Feeding

The Abruzzese shepherd dog is an animal that doesn't have big alimentary pretensions. Once their food regime was very scarce and this has strongly tempered its characterist. 
The food requirement is varying from individual to individual and wanders around the 600 grs of meat a day. guilio
Clearly the necessary quantity of food various also for other factors. 
A dog that works needs a greater quantity of  food vice versa a dog that develops a sedentary life needs  to receive a inferior quantity of food 
You could be said that perhaps an excess of foods is more dangerous of a scarce feeding , in fact, anatomically their digestive apparatus is very short and too much a rich ration could often give problems place as the torsion of the stomach, a pathology that strikes the dogs of big ransom and that it is often cause of death. 
To avoid that the dog can have these problems it will need, therefore, to divide the daily ration in more meals so that to avoid that the dog can have too much a great ration. 
This makes necessary in the dogs that have pups since in this phase their daily requirement can reach until 4 kgs/day of meat. 

Meat or Raw food?


One of the most recurrent questions that are proposed it is that tied up to the type of food to administer to our dogs. Today exist in commerce a lot of foods that supply to the energetic requirement of our animals.
Surely this doesn't mean that the meat is not a good food, in fact, these dogs are grown feeding itself with what the shepherd succeeded in recovering for them: generally serum of milk but also discards of butcheries or dry bread. Many believe that to cook the meat both better and to give it raw because so possible microbes are eliminated or even because "so the dog doesn't eat the animals from courtyard". In reality the raw feeding has its benefits: the cooking reduces the food power of the meat and lowers the content of vitamins of it. It doesn't need then to think that the stomach of the dogs both as ours. The dogs are able to bear and to digest indigestible foods for the man and they surely have less problems of us. You can be held therefore that the raw meat is a good food for these dogs and that therefore he can quietly feed these dogs with meat and bones raw. Recent studies, have shown besides, that the dogs fed with the method BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) they have very less probabilities to be afflicted from displasia. 

 

Are the bones dangerous?

Another false myth is that that the bones that don't have to absolutely be dates to the dogs. 
The bones kind those of chicken are easily shater from the dogs and they contribute to satisfy the enormous requirement of kick of which these dogs have need kind in the period of growth where they can come to grow of 300 grams a day.  The bones, contribute besides to eliminate from the residual teeth of food, that in the long time can provoke problems to the set of teeth of the dog with the appearance of caries. Surely a danger exists because of the fragments of bones that can provoke damages to the digestive apparatus but this problem  can easily be old eliminating the long bones, kind those of turkey and rabbit that for them conformation they have the tendency to splinter themselves and to be sharp. Once, when these dogs lived on the pasture, their feeding was very poor. The shepherds prepared them of the mashes formed by the serum of milk and by the bread that it advanced. It dealt with an extremely nourishing food that however it was not present for all the periods of the year. In some cases the dogs provided from if chasing small rodents lizards or simple crickets. The tied up shepherds to their dogs made to bring together with the restocking you also discard of butcheries that however they immediately ended after a few times.

 

The dogs reproduced in this page all originate from the private collection of Marco Petrella.

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