Choosing The Right Food For Your Pet

There was a time when people would feed their pets scraps from their dinner plate and this would be enough to help them get by. However, to care for your animal properly, this is discouraged because:

• Human food isn’t always suitable for the pets and can be hard to digest.
• Eating human scraps can make your pets fat.
• It encourages animals like dogs and cats to scavenge for food; they will return to you every dinnertime for food.

There are personal reasons for the choices you make. For example, what you can afford. High quality pet food isn’t always cheap and if you have more than one small animal, you may need to find a balance between nutritious and affordable.

Certain nutrients are essential for all animals:

• Carbohydrates
• Fats
• Proteins
• Minerals and vitamins
• Lots of water

As with people there has to be a balance. Carbohydrates and fats give energy; too much will encourage your animal to be overweight if they don’t get enough exercise. You need to be especially cautious with an older pet that may not be as active. Too much of one type of vitamin can also cause problems; if you use supplements always follow the directions.

Of course, animals have opinions too! You may choose an expensive nutritious meal, but if an animal doesn’t like the taste, they may not eat it. So always buy a new type of food in a small quantity first to see if your pet likes it – you don’t want to be stuck with a 20kg bag of food they won’t eat.

Whenever you are giving a pet a new food, do so in small quantities. Suddenly changing their food in one go, can result in diarrhoea and other digestive problems. Always check the packet to see how much you should be giving the animal. Some animals will gorge themselves and keep eating if you keep feeding. A pet food will give you clear directions of how much to feed depending on the animal’s weight.