Feeding Your French Bulldog – the Best Foods for Health
We feed our French Bulldogs a raw diet, consisting of chicken parts, beef heart, ground turkey necks, eggs, ground vegetables, yogurt and other natural, healthy ingredients.
However, we understand that not every puppy buyer has time to spend hours in the kitchen preparing a home made meal for their dogs (heck, sometimes it’s hard enough to find time to cook for ourselves!). With that in mind, we’ve created this list of foods which we recommend for our puppy buyers, and anyone else interested in feeding their Frenchies a healthy, premium diet with an emphasis on fresh ingredients.
Choosing which method of feeding is right for your French Bulldog depends on their own nutritional needs, and your personal time constraints. All of them are top quality foods, and better than most dogs are fed on a daily basis!
HOME MADE RAW DOG FOOD
We feed a mixed meal consisting of a ratio of 80% protein (ground turkey necks, diced organ meats, ground muscle meat), 12% ground vegetables (greens, orange vegetables, some fruit), 5% fish (herring, salmon and mackerel), and 3% other ingredients (yogurt, eggs, cider vinegar). Any carbs are from sweet potato and squash, although we sometimes add oatmeal for puppies. If you’d like our complete recipe and preparation instructions, please view these pages.
This is a time consuming feeding choice, but you’ll know exactly what your French Bulldog is eating, and we’ve never had a dog with a digestive or allergy issue on this diet, even if they have had one on other commercial foods.
COMMERCIAL RAW DIET MIXES
There are several types of pre made raw diet mixes on the market, and they are a definite time saver. They have all your ground vegetables, minerals, bone meal and supplements – you just add fresh meat, fish or poultry, depending on which works best for your individual dog. In cases of extreme protein allergies, you can even use a meat substitute, like tofu or lentils. Some mixes are grain free, others have no added fruits or vegetables, and some have whole rolled oats.
Using a pre made pre mix allows you control over the details of your dog’s diet, without the extensive work required to make a raw diet from scratch. Additionally, the Urban Wolf blend is ideally suited to baking into a loaf type product that easily keeps for several days in the fridge, making traveling or boarding simpler than carrying raw with you.
COMMERCIAL RAW FROZEN DOG FOODS
Commercially made frozen raw diets are definitely the simplest and most convenient way to feed your dog a safe, balanced raw diet. None of the fuss of shopping, chopping, grinding, mixing or freezing, with all the benefits of feeding raw.
Most good commercial raw manufacturers understand the importance of using safe, sanitary manufacturing practices, and top quality, human grade ingredients. The best of these companies have done the research to ensure that their recipes are complete and balanced, which means they will provide greater than adequate nutrition to keep your dog healthy and in optimum condition.
FREEZE DRIED OR DEHYDRATED RAW DOG FOODS
I know that some people are a bit touchy about handling raw meats. There’s also the convenience factor – it’s much simpler to grab a bag of food, add some water and feed, than it is to remember to take raw out of the freezer every morning. Another consideration is if you travel frequently, either with or without your pet – some boarding kennels won’t feed raw meat diets, and carrying them with you can be awkward, if not impossible to accomplish. Dehydrated or freeze dried diets can be useful for this – they are shelf stable, pour and serve formulas that give the benefits of raw, with the convenience of kibble.
They come in three basic forms:
- Dry powdered mixes with pieces of meat, fruit and veg – similar to dried soup mixes (Honest Kitchen, Grandma Lucy’s, Sojos, Addiction, Dr. Harveys)
- Freeze dried raw patties or pieces – ground, frozen raw, with the moisture removed (Primal, Stella and Chewys, Orijen)
- Dehydrated, shredded raw – raw diet, mixed, ground, and shredded, with the appearance and consistency of soft jerky (Ziwi Peak)
KIBBLE (DRY DOG FOOD DIETS)
Well, think of this as last but not least. I know that some people just don’t want anything to do with raw. I can accept that, but we still have a responsibility to choose a food that provides optimum nutrition, with a minimum of garbage ingredients. Even if you are feeding kibble, you can still feed one that is grain free, high in protein sourced from whole named animal or fish sources (not meals or byproducts), free of fillers and extra fats, baked and not extruded. I strongly urge you to avoid corn, wheat, fillers, and most of all, any non descript ‘meat’ or ‘animal’ ingredients that don’t specify what specific animals they come from.