Why Dogs Eat Poop And Other Revolting Things...

[Guest manawatugal]

Following on from 'mpportaits' post. Dr Ian Billinghurst is a raw food enthusiast an Australian veterinary surgeon (the BARF chap) and I have just got his book 'Give Your Dog a Bone'(1993) out of the library. This is what he says about faeces eating. "This habit is called 'caprophagy' it may seem a revolting habit but for dogs it is prefectly normal.

They obviously like it but what benefit do dogs derive from eating faeces? Faeces are a highly valuable food, consisting of the dead and living bodies of millions upon millions of bacteria. This makes faeces an excellent source of very high quality protein, of essential fatty acids, fat soluble vitamins, particularly vitamin K, the whole range of B vitamins many different minerals because of the soil in it, and a host of other nutritional factors including anti-oxidants and enzymes and also valuable fibre. Many dogs that eat commercial dog food, particularly the dry dog food, have to eat faeces to stay healthy. Usually their own. Cat's droppings are also very popular. The faeces they eat is of far greater benefit to them than the product produced by the dog food companies. Your dog needs to be fed faeces and similar revolting material or their equivalent if it is to remain healthy.

If you do not want your dog to eat this and people who kiss their dogs usually don't, then you must provide in the diet all those nutrients which are currently missing from your dog's diet and which faeces supplies. To replace faeces requires a team of ingredients like yoghurt, brewers yeast, eggs, polyunsaturated oils, an enzyme supplement and crushed raw vegetables as a source of fibre"...

he goes on to say that dogs are: carnivore, vegetarian, scavenger, hunter, opportunist and omnivore.

So far a very interesting read. He's done a lot of research over the years and found a huge improvement in his own dogs' health as well as his patients dogs once raw feeding started. Anyway the book although written 18 years ago is quite eye opening.

[Guest cendrine]

So poop is an important source of probiotics?

 

I'd rather just lay out the yogourt!

 

A question for those of you who feed raw or supply the additions suggested: Did poop eating diminish or was never an issue to begin with? Or does it occur regardless of what you feed?

 

Maybe this should be a poll.....

[Guest Lakota]

I've never had a poop eater. Lakota is raw fed; my GSD/Rotti cross was high end fish based kibble fed. Both were self-rationing with food, a neither ever had a weight issue.

[Guest IrskasMom]

Interresting

[Batmom]

Mr. Billinghurst is evidently a very entertaining writer but not an accurate or scientific one.

 

Dogs eat poop because it's there.

 

Great April Fool, though.

Edited April 1, 2011 by Batmom

[Guest mbfilby]

I have to agree with Batmom, although there is evidence that poop eating is more common with commercial kibble. I would be more inclined to believe that eating waste is a defense mechanism left over from evolutionary behavior.

[Guest BrianRke]

Is this some kind of April Fools joke? Eating feces causes a lot more harm than good.

[Guest mpportraits]

Very interesting! I'm going to try to put yogurt on her food now...you are so sweet to post this!!!!

[Guest Swifthounds]

Mr. Billinghurst is evidently a very entertaining writer but not an accurate or scientific one.

 

Dogs eat poop because it's there.

 

Great April Fool, though.

 

This.

 

Billinghurst was a a good boot in the behind for people to actually look at what was in the dog food they were feeding (but so were others, and a few of them do a much better job) and his initial popularity really got people in his country to look at food labels, but he's pretty much off the reservation on much of his advice.

 

He's responsible for the fad BARF diet, which makes anyone taking him seriously think it's a full time job to feed a dog so it's healthy. He makes some suggestions that make Ole Roy seem like a better choice, and his advice have caused a lot of people to over think a raw diet to the detriment of themselves and their dogs.

 

Can a dog get nutrients from poop when no other food is available? Sure. A dog who is well fed is not eating poop to stay alive and it's sure not eating poop for missing nutrients. They eat it because they're dogs, because they don't have the same "ick" standards we have, because they're bored, and sometimes just because we actually react to it - and that's fun.

[PrairieProf]

Well it would hardly explain why Beth obsessively eats FROZEN poop -- same nutrients in unfrozen poop but it evidently isn't as tasty and/or doesn't have that delectable crunch. (Can I say, thank God we're almost at the point when it will start staying above freezing at night? And people are getting a little lazy lazy about picking up after their dogs at the dog park??)

[Brindles]

"Coprophagy" is the correct spelling.

 

My dogs started that habit when I switched them to the 4health food at Tractor Supply Company. No problems since we switched back to the old food. I do agree that it's partly a nutrient-related issue, but I completely disagree that dogs "need" to be fed feces. Absolutely not.

 

Also, the feces of herbivores is completely different in composition from the feces of dogs and cats.

[Guest tuba]

Well played

[Guest manawatugal]

Actually it wasn't an April Fool's joke, sadly I am never that 'on to it' and didn't realise the significance of the date when posting which I did in a real hurry. Maybe just because it grosses humans out doesn't mean it's a terrible thing for dogs, after all just look at the way they greet each other! anyhow I just copied that post straight out of his book. He also believes that dogs need finely shredded up raw vegetabls for soluble and insoluble fibre as well as important nutrients and that if they are fed a meat only diet will not be healthy long term.

I always thought BARF meant to be sick in American/Canadian-ese. We say chunder/chuck/heave/puke and I am sure there are many other words to describe the same thing.

[Guest KennelMom]

BARF is used as the abbreviation for "Bones and Raw Food" or "Biologically Appropriate Raw Food"....barf also means to puke Kind of a double entendre of sorts, I suppose. BARF is a particular kind of raw food diet. You'll also refer to the "prey model" style of raw feeding. I'm sure there are others out there as well...

 

Dogs fed kibble don't need to be fed feces to be healthy. Likewise, dogs don't need to eat "finely shredded up raw vegetables" to be healthy. Dogs are a lot like people - they can survive on a variety of diets. They're pretty good generalists.

 

 

On a kibble diet, we have poo eaters that will eat it year round. Some are seasonal - only in the summer or only in the winter. On a raw diet, the poop eating pretty much stops entirely except for the most die-hard poo fanciers. I don't know if it's a combination of the poop from raw fed dogs just isn't appealing for whatever reason, or the dogs are more satisfied with an unprocessed diet...or some other reason I haven't thought of yet. But there's definitely a near elimination of poop eating when we feed raw.

 

All that said, there are a lot of animals who eat poop. Either their own or other species. It can be source of nutrients, like B12.

Edited April 1, 2011 by KennelMom

[TheFullHouse]

It can also make some dogs very sick. We almost lost Emmy to HGE caused from eating poop. Way too much bacteria than her stomach could process. Jilly Bean will also at times eat too much and get sick from it so I just prefer mine don't eat it at all.

[JaneW]

Surely it's absurd to say that material an animal's own body has already processed and rejected is nutritious and good for it to eat? But I'm not a scientist, so I could be wrong.

 

This is also rather silly: "he goes on to say that dogs are: carnivore, vegetarian,... and omnivore." Any animal that eats both plant matter and meat is an omnivore, period. Any real animal expert would know that.

[Guest Swifthounds]

Um, dogs are carnivores. That they survive if fed vegetation doesn't change their physiology.

[suebero]

Sometimes dogs eat poop (and other stuff) because they are bored. I have one who prefers to eat dirt over poop, but also eats grass, and plants. He goes out with a turn out muzzle with stool guard every time. He gets a super premium food with supplements, so I doubt it's nutrition related. I think he may have a slightly upset tummy and is trying to eat something (anything) to soothe it (just my guess). I'm glad it's not stones, but stool guard is the only answer I've found so far.

[Batmom]

Um, dogs are carnivores. That they survive if fed vegetation doesn't change their physiology.

 

Biologically, they're considered omnivores or facultative carnivores. They don't have to eat meat at all and don't solely eat meat.

[PrairieProf]

I recently read (in more than one place) that the idea of dogs as "carnivores" is a confusion arising from the fact that dogs belong to the biological order Carnivora ... but pandas, which eat only herbivorous matter, belong to it too! So dogs as "carnivores" is properly a species classification only, not a description of dogs' natural diet. I found this most enlightening.

[Guest Swifthounds]

Um, dogs are carnivores. That they survive if fed vegetation doesn't change their physiology.

 

Biologically, they're considered omnivores or facultative carnivores. They don't have to eat meat at all and don't solely eat meat.

 

Any carnivore can be fed and survive on a diet that doesn't include meats - even obligate carnivores. That doesn't change the diet they were designed to consume or the physiology that they exhibit.

[Batmom]

Any carnivore can be fed and survive on a diet that doesn't include meats - even obligate carnivores.

 

Nope. "Obligate" means they have to have it.

 

Biologists consider dogs to be omnivores or facultative carnivores. Facultative means they tend to do it, prefer it, or get best growth/reproduction from having some of it, but can get on relatively well and reproduce without it.

[Guest Swifthounds]

Any carnivore can be fed and survive on a diet that doesn't include meats - even obligate carnivores.

 

Nope. "Obligate" means they have to have it.

 

Feel free to take that up with the folks who develop and market vegan cat foods and the cats of their consumers who don't seem to be dying.

 

Biologists consider dogs to be omnivores or facultative carnivores. Facultative means they tend to do it, prefer it, or get best growth/reproduction from having some of it, but can get on relatively well and reproduce without it.

 

Some still do, yes, but they never have a good explanation for why a .02% difference in DNA from the gray wolf makes the wolf a carnivore and the dog an omnivore. They can feel free to take up that gripe with the nice folks at the Smithsonian.

[Batmom]

Um ... I'm talking about scientific classification, not chit-chat on the internet.

 

 

 

Today, it's likely possible to provide vegan cat food that supplies the needs of an obligate carnivore by adding the required chemical dietary elements (taurine, for example).

 

An even smaller difference in DNA can mean a lot. For example, the difference between a human who can digest milk and one who can't; the difference between a human who has type 1 diabetes and one who doesn't .....

Edited April 3, 2011 by Batmom

[Guest Swifthounds]

Last I checked, the Smithsonian's classification folks weren't "chit-chat" on the internet, though I can't be certain what they do in their spare time. They could be total Facebook addicts.