Regardless of whether you own a wombat(illegal) or a basset hound(recommended), one of the more overlooked questions Australian pet owners fail to ask themselves before owning a pet is this: would they be able to provide for the pet nutritionally and ensure a healthy diet?
It is not uncommon to often toss out leftover home-cooked food to the pet as their meals, and while this may work occasionally, medical guidelines suggest that this approach isn’t always healthy.
Especially here in the outback, the culinary styles are often not suited for pets and their required diets. Times like this one wish there was a one-stop shopping centre for Pet food in Australia, and sure enough, there is.
This article will focus primarily on food for canines of all shapes and sizes.
Step 1: Choosing the type of diet
Depending upon the recommended nutritional intake of your dog, it is easy to choose between raw and processed foods. Raw foods come in bags of chopped-up meat, such as beef, pork, and chicken, all homegrown in the farms of hardworking Aussies.
It is advisable to refer to an expert before deciding upon the diet your dog needs.
Raw diet:
Uncooked meat, edible bones, and organs primarily fill up this type of diet. Thanks to the commercialisation of dog food, homemade recipes for ingredients in such a raw diet are becoming popularised increasingly.
A numerous advantages to this, and for dogs that aren’t used to unnatural and processed diets, this is recommended, in fact, for a variety of Australian breeds.
Low-Protein diets:
These kinds focus less on the dry matter in the food and make it a semi-solid watery slush that is carb-rich and not recommended as a diet to be followed during all stages. Varying with age is the need for protein and so on for a dog, and as a result, the low protein diet, with less than 20% of it being concentrated towards protein. This provides the proper nutrition for a dog to sprint around in the Aussie outback.
Hypoallergenic diet:
As is the case for humans, certain food types will cause an anaphylaxis shock in dogs. As a result, we use hypoallergenic food types to control their reactions, including itchy skin inflammation, watery eyes, and so on.
They usually consist of novel proteins, hydrolysed proteins, and limited ingredients whose allergenic nature is tested.
Grain-free, low carb diet:
Since the recent development noted that most dogs couldn’t metabolise carbohydrates, it is of sense to make diets that aren’t rich in carbohydrates and are more focused on other essential nutrients to survive the harsh climate of our home country.
Senior diet:
As dog’s age, their ability to absorb nutritional value from conventional dog food reduces, and they thus require food catered explicitly for them. Since every endemic species has its own preference, back at home, there needs to be a specific diet in every pet food in Australia. Older dogs require a mix of dry and wet food that will round up all the stuff they need.
Step 2: Purchasing the required diet
Once sufficient knowledge has been gained on the different kinds of diet that are required through the various stages of the life cycle of a dog, the next step is to see what type of pet food items have these desired features.
The trend now is to feed your dog the healthiest available alternatives, and so the critical point is to shop organic and choose from the many all-organic food choices out here in Australia.
Everything that follows and precedes this step is entirely within the hands of the owner. A good diet always supplements a healthy lifestyle.
