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anybody have a good way to put some weight on a dog? i have a plott/redtick that i have tried everything i can think of she is given twice as much food as the other dogs i put egg beacon grease table scraps of meat iv tried adding rice drippings from roasts and birds and she was recently wormed and i still cant get any weight on her. any ideas would be greatly appreciated thanks ahead of time.

Have you wormed her? Try that, but don't over do it. If she is wormy and you over do it, the toxicity from the dead worms could make her sick or even kill her. Give her a normal dose of wormer and then do it again in a month or so.

Purina makes a feed supplement that is meant to put weight on horses. I can't recall the name of it right now, but I do know it works great on horses and whenever I would feed I couldn't keep my dogs out of it, so I know dogs will eat it. And the yard dogs that were getting into it when i was feeding that horse were gaining weight like crazy. Check with the feed store and see if they know the name of this stuff. If you can't find it, let me know and I will ask my feed store. It came in the little white 30# buckets.



Tex

How old is your dog? I think allot of times we do need to put some weight on them but also sometimes it's good to remember some dogs are just thin and you probably won't be able to till they get older. Their metabolisms are high and like little kids they are just skinny. That doesn't mean they aren't healthy. I have one that is 16 months old and gets diamond extreme athlete and victor premium in an automatic feeder and meat scraps and wet feed a couple times a week and is super thin. No worms, just young and that's his body type. But when he is 4 he will probably be a stout strong looking hound.

my dad had a couple German shorthair pointers that in the winter had a hard time keeping on weight, and the vet told him to buy some lamb milk replacer(get it at any feed store)mix some up and pour it in with their food. It fattened his dogs up good, and they love it! I crack two eggs over my dogs food in the winter, and it keeps them fat and shiny, but I don't have any real hard keepers. Hope this helps.

Cameron

milk replacer get lamb or goat which ever one has highs fat

I had a few dogs that had a hard time putting weight on I put them on the conklin canine microbial supplement and it made a big difference . I have sold it to a few people and they had good results .

I've used non-medicated lamb milk replacer.

Another thing to remember. Those of us who live in less populated places usually find feed choices limited. Often these large companies don't have a set feed formula if it fits into the parameters of their analysis they will use it. This means the actual quality of feed varies a great deal sometimes.
There's this push by these companies to keep a dog on a single brand of food. That's just marketing. Horses and cattle don't handle complete feed changes well because they need time for the gut microbes to adjust. Dogs don't have this type of digestion. So changing feed isn't a issue so long as the quality doesn't vary.
What they don't mention is if one method of preparing feed or the ingredients has vitamins or minerals in a bound form where the dog can't digest it properly you might be dealing with a deficiency.
If parasites aren't a issue and feed quantity isn't restricted quality is the next likely culprit.

If the other dogs are eating the same food and less of it and look ok, it must be something wrong with her. Is she a litter mate to any other dogs that are eating the same feed? If so it probably is not genetics. Feed her as much table scraps as she will eat, if she still doesn't gain weight she probably want ever.

Not to be disagreeable, but I am not a fan of changing up a dogs feed. It has been my experience that doing that can, not always, but can lead to dogs being finicky eaters. Once I find a quality feed that keeps them healthy and meets their needs, I tend to stick with it. I do need to clarify though, I do switch formulas during different seasons. They get a good maintenance formula in the summer when they aren't being hunted as much and in the winter during hunting season, they get a higher fat and protein feed. I like to stick with the same brand and once I make the switch, that is what I stick with until the season changes.

All that being said, they do get table scraps occasionally. Another treat is our homemade dogfood we make here at home. It consists of any old, or scrap meat that we end up having when we get our beef from a fresh processing. We also use alot of horse meat from any that may have had to be put down. This meat is ground up and cooked, then mixed with beef tallow, rice, pumpkin, carrots and sweet potatoes. I'm not sure why, but dogs really seem to love the orange stuff. Our vet told us that stuff like the pumpkins and such has alot of vitamins. All this cooked up and mixed together really seems to go over well with the hounds and after just a couple days their coats will almost be slick like it has lanolin on it. Even when I feed the scraps or our homemade stuff though, it is still mixed with the regular feed. I am fairly religious when it comes to being consistent with their feed and it seems to work well for me and my hounds.




Tex

Funny TeX. If it takes a paragraph to list things you feed your dog its hardly "well I feed six cups of super dog feed from birth til death"

Yeah, I knew I did a poor job of explaining that.. LOL

All I was trying to say is that I like to stick with the same foundation feed and not do alot of switching. I use the same brand of feed and will switch twice a year when the seasonal changes require different recipes. That being said though, I will give some supplemental feed occasionally. The foundation feed is still there though. Different hunting styles, regions of the country and a number of other criteria will all determine different nutritional needs. This is especially true when we discuss the needs of these athletes we all spend way too much money on.

This is just what I do and what works for me. Other people alot smarter than me probably have better ways of doing things.



Tex

how cold has it been. is the dog house insulated. its been 5 below here for awhile. pretty tough to put weight on living in a plastic barrel. let her in by the fire once in awhile so she can get that deep sleep. first thing after a good run for my dogs is a few hours in the house and a hot meal( in the winter). a big doghouse so two dogs can share heat helps.

yogurt and raw milk have enzymes to help with digestion. not all fats are the same. some fats are more easily stored vs burnt up as energy. if she can last a nite on the hill she is probly alright.

I've owned dogs that i could never put any fat on but they were the high energy type that were fireballs in the woods .I wouldn't worry about it to much unless her ribs stick out and she has a starved look about her.

she is three and a half she sleeps on a big thick layer of stray with a heat lamp in the area with them i have been feeding her three cups of feed with warm water in her food at night and a cup and a half with warm water in the food in the morning she was wormed three weeks ago maybe four now has never turned down a bowl of food just started giving her some probiotic and ground up raw meat/fat shavings form the butcher they are on their second dose of that and just picked up a heart wormer from the vet to rule out heat worms. i started noticing her getting thin a week before the first round of wormer hense why i gave the wormer. still early if the meat/fat scraps dont start working i will add the milk replace just dont wanna overload her system too fast.