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Stool

Penelope's Mom

Well-Known Member
I may still keep her vet appointment because I will have to increase her food at some point in her life. I'll wait to see how she does over the weekend and decide on Monday. :)
 

angelbears

Well-Known Member
Yes, you may have to increase her food as she grows. As long as you don't over feed her, she should be fine. Increase slowly over time. Remember with the giants fat does not mean healthy, lean does.
 

Smokeycat

Well-Known Member
As the others are saying the problem isn't the amount of food that is the problem. It is the fact that the amount of food being eaten being higher than the amount of food needed that is the problem. As she needs more food her body will be able to handle more food.
 

ruthcatrin

Well-Known Member
Not nessecarily. Maybe she really didn't do well on the first food. And then she was acting hungry, so you gave her more of the 2nd food, which aggravated her system more.....
 

Penelope's Mom

Well-Known Member
She had soft poop when I got her but right now, I don't remember know how much the breeder was feeding her. I feel horrible. I knew 6 cups per day was a lot because that's how much Franklin was eating and he was full grown. She just always acted like she would die of hunger at any moment. lol
 

marke

Well-Known Member
Marke: "I'm sure" is nice and all, but where did you get your numbers from?? And just based on your own numbers, giving a puppy a drumstick would be supplementing with calcium, so please make up your mind on what you're trying to say.
Composition

Bone itself consists mainly of collagen fibres and an inorganic bone mineral in the form of small crystals. In vivo bone (living bone in the body) contains between 10% and 20% water. Of its dry mass, approximately 60-70% is bone mineral. Most of the rest is collagen, but bone also contains a small amount of other substances such as proteins and inorganic salts.
Collagen is the main fibrous protein in the body. It has a triple helical structure, and specific points along the collagen fibres serve as nucleation sites for the bone mineral crystals. This is shown in the animation below.
The composition of the mineral component can be approximated as hydroxyapatite (HA), with the chemical formula Ca[SUB]10[/SUB](PO[SUB]4[/SUB])[SUB]6[/SUB](OH)[SUB]2[/SUB]. However, whereas HA as has a Ca:p ratio of 5:3 (1.67), bone mineral itself has Ca:p ratios ranging from 1.37 - 1.87. This is because the composition of bone mineral is much more complex and contains additional ions such as silicon, carbonate and zinc.
Cartilage is a collagen-based tissue containing very large protein-polysaccharide molecules that form a gel in which the collagen fibres are entangled. Articular, or hyaline, cartilage forms the bearing surfaces of the movable joints of the body. Mechanically, articular cartilage behaves as a linear viscoelastic solid. It also has a very low coefficient of friction (< 0.01), largely attributed to the presence of synovial fluid that can be squeezed out upon compressive loading.
The animation below allows you to explore the microstructure of cortical bone.
I would not think of giving a dog a bone as supplementing with calcium anymore than i'd consider adding pumpkin to their diet as supplementing with vitamin a ....... I've watched food/feeding fads since the internet , and honestly I've not seen them solve any health issues ........ these mb's are cluttered with dog health problems , none of them have ever been my dogs , makes me wonder why ???????
 

ruthcatrin

Well-Known Member
I would not think of giving a dog a bone as supplementing with calcium anymore than i'd consider adding pumpkin to their diet as supplementing with vitamin a ....... I've watched food/feeding fads since the internet , and honestly I've not seen them solve any health issues ........ these mb's are cluttered with dog health problems , none of them have ever been my dogs , makes me wonder why ???????

Ok....so where are you quoting from?? Not that you've bothered to answer that question the last several times I asked....

How can you NOT consider adding bone to their diet a supplementation of calcium?? You're the one arguing for bones to have a really high calcium content. And you're the only one saying pumpkin's a vitamin, fiber would be more correct....
 

marke

Well-Known Member
Ok....so where are you quoting from?? Not that you've bothered to answer that question the last several times I asked....

How can you NOT consider adding bone to their diet a supplementation of calcium?? You're the one arguing for bones to have a really high calcium content. And you're the only one saying pumpkin's a vitamin, fiber would be more correct....
university of Cambridge ..............I didn't know I was "arguing" about the calcium content of a bone ? I don't think a chicken leg a day will harm a puppy , I actually think it would be good for it as long as you kept the pup lean and exercised properly ................ when you remove the marrow , cartilage , and connective tissue , i'd like to see the study that says bone compromises 30% of a chicken leg by weight ...... whatever amount bone does compromise , 65% of the dry weight is calcium phosphate , and of that 60% is calcium and 40% is phosphorus ....... not that I believe any of it matters . the dailey recommended dosage of vitamin a for a dog is 2272 iu per pound of food , canned pumpkin contains 4358 iu of vitamin A per ounce , along with 63mg of calcium , 87mg phosphorus , 505mg potassium and 56mg of magnesium ............what is it you give your puppies to chew on ?
 

Penelope's Mom

Well-Known Member
Penelope has had almost perfect poop this weekend, so I'm calling to cancel her vet appointment this morning.

Thanks to everyone who helped me get to the bottom of this and helping P with her poop problems. :D
 

ruthcatrin

Well-Known Member
university of Cambridge ..............I didn't know I was "arguing" about the calcium content of a bone ? I don't think a chicken leg a day will harm a puppy , I actually think it would be good for it as long as you kept the pup lean and exercised properly ................ when you remove the marrow , cartilage , and connective tissue , i'd like to see the study that says bone compromises 30% of a chicken leg by weight ...... whatever amount bone does compromise , 65% of the dry weight is calcium phosphate , and of that 60% is calcium and 40% is phosphorus ....... not that I believe any of it matters . the dailey recommended dosage of vitamin a for a dog is 2272 iu per pound of food , canned pumpkin contains 4358 iu of vitamin A per ounce , along with 63mg of calcium , 87mg phosphorus , 505mg potassium and 56mg of magnesium ............what is it you give your puppies to chew on ?

I can't decide if you're being deliberately obtuse or if you're that stupid. "University of Cambridge" tells me lots (not!). What is the NAME OF THE PUBLICATION?? Or even better, since you obviously copied and pasted your quote above, the link you copied from! Its not hard, it just takes a couple extra steps using skills you've already proved you have.

Your welcome to do your own experimentation to figure out the bone content of drumsticks. I stated before that those numbers were what I had found from my own weighing and measurements, and matched what other people had found when they did the same.

You realize you're screwing your own arguments, you keep insisting that adding things to what a dog eats during a day isn't supplementation (never mind that the very definition of the word is "to give something extra"), and then argue that those things have really high vitamin/mineral values......make up your mind which side of the argument you're taking.

When they're still growing I do NOT give them extra bone. Apollo chewed on firewood and sticks because he proved he just wanted to shred them not eat them. They both got cardboard. And a variety of commercially purchased dog chews. At this point in their lives yes, I give them bone, but they're both well past the young growth stages.
 

ruthcatrin

Well-Known Member
(and before someone freaks over the amount of additional Vit A in pumpkin, the MAX recommended daily intake is 113,636 IU/pound of food, and with these big dogs .063 of a gram of calcium is not going to make that much of a difference......)
 

marke

Well-Known Member
as deliberately slow and stupid as I may be , I had no problem googling "chemical compositon of a bone " , the university of Cambridge seemed reputable ............. a chicken broiler in the supermarket is on average between 35 and 49 days old , T.J. Applegate and M.S. Liburn , 2002, found the average weight of a 42 day old broilers tibia to be 6 grams .......... the tibia is 61% marrow , "Normal Structure , Function , and Histology of bone marrow" Gregory S,.Travlos ........... my math tells me the average bone in a chicken drumstick is 2.34 grams .............. minus 20% water I get 1.8 grams of bone in a chicken drumstick at a 5:3 calcium to phosphorus ratio........... after all the math is done , actually long before it was done , I believe a chicken leg is about as harmful to a puppy as canned pumpkin ..... except I believe it to be way more beneficial in regards to health ...... if your dog needs pumpkin to have normal stools there is a problem , and it's not a lack of pumpkin in their diet ....... as far as experimenting , i'm always up for learning to raise a dog better , but I must say i do a pretty good job right now ........ not only have I been practicing raising them a long time , I been x-raying the results just as long ..................
 

ruthcatrin

Well-Known Member
One (HUGE) problem with your assumption, the Applegate/Lilburn study said the weight of a 43day old bird's tibia was 5.48 grams AFTER drying it out and removing the fat (which means that they're working with bigger birds than I am, but thats ok).

I don't see where you're finding the marrow % of a chicken's tibia, but Travlos DOES state that marrow is about 50% fat, and doesn't state how much is moisture that I can see. Even if 61% is normally correct that means that if the fat has been removed then only 30.5% of the weight is marrow (including moisture).

So that brings us to 3.84grams of bone, dried and fat removed. Probly more since we didn't remove the moisture from the % of marrow.

And I'm still trying to figure out where you got 5:3 as an ideal calcium to phos ratio? If we've got 3g of phos the ideal calcium number is 3.6g. A 5:3 ratio is way to much calcium for a growing dog.

Oh, and I found this yesterday: http://www.agriculturejournals.cz/publicFiles/08103.pdf so dry matter calcium in chicken bone averaged 180g/kilo of bone, which is 1.8% calcium, and phos averaged 83g/kilo. Which is a 2.2 to 1 ratio.

So I stand by my statement that the addition of a drumstick to a balanced diet adds a large portion of calcium to their diet and has the potential to be detrimental to their growth.

(and since you missed the whole point of this thread. Franklin's mom was trying to find a solution for her dog that didn't require her to give pumpkin all the time. Try reading next time, k?)
 
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marke

Well-Known Member
Your average bone in drumstick contains about 48 grams of bone,
personally i don't believe the entire drumstick weighs much more than 48 grams ......
So that brings us to 3.84grams of bone,
.
so we've lost about 40 grams of bone ,from page 6 or 7 through page 11 , maybe with some additional googling we can lose a little more by page 13 ........
(and since you missed the whole point of this thread. Franklin's mom was trying to find a solution for her dog that didn't require her to give pumpkin all the time. Try reading next time, k?)

possibly your reading skills may need a little work themselves ???? my suggested solution i believe on page 1 was to boil a chicken leg , grind it up and add it to her 55lb pups diet so as to add bone ......honestly i'd grind up the whole quarter ......... which i know for a fact does work ......... as far as that having the"potential" to be detrimental to her growth , i personally find ridiculous , just don't overfeed the dog .............. if the calcium phosphorus ratio in chicken quarters is not suitable for a growing pup , i'd think a lot of raw feeding folks are screwing up a lot of dogs ......

So giving her an extra chicken drumstick a day doubles her calcium intake.

She's less than 1yr old.

Are you TRYING to screw up her growth?

i do wonder exactley how many large breed puppies you have raised ?????? personally i'd be somewhere between 50-60 ............by a year old my dogs are running 3 miles .....
 

rrebeccag

Member
Hello. I've been reading this thread as I have a 17month old DDB and when I adopted him he was being fed BB grain free so I stuck with it. However, he has soft stool most of the time and sometimes his first one is nice but then his 2nd is almost diarrhea though just tiny bit. I'd like to change it to see if that helps. I read you can give them probiotics or even Metamucil but if I can find food that will harden up the stool then I'm good to go. BB is already $55 on sale and it's really pricey for us. I don't want to spend even more if possible. Maybe I should try Pedigree. Is this the same Pedigree in the yellow bag? That stuff is super cheap and the bag comes in like 90lbs or so. I appreciate any advice.