Tag Archives: dog food

Feeding the rabbiting pack

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This comes as a surprise to most people, but no the rabbiting dogs don’t live on rabbits for their dinner.  Don’t get me wrong, they do love a feed of it. Especially at the moment as the snackpacks are here (very young rabbits) The dogs just grab and go!

The reason is very straight forward, they can’t live on them as they don’t contain enough fat. If you want to go on a crash diet then get into the rabbit meat but be warned, we can’t survive on it.

I started the dogs on Mighty Mix a few months ago and they are doing very well on it. We’re giving them the frozen concentrate, feeding the usual way for us which is into a bucket and help themselves whenever they want.

Mighty Mix

Wolf the little guts is the only one overweight but she’s just had a litter of pups so not to worried about that. For now.

They have also spent time on the nourish biscuits and did well on them. Was looking after a pigdog pack (What a pain in the arse they were) and managed to get them looking really good on the large dog biscuits and dogrolls. They were skin and bones when they got here and looked bloody good when they left.

Price wise it seems to be working out slightly cheaper, a bag of frozen lasting about 9 days. On the other brands I would go through two bags for the same time frame which equates to an absolute minimum of $120 IF you can get it on special, which often you can’t.

So far very happy with it. I must get a bag of the treats they have and see what the dogs think of them….

Feeding the pack

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This is by far the biggest job, namely keeping good food up to them that they will eat. Sounds simple, but it’s not. Story below…

The GWP - German Wirehaired Pointer

The GWP – German Wirehaired Pointer whose main job is deer and pig control

The main problem I have is getting food that is high enough in energy levels to keep weight on them but doesn’t cost silly money.
The variety in dog size throughout the pack is where it gets tricky, dogs from 5KG through to just over 25KG means one size doesn’t really fit all. If you buy any working dog food it’s normally targeting large dogs, as that is what most farm dogs are being that those dogs are heading dogs (Strong eyed collies) and Huntaways. They tend to start at around 30KG and go up from there.
This lot can’t just survive on fat and trim from the butcher, although they do enjoy it a few times a week. But they become bored with it quick if that is all they get and go backwards on that too. They LOVE a feed of rabbit, but I try to keep that to a maximum of once a week. Rabbit is such a lean meat that the dogs lose weight and very fast if that is all they get, and it only takes 3-4 days if they are working before you start to see this happen.

I was using Eukanuba and had reasonable results, but they choose to rip me off. I bought 36 bags of it at over $4000 dollars, a lot of money in one lump, but that was meant to give me the best discount possible. Then a mate went in at the same time to a different supplier and bought 6 bags for a lot less. I hate getting ripped off!!
So they can get bent.

Just three days ago I got onto a New Zealand made dog food manufacturer/retailer, MightyMix I’m trying out the MightyMix Nourish but after a couple of feeds some of the dogs don’t seem to keen on it. However I will be trying their MightyMix Frozen Concentrate as apparently this is the bees knees (Really good!!) I also much prefer to support local business whenever possible.