Tam Cordingley, CSI Instructor, SAAB Member
There are many reasons not to use a dog food containing corn but let's start with a dog's teeth, certainly not made for grinding corn.
Have you ever looked at the
teeth of a wolf? How about those magnificent teeth of the lions we marvel at on the NatGeo channel?
A predator’s teeth are not the same as the teeth of a ruminant. Have you ever noticed the teeth of a cow, goat,
or sheep? They are big and flat. Made for grinding vegetation. No "canines" or fangs to be found!
Predators are ii Carnivorous (opens in window). Simply
put that means they are designed to eat MEAT. The have
sharp teeth for ripping meat, fangs for biting their prey. They don't
chew their food. They gulp it down in big chunks, even a mouse goes
down whole. They don't like dog food that was turned into mush by a
well meaning owner and dogs can choke on dry dog food kibble.
Meat is highly
usable and easily digestible by carnivores (dogs) therefore
they have a short digestive tract and only one stomach. The
dog’s digestive system is not intended by nature to handle large
amounts of roughage. Ruminants on the other hand
have multi-chambered stomachs to break down and digest grains
and forage crops. They swallow this material, mix it with
digestive juices, spit it back into their mouths, chew their cud
again, and swallow it back into the next stomach.
When a cow is
butchered the stomach contents in the first stomach are nothing
like the contents of the fourth chamber of the stomach.
The point is that it takes four stomach chambers to digest grains and
roughage and make it usable. The carnivore has only one stomach.
Corn is a useful vegetable. It
is used to make corn meal, which sits on your stomach like a
heavy lump until passed. Sweet corn is great with butter in
the summer but did you ever notice it comes out the same way it
goes in? Corn is fermented to make ethanol. The fermentation process also
produces methane. Methane is a
useful gas, it can power all sorts of machinery. However the
process of fermentation, which produces gas, is the same process
that causes bloat in dogs. Think of it this way: Fermented,
grains produce gas - or rye whisky or scotch, etc.
Meat May Rot But It Does Not Ferment Like Grain
I have one dog who is a
confirmed stool eater, however she is selective. She will
only eat the stool of a dog that was fed kibble.
That stool has undigested particles in it so is viewed as food. The stool of a dog that is fed meat will not be eaten because
all the food has been digested. This same principle applies to rabbits. If not wire-caged, they will eat their stool once but
they will reject it the second time around because the nutrients are used up.
Why do dog food companies
use corn? That answer is easy. It is cheap and readily
available. It is not a coincidence that most dog food companies
are also cereal companies. On most labels there are three or
more different names for the corn, but it is mostly corn. The end of this short story is
that I don’t feel that my dogs should be the disposal unit for the cereal industry.
If God intended for dogs to eat hay and corn they would have teeth like cows and horses.
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