CORN IS FOR COWS. GRAINS ARE NOT DOG FOOD

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.

Carnivores are meat eaters and like this wolf, they rip, shred and swallow thier meat. They are unable to GRIND corn like a cow (herbivore) can do, thus dogs are prone to bloat when fed 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 carnivores. 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 but 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 for cows - corn ferments, causing bloat. A cow's stomach can handle corn, the dog's teeth and stomach cannot so corn is just a cheap "filler" which is passed out undigested. 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.

When fermented, grains produce gas - or rye whisky or scotch, etc. Meat may rot but it does not ferment.

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, after 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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Dogs need grass, fresh veggies and fruit but not chemicals and pesticides!