het boek "Small Annimal Nutrition" van Sandie Agar ISBN 0-7506-4575-X eerste ppublicatie in 2001
Ten eerste een stukje over 'home-made diets'
It is stating the obvious to say that in the wild, animals eat raw, unprocessed foo, but it is a fact that is often overlooked. They eat not only what is, to humans, the acceptable bits, muscle meats, liver and kidney, but also those we consider unacceptable, bones, brain, skin, gut, and gut contents, thus giving a much more balanced diet. We are probably not going to feed whole carcasses, BUT FEEDING RAW MEAT AND BONES DOES FORM A MORE NATURAL DIET, even though many people will have concerns about giving bones to dogs.
Problems seen in veterinary surgeries caused by feeding bones range from pieces of bone stuck in the mmouth through damaged gut to constipation. COOKED BONES ARE MORE BRITTLE AND MORE LIKELY TO CAUSE PROBLEMS, but even the large uncooked 'knuckle' bones have been known to initiate a sudden visit to the vet. WE DO, HOWEVER, ONLY SEE THE PROBLEM CASES AND THERE MAY BE MANY DOGS THAT ARE REGURARLY GIVEN BONES WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS ARISING. Many scavenging dogs, for exemple, will regurarly eat chicken carcasses, chop bones, etc., with impunity. The best approach is to warn owners of the potential risks so they can make an informed decision, to feed or not to feed bones.
COOKING ALTERS FOODSTUFFS; cereals and vegetables become easier to digest because starches in them are broken down, BUT SOME NUTRIENTS ARE DESTROYED BY HEAT AND OVERHEATING PROTEINS CAN LEAD TO CHEMICAL REACTIONS TAKING PLACE, WHICH MAKE THEM LESS DIGESTIBLE. Taking this into account, home-made diets should only be lightly cooked and any water used in cooking should be kept and mixed with the food, thus saving leached nutrients. Salt should not be added. Home-made diets should also contain AS MUCH VARIETY AS POSSIBLE TO ENSURE ADEQUATE NUTRITION. It is when trying to formulate home-made diets that the preceding energy calculations come into their own.
It is immportant to stress to the owners that cats are obligate carnivores whose bodies are programmed to function on a diet consisting mainly of protein and fat. They normally eat little carbohydrate other than that in the gut of their prey. PROPRIETARY CAT FOODS NOW SEEM TO CONTAIN INCREASED AMOUNTS OF CARBOHYDRATE, LEADING OWNERS TO THINK THIS IS ACCEPTABLE PRACTICE. Commercially prepared foods are supplemented with the necessary nutrients, e.g. taurine, which are of animal origin to ensure an adequate supply. This supplementation is normally not possible with home-mae diets and those which contain too much carbohydrate will have inadequate supplies of some nutrients. CATS CANNOT BE VEGETARIANS. [...]
Providing a balancedd home-made diet is possible, but requires considerable skill, can be expensive, and cooking may produce smells which are unaacceptable to human noses but will cause a queue of the neighbourhood's cats to form at the doorstep. For these and other reasons, the majority of people will opt for those foods which are specially prepared, ready to feed and readily available - proprietary diets.
Nou, het is niet ideaal, vooral dat gedeelte over licht koken, maar ik vind het vooral positief toch...
Er volgt meer uit dit boek, maar ik moet nu even twee uurtjes studeren
