Puppy food and pooping...

pumpkinlady · #1 08/01/12, 11:59 AM

I got a new puppy about a week and half ago. He is only 10 weeks old and a mini doxie. The woman was feeding the pups purina puppy chow. I thought I would try something with less grains in it and bought a bag of "Simply Nourish" from PetSmart. I did mix it with the other food so not to cause him any trouble.

The problem I am having is that he poops more than any pup I have ever had.
Just today in the 7 hours he has been up he pooped 3 times. No doubt he will poop at least 2 more times today. I am concerned that the new food isn't giving him what he needs and is just passing thru him. With other dogs it always seemed like the better the food the less would come back out. So I would be able to feed less and the dog got better nourished.

I hate to go back to a corn/grain based food. What good puppy food is out there I can try?

Veronica · #2 08/01/12, 12:08 PM

Here's a list of good puppy foods.

I feed Fromm and Acana to my dogs. I don't think they are available at Petsmart, but Wellness and a couple of the others are.

JasoninMN · #3 08/01/12, 12:25 PM

Sounds like a typical puppy to me, give it time, as he grows he will go less.

wendle · #4 08/01/12, 12:39 PM

I feed mine purina one, puppy formula. Usually I see two to three stools a day. Not so runny either. I know it has grain in it, but they seem to do very well with it.

dlskidmore · #5 08/01/12, 12:41 PM

I think you just picked the wrong "better food". I do find that better kibbles make smaller poop. In fact, if you didn't have a list of ingredients, you could use that as a rough judge of how much of the kibble is actually digestible food.

You didn't mention which flavor you're feeding, but the two I looked at listed a lot of grain (rice/oatmeal) and no meat meal. Real whole meat has a lot of water in it and the water counts towards the ingredient weight even though it gets cooked out, most grains are dry and weigh less per kcal, so even if real meat is the first ingredient, if dry grain is the second ingredient he's not getting many of his calories from meat. Whole meat is more expensive than meat meal (mostly due to transportation and storage costs) so they're going to put as little meat in as they can get away with to make it the first ingredient.

Look at the first 6 ingredients, and look for more meat meals than grains/potatoes/legumes. Watch for them trying to hide the food's real ratios by breaking up the grain/veggie component into a lot of sub-ingredients to move them down the list. Nothing wrong with trace amounts of parsley and carrots, but if there are a dozen veggies listed, that's adding up to a significant part of the food that's not very digestible to dogs.

I feed a raw diet, but when I fed kibble I used Orijen. With Great Danes, reducing stool size is important. The "High Quality" food the rescue recommended caused gigantic poops.

Maura · #6 08/01/12, 09:16 PM

Could be his system is clearing out. If you switch to grain free you don't have to mix the food. The food mixing is because kibble will be made with different grains, corn in one, corn and wheat in another. This is what causes the tummy upset. My fosters get raw and the only problem I've ever seen is the detox (big poops, bad body smell).

GrannyCarol · #7 08/02/12, 12:21 AM

You didn't mention if there is a possibility he needs to be wormed, they can make for stool problems too.

pumpkinlady · #8 08/02/12, 11:11 AM

Thanx for all the feed back. He was wormed so that isn't the issue. I am keeping a close eye on him to make sure he doesn't lose weight and I will be trying a new food the next time I go to a store.