Canine Nutrition

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CORN IS FOR COWS

Tam Cordingley, CSI Instructor, SAAB Member

Dogs are meat eaters. They don't have the herbivore's teeth or stomach to eat dog food with corn - which ferments and can cause bloat.

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.

 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.  They have, fangs for biting and gripping their prey.  The have sharp teeth for ripping meat from bone.

 Dogs are carnivores. Carnivores don't chew their food, they gulp it down in big chunks, even a mouse goes down whole.  Dogs can choke on dry dog food kibble and they don't like dog food that was turned into mush by a well meaning owner.

Meat is easily digestible by carnivores (dogs, coyotes, foxes, wolves, etc.) therefore they have a short digestive tract and only one stomach.  Nature did not intend a dog’s digestive system to handle large amounts of roughage.

Ruminants (cows, deer, goats, sheep) 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 contents of 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 in your stomach like a heavy lump until passed to the intestines.  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 produces gas (you've noticed..) but your stomach is upright and you can burp. A carnivore's stomach is horizontally suspended and it is harder for them to burp.

 GRAINS FERMENT, CAUSING GAS. That's why Herbivores have multiple stomachs to process grasses and grains.  Carnivores have only one stomach, thus gas formation causes bloat in dogs.

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. Rabbit breeders know if caged, they will eat their stool once but they will reject it the second time around because the nutrients are used up.

So 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 grains but it is mostly corn, think "corn flakes".

If God intended for dogs to eat hay and corn they would have teeth like cows and horses.

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