the amount of food back to her normal needs. The puppies will now exclusively be supplied with high-quality puppy food.
As you can see, there is a lot to consider when it comes to feeding dams. Provided that you inform yourself about the subject and make sure that the food is of good quality, it is, however, not a complicated matter to feed appropriately during pregnancy.
We have summarised the most important feeding recommendations for the duration of pregnancy in dogs for you in this article and you will find the right products for the nutrition of your dam or lactating bitch in our shop.
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