dog treats Australia, and why our healthy dog treats are meat based

Dog Treats in Australia should be mostly meat.

But they are not, and the following myth is part of the reason why dodgy manufacturers get away with giving your dogs cheap grains .. instead of the meat their body craves.

How much do the rabbit contents weigh?

The assumption that the manufactured pet food supporters use (as to why dogs need lots of grain) is mostly based on the misguided thought that a wild pack of dogs kill the prey mainly to get to the contents of the stomach. Yes, the stomach contents will be warm and soupy, but the main energy and essential amino acids are gained from the muscle meat of the prey. This is what is eaten first by the animals that do the killing, and the other pack animals get what is left (often the stomach and offal).

If the rabbit stomach contents were so important to the survival of the dog species, why would they only weigh maybe a few hundred grams while the rabbit will weigh well over a kilogram. That means that most of the animals in the pack don’t get to eat the stomach contents, but they survive well!

What state of digestion will the dog prey contents be in?

Most likely the rabbit will have been eating grass and maybe a few green grains. If they chew them a lot and crush them to a pulp and remove the outer fibre then the grass and grains might provide a little bit of nutrition that the dog can absorb, but as discussed above, it is typically not the kind of food that is easy for a carnivore to digest.

If you read the full nutrition tables for grasses or green grains you will also see that while they have select vitamins and minerals, they don’t have a massive amount of these, nor a complete spread usually and very low levels of proteins (also the least bioavailable proteins). Compared to any meat, all grains have a much lower essential amino acid content. Something that dogs can ONLY get from MEAT.

What is my dog’s favourite raw meat food at the moment?

Surprisingly my dog will maneuver around a tray of meat and offal to locate and eat tripe (sheep stomach – not the contents).  It has relatively low nutritional value (check the tables for yourself or see my previous offal articles) and is more expensive than the main meat I buy my dog, but it is 100% MEAT.  And he loves it.  I have posted videos of this online.

Is it not possible that wild dogs also very much enjoy the texture and smell of the actual herbivores stomach as well, rather than the contents?

Dogs will eat almost every part of the prey when they catch it or find it dead in the forest. They have to do this to survive.

Eating an animal, its stomach, its liver, its kidney and even the juices inside of these organs is not surprising. That the omnivore brigade use this to support their case only weakens it.

Dogs are carnivores with the ability to eat a little natural vegetable matter (and extract a little nutrition from it).  The fact that humans can train their dogs to like and eat vegetables raw or cooked is irrelevant to what is best for the dog. Similarly the tricks that dog food manufacturers make to turn bland cooked grain into something attract to a dog is an amazing trick, but not an ideal one.

Dog Treats sold in Australia should be mostly meat to address the very low meat content in most manufactured dog food, and that is why I sell meat based dog treats on this healthy dog treat site!