TOOT 113 — Animal Nutrition

DOG and CAT Nutrition

• Dogs evolved from the grey wolf but during domestication acquired a suite of genes associated with starch
digestion and metabolism.

• Dogs are not carnivores.

• They are best described as meat-eating omnivores capable of digesting and assimilating a wide variety of
feedstuffs of both plant and animal origin.

• Dogs and cats are mono-gastric, post-gastric fermenters with simple and relatively short gastrointestinal tracts
and small ceca

• Cats are strict carnivores and have a high requirement for animal protein,

• They require pre-formed vitamin A, taurine, arachidonic acid, and high dietary levels of niacin, arginine and
sulphur amino acids

• Cats are poor at regulating protein metabolism and rapidly show adverse clinical signs on low-protein diets.

• More than 40% of dogs and cats in developed countries are overweight (30-35%) or obese (5-10%).

• These animals are at increased risk of developing several pathologies (diabetes mellitus, pancreatitis,
osteoarthritis, hip dysplasia, pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease, reduced tolerance to exercise and heat,
possibly increased neoplasms)

• Overweight dogs have a significantly reduced lifespan (30% decrease) and reduced quality of life. Risk

factors for overweight dogs include:

• Breed
• Neutering
• Female
• increased age
• high feeding frequency
• larger number of people in the household
• feeding of treats
• obese owners
• low socioeconomic status of owners
• lack of exercise
• Hypothyroidism
• hyperadrenocorticism
• increased availability of low-priced food.

• For cats, provision of dry food ad libitum is the major risk factor for obesity.
• Teaching cat and dog owners to condition score their animals accurately is an essential feature of a holistic
health pet care program.
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• Homemade diets are almost always unbalanced, suggesting it is difficult for owners to formulate a nutritionally
adequate diet from a few simple ingredients.

• There is no evidence of nutritional benefit of BARF® diets and some evidence (poor quality) of a nutritional risk.
• There is strong evidence that raw diets present a pathogen risk to both dogs and owners

• It is possible to formulate a nutritionally adequate vegetarian diet for dogs but the challenges presented by the
high levels of antinutritional factors in plant foods are such that it would be difficult for a non-professional to
formulate a balanced and palatable vegetarian diet for dogs.

• Adverse food reactions in dogs are common

Diversity relevant to nutritional considerations in dogs includes:

• variance in bodyweight (1.5-100 kg)

• variance in appetite drive (e.g., Labrador versus toy dogs)
• variance in body shape and composition {e.g., greyhound versus basset hound)
• variance in propensity to obesity (e.g., Labrador versus greyhound)
• variance in exercise-drive and ability (e.g., border collie versus lapdogs}
• variance in work potential (Alaskan husky versus Pekingese)

• cats are obligate meat eaters, and this has implications for the development of feeding programs that are
consistent with health and longevity.

• Cats also have several metabolic idiosyncrasies that are of importance in designing diets

Unique features of feline nutrition

• Cats utilize protein as a major energy source and have a very high protein turnover rate

• Cats utilize protein more for maintenance than for growth and so have a very high protein requirement.

• Cats are poor at regulating their protein metabolism with changes in protein intake, so are prone to deficiencies
and toxicities of amino acids

• Cats cannot synthesize taurine, so taurine is an essential dietary component

Cats have a high dietary requirement for the essential amino acid arginine to drive the urea cycle to remove excess
ammonia from meat protein metabolism.

• Cats cannot convert sufficient amino acid tryptophan to vitamin B3 (niacin) and so require high le vels of dietary
preformed niacin.

• Cats cannot synthesize arachidonic acid from linoleic acid and so require preformed dietary arachidonic acid.

• Cats are deficient in glucokinase, an enzyme in the glycolysis pathway, and so cats are poor at utilizing simple
sugars

• Cats do not adjust their water intake to feed water content very well.

Protein requirements of dogs for maintenance, growth, gestation and lactation

• The total amount of protein required by dogs depends on the quality of the protein in the feed (digestibility of
the protein and its essential amino acid composition).
Vitamin and mineral requirements of dogs

• Clearly a greater density of most nutrients is required in the feeds of growing puppies, pregnant or lactating
bitches, although they will be fed at higher rates of energy intake to meet their higher energy needs, and this also
provides additional nutrients.

Protein requirements for cats for maintenance, growth, gestation and lactation

Cats are unusual in their protein metabolism for the following reasons:

1. Cats on low-protein diets continue to use amino acids for energy and on high-protein diets are prone to amino acid
toxicities

2. Amino acid catabolism in cats occurs at a very high rate regardless of protein intake, which means they have a high
obligatory loss of nitrogen even when fed protein-free diets.

• cats use most of their protein for maintenance (60%) compared with growth (40%), in contrast to dogs, which
only use 30% of their protein requirement for maintenance and 70% for growth

3. Taurine (2-aminoethanesulphonic acid) is an unusual amino acid that is not incorporated into proteins but is
found as a free amino acid or in small peptides in tissues.

• Cats fed on taurine-deficient diets develop specific deficiency signs with time (months or years), because the
rate of synthesis is low and the relative metabolic demand in cats is high due to their high protein turnover.

4. Niacin or nicotinamide is an essential vitamin acquired in animals from two sources: dietary niacin and
synthesis from the essential amino acid, tryptophan.

• The rate of niacin synthesis in cats is insufficient for normal metabolism and additional preformed niacin is
required.

5. Cats require more sulphur amino acid (methionine plus cysteine) than dogs because they produce the sulphur
amino acid felinine and N-acetylfelinine, which are pheromones excreted in urine, particularly in torn cats.

• Sulphur amino acids in cats then are required for hair and skin production, muscle growth, felinine production,
taurine production and for the extensive methylation reactions in rapid metabolism, making the sulphur amino acids
the first-limiting amino acids in cat diets.

6. Arginine is required for the urea cycle and in cats this cycle is critical to the disposal of the large amounts of
ammonia generated by the high rate of protein catabolism.

• Within hours of consuming an arginine-free diet, cats develop hyperammonaemia, ennesis (vomiting), muscle
spasms, ataxia, hyperaesthesia, tetanic muscle contractions, coma and death.

Types of dog food

• formulated heavily on the basis of price points in the marketplace.

• Some of the formulations are based around convenience to the owner (e.g. dry foods are easy to carry and
store) and many are extruded to appear as human foods

• dog foods can be classified on the basis of texture/moisture (dry, semi-moist, wet canned), market segment
(generic, supermarket, premium, super premium) or therapeutic.

• In addition, there is an increasing interest in raw food diets, vegetarian diets and homemade diets
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Issues in dog and cat nutrition

1. Coprophagy (faeces eating) in dogs

• common in dogs, affecting almost 50% of the domestic canine population at some point in their lives

• It is a behaviour of great concern to dog owners, with 6% of dogs returned to a shelter being relinquished due to
coprophagy

• Some owners consider the practice so abhorrent they consider euthanasia of their pet.

• Coprophagy in dogs is considered a behavioral problem with perceived, but not evidenced, negative impacts on
the health of both pet and owner

• Coprophagy in dogs is considered by many to indicate a nutritional problem

Coprophagic dogs do display depraved appetite in which non-food items are consumed (pica), and both
behaviors are associated with anxiety disorders, suggesting that coprophagy is a behavioral rather than
nutritional disorder

• This is supported by the fact that providing regular vitamin or enzyme supplements has no effect on the
incidence of coprophagy

• There is no evidence that changing a dog's diet decreases its tendency to eat feces, nor does feeding frequency
relate to the incidence of coprophagy

Dogs with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency eat feces but this is associated with undigested fats and other
nutrients in the feces and is unrelated to coprophagy in normal dogs

• Other reasons for coprophagy in dogs include searching by castrated males for testosterone, expression of
anxiety related disorders, boredom, attention-seeking, evolutionary scavenging behavior or a continuation of
the practice whereby females eat puppy feces to remove odors attracting predators. Three most effective
treatments for coprophagia in dogs

• removal of feces

• positive reward

• distracting the dog

2. The 'humanization' and 'premiumization' of dog feeding practices

• There is an increasing interest in the use of 'non-commercial' foods such as homemade foods, vegetarian and
raw foods

• Can be attributed to two driving forces: the desire to treat dogs as human family members {'humanization') and
the desire to feed dogs the best quality feeds possible {'premiumization')

Raw food and homemade diets for dogs:

• There is no evidence of nutritional benefit of raw foods to dogs but there is some (poor-quality) evidence of a
nutritional risk

• Concerns about the microbiological safety of raw foods

 • There are many reports of the presence of pathogenic bacteria and particularly Salmonella spp. in raw
meatbased diets, and evidence that these bacteria are shed in faeces posing a potential zoonotic threat to dog owners

Vegetarian diets for dogs?

• Provided a nutritionally balanced, digestible diet can be formulated that is palatable to dogs, and maintains
health of the dog in its physiological state (pregnancy, lactation, growing, exercising, working, etc.), there is no
nutritional reason not to adopt such a ration if so desired

• It is possible to formulate a diet without meat that meets the nutritional requirements of dogs, but plant-based
diets suffer the following potential problems:

a) They may have high levels of non-starch polysaccharides, which are indigestible or are digested in the large
intestine with potential flatulence problems

b) Plant proteins are often low in lysine, the first-limiting amino acid for dogs.

c) c. Many potential plant sources of protein such as soybean, contain anti-nutritive factors such as trypsin
inhibitors, lectins, tannins and phytates.

d) d. Plant proteins may be contaminated with mycotoxins.

e) e. Some plant protein sources are unpalatable

3. Obesity in dogs

• Obesity, defined as a dog 15-20% overweight - most common nutritional disorder in dogs.

• Dogs classified as overweight or obese account for —40% of the canine populations in most developed countries,
with obesity in —5-8% of all dogs

• Dogs with BCS scores above 5 on a 9-point scale, lived to a median age of 11,2 years, while their restricted-fed
counterparts lived to a median age of 13 years: a 16% increase in longevity

• The risk factors for obesity include breed, female gender, neutering and age

• Susceptible breeds include Labrador retriever, cairn terrier, cavalier King Charles spaniel, cocker spaniel,
dachshund, basset hound and beagle.

• Feeding once-per-day is associated with obesity incidence as is the feeding of additional treats, living in a single
dog household and lack of exercise

• In preventing and reversing obesity in dogs, the first challenge is to teach owners how to assess the body
condition of their dog and to learn to appreciate when their dog is overweight or obese.

• Having convinced an owner that their dog needs an obesity-management strategy should be implemented. 4.

Food allergies and adverse food reactions in dogs

Adverse reactions to foods can take several forms:

• food allergies (FA), in which immunological mechanisms and hypersensitivity reactions occur
 • food intolerances (FI), which might reflect an enzyme deficiency in the animal {e.g. lactase), a toxin in the food,
or a pharmacological response (e.g. drug-like effect of a food component such as histidine in poorly preserved fish is
converted to histamine in the gut).

References:

Animal Nutrition from Theory to Practice, Hynd, P.I., 2019