Feeding help!

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moppett

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I was wondering if you could help. I am having trouble getting my two hounds to eat. I rescued them both a year and a half ago, they are now 2yrs approx. and when I got them were unhandled and a little feral! I think they’d been in a really hectic rescue centre/crazy ladys home with far too many animals and total chaos. They’d been there since 12 weeks I think?

1) They won’t eat from bowls.
I have tried plastic trays, ice cream tubs, lids, the floor – but they don’t seem happy/comfortable eating from them. I inevitably end up caving and feeding them by hand. I have tried putting the food down for 10mins, picking up, and then trying the next mealtime. But last time it went 3 days and one of them made himself sick by eating grass. They need to gain weight so I couldn’t afford to hold out any longer.

2) They are so fussy and turn down food
They just sniff and turn away at their food. Sometimes with very small pieces of meat or little tiny meatballs of mince I can coax them to eat by hand(usually if I can coax them to eat just a few bites they will get a bit more enthusiastic and eat well). But I feel I’m begging them to eat. I usually resist getting something else out for them but I don’t want them dropping weight. - Perhaps they aren’t super fussy and its part nervousness? Apprehension? I’ve tried putting food down, backing away and leaving them to it but they’ll just wonder round the garden, or sniff the corners of the kitchen. I try separating them but they then just wonder why they’ve been put in the kitchen on their own and don’t even sniff the bowl of food!

I currently feed: MVM beef, lamb and tripe minces. Chicken hearts, wings, thighs, drumsticks. Lamb kidneys, liver and hearts. Eggs. Cubes of beef are their favourite but too expensive (think Tesco stewing beef!). 3 times a week they will get goats milk yoghurt. Weekends they get lamb bones, beef ribs, filled hooves, marrow bones.
They won’t eat chicken carcasses, chicken minces, ANY economy mince, pheasant, or rabbit.

Out of desperation I bought a bag of kibble to feed in the mornings to see if it was raw they hated – but they don’t seem to prefer one to the other particularly. The only upside for me feeding kibble was that I wasn’t wasting defrosted raw food (or making my bitch even chubbier than she is now) and it is the only way I can think of to get their salmon oil and coconut oil into them.

I feel such a novice – can’t believe I’ve been hand feeding them for a year now! I just want my hounds to take after my other dog who gets SO excited every meal time and wolfs down whatever is in the bowl! (also from a selfish point of view…wrestling to tear little chunks off a chicken drumstick at 6.30am in work clothes to persuade 2 disinterested dogs isn’t ideal!).

If you've read to the end of this you're AMAZING and thank you :)
 
I hate to say this.......... but by pandering to their food fetish you are making them worse. You are going to have to toughen up :) I know cos i learned from bitter experience. My bedlington was incredibly hard to get to eat. He had no interest, and much as you have done I tried everything, including the hand feeding of specially cooked chicken! He went on starvation for days at a time, and I gave in and tried by hand to get him to eat. It was a big issue for me, and I suspect I was making it into a bigger issue for him. I was making him a picky eater, by pandering to his whims, and chopping and changing the foods. He had competition, was just not interested at all. UNTIL........ I started fostering whippets, and they arrived with a huge bag of raw chicken necks. He stole one of those necks, and ate it, then stole another. He ate 4 necks, one after the other. I had never in 18 months seen him eat like it. So I moved him off everything else and just onto chicken necks. He had as many as 6 a day, and looked great. I then added in oil, he carried on eating. Now 18 months later he will eat most anything. However he still has days where he does not want to eat, and on those days, I take his bowl away after 10 minutes. His normal diet is raw chicken necks/ wings, raw mince, from butchers, or Natures Menu. a tin of oily fish once a week, and leftover veg and food from us. It has taken me 3 years to get to the stage where I dont worry at all about whether he will eat, now I just put it down, and if he doesnt eat it, my whippet may steal it, or he gets it the following morning. No dog has ever starved themself to death, stick with raw, but dont give such a variety to start off with. An occasional treat is fine, but you need to get a normal eating pattern going. Having hooves, bones, yoghurt ribs is great, but you have to remember they will fill them up, and mean that standard food is less interesting. Imagine, a kid at a party, just crisps and sweets, and a pile of veg, they will fill up on the crisps and sweets and non of the veg. So dont give the treats, unless they have finished eating, and the treats are to occupy them.
 
Bosworth you are AMAZING! Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I am SO SO relieved to know that someone else has had the same problem!! Its just I've had them for over a year and they still look like skinny welfare cases and then I feel like I'm starving them if they choose not to eat what I've given them. Especially when they appear so hungry they're eating grass from the garden which then makes them sick.
I've just done a MVM food order for next week. I will start being strict. I know they eat chicken, beef and lamb so will persevere. I must keep reminding myself that a dog won't starve itself.
If only mine were like yours and discover a love of chicken necks! The boys turn down so much food my girlie is an overweight hound who looks like a corgi on stick legs.
 
What sort of hounds are they moppett? The eating grass from the garden has nothing to do with being hungry incidentally, all dogs do it to a greater or lesser extent to balance their diet :p Of my four greyhounds, Amy does it all the time, Flick and Hoover less so, and Islay never does it :)
 
Lévrier;12433210 said:
What sort of hounds are they moppett? The eating grass from the garden has nothing to do with being hungry incidentally, all dogs do it to a greater or lesser extent to balance their diet :p Of my four greyhounds, Amy does it all the time, Flick and Hoover less so, and Islay never does it :)
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Interesting. One of the boys eats grass more than the other. But it always makes him sick. Just like a salivary foamy grass-ball.
I have 2 Ibizan Hounds and then a mixture of a hound. The mix must have galgo (spanish greyhound) in her as she has greyhound feet and although she was emaciated and slight when I rescued her...she's turned out to be quite well built - like a Podenco Campanero.
 
Hounds naturally eat grass to obtain chlorophyll. This is prefectly natural. You may also find them eating soil which I think is to aid their digestion.

Remember to worm regularly.

Best as an earlier poster says, to settle on a fixed diet rather than swap around. They will eat when they are hungry enough.

A tip with getting them to eat is to put some pilchard sauce from the can onto the food as dogs usually really like this
 
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twiggy2 said:
can you put some photos of them up?
from the side standing square and from above looking squarely down at them would be best
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Agree with this idea - my greyhounds are actually an ideal weight, but most people with rescue greyhounds think they are too thin! It would be interesting to see them. I love Ibizan Hounds, lucky you Moppett :) :) :)
 
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