Does diet affect fertility in dogs? The science says YES!!!
So we’re going to talk about some of the things that you should be getting in your diet for your dogs to boost their fertility, and what the studies show, and also things that you might want to avoid because they have a known negative effect on the fertility of dogs.
So fertility in general in dogs, and humans as well, is declining worldwide, and probably a lot of it’s due to environmental toxins. But first we’re going to talk about things that you need to have in the diet rather than things that you need to leave out.
What should you ADD to the diet for great dog fertility?
There have been a lot of studies done on breeding dog supplements. For example, what micro-nutrients and antioxidants can do to boost fertility in dogs that have poor sperm function and low sperm counts.
Antioxidants and Canine Fertility
As far as antioxidants go, the most important of these are the omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. The ideal ratio of these two fatty acids is four parts of omega-6 to one part of omega-3. And the very best source of these, that’s very easy for you as a breeder to supplement your dogs with, is actually sardines. So I’ve got some sardines here. Thought I’d show you. This is what I feed my dogs.
How much sardines to feed:
Just giving them sardines once a week is enough. My dogs are roughly 10 kilos (20 pounds) in weight and the dose that I use is 140 grams, or about five ounces of sardines/20lb body weight. I just buy them whole. They actually like the bigger ones, which tend to be cheaper, which is great. And of course I thaw them out for my dogs. I don’t cook them, I just feed them raw. You can also dehydrate them, which they definitely prefer.
Sometimes I have to make sure they’re pretty hungry before they’ll actually eat a sardine. If your dogs are not used to it, then you might want to chop it up and mix it through other food. And maybe give them a little bit with the other food during the week.
My dogs will eat whole sardines, no trouble at all. And if they don’t I just serve up the same food to them the next day until they’re hungry enough to eat it.
Liver
I also recommend that you give your dogs about 140 grams or five ounces per fortnight of lamb liver. Again, this is per 10 kilos body weight or 20 pound body weight. So I just buy lamb liver. I prefer lamb to beef. The reason I prefer lamb is because it usually hasn’t gone through a feed lot, and it’s not likely to be a sick animal.
Liver is so packed with nutrition, and also is a good source of those omega-3 and six fatty acids that we talked about with the sardines. So if you’ve got your sardines per week and your liver per fortnight, then you’ve got it covered.
The reason we don’t feed more liver is because we are worried about overdosing vitamin A. Nutrients are like anything else. In the right dose they’re marvelous. If you have too little then you can have health issues. If you have too much you can get toxicity.
You need to be a little bit careful of not overdosing with things like vitamin A and vitamin D, and just make sure you’re feeding the right amount. So do be careful with your supplementation.
Micronutrients that boost dog fertility
The micronutrients that have been found to boost sperm quality and numbers in normal dogs, are vitamin E and selenium, zinc and folic acid (B9).
There have been studies done on this: male dogs that had lower than normal fertility were supplemented with high doses these four nutrients and they found a significant increase in fertility as a result.
Now one thing you got to bear in mind is that it takes at least six weeks for a sperm to be manufactured by the testicles. It’s a long, slow process. What you’re seeing with your dog’s sperm right now is basically what was happening six weeks or so ago. Also if you want to increase fertility you have to give your dog at least six weeks to actually see a result in sperm quality as a result of a changing diet.
So anyway, there was this study done and it showed that the right supplements did have a positive impact on dogs with low fertility. And let’s look at each of these in turn.
Vitamin E and dog fertility
The first one was vitamin E.
The dose used in the study was 3 mg/kg of body weight as a supplement, which is pretty high amount. And even at just the recommended daily amounts which is 0.6 mg/kg body weight for dogs, vitamin E is pretty hard to reach satisfactory levels in a normal diet, particularly in a natural diet.
There are very few natural foods which are high in vitamin E. So it is one of the things that you probably should be supplementing in your breeding dogs, especially if they’ve been suffering from low fertility.
That’s easy enough. You can just go get yourself some vitamin E capsules, slip them down your dog’s throat every day, and make sure they’re getting the dose they need.
Zinc and dog fertility
Now, the next crucial supplement is zinc. The recommended dose in the study was 2.4 mg/kg body weight every day. This is a higher level than the normal recommended amount which is 1 mg/kg body weight.
Luckily zinc is pretty high anyway in beef and other red meat. So if your dog’s getting enough red meat then you should be pretty right. You could be just making it with the amount in natural sources like beef though, so you might want to consider a little bit of supplementation with zinc, especially if you’re experiencing suboptimal fertility. I feed about 50:50 red meat to poultry and fish and just squeak by.
Think your commercial foods have enough in?
If you’re feeding commercial foods, please be aware that most of the time, even if it says this is the lamb version or this is the beef version of our product, when you look at the ingredients it is likely to be mostly chicken, because chicken is cheap. So do check the ingredients. A lot of commercial foods won’t have the actual content that you think they might have.
So it is a good idea to give natural beef sources to your dogs, just to make sure they’re actually getting what you think they’re getting. And a reasonable amount of beef in the diet and other red meats will be a good provider of adequate zinc levels for most dogs.
Selenium and fertility in dogs
Now the other thing that they supplemented in the study was selenium. Luckily selenium is naturally high in chicken and beef anyway.
Vitamin B9 (Folate) and dog fertility
Now the next thing was vitamin B9, which is also known as folate. Now in a natural diet, folate can be lacking. Luckily it’s easy to reach the levels recommended by the veterinary nutritionist just by adding a little bit of nutritional yeast to their diet. And the daily amount is 2 grams of nutritional yeast per 10 kg of body weight (a teaspoon) and that should easily cover their needs of vitamin B9 or folate. However you can safely give a bit more if you want.
Herbs that Boost Dog Fertility
Okay. In the study they also included some fertility enhancing herbs which you might also want to add to your dog’s diet.
One of them was maca, sold as maca powder. Easily found in health food shops. And the other one was ashwagandha, which is just a general tonic that improves an animal’s vitality and health.
So that’s a quick run over the nutritional needs that you should make sure you’re covering with your breeding dogs.
What should you AVOID feeding for great dog fertility?
Now, what about things that you need to be avoiding in their diet? And there are quite a few dietary components that can harm dog fertility. Let’s consider first environmental toxins.
Environmental toxins that reduce fertility
Environmental toxins are probably what’s behind the decline in fertility in our dogs and ourselves throughout the world. One of the biggies are the plastics.
Plastics DEHP and PCB and dog fertility
Now the plastics of particular concern are DEHP and PCB. They’ve got long scientific names, Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate and polychlorinated biphenyl, but DEHP and PCB is what they’re commonly known as.
These directly reduce sperm quality, and they also particularly affect male embryos. So if your dogs are eating food contaminated with these plastics you actually see a reduction in the 50-50 sex mix: you’ll seem to get more females but actually, it’s really just less males!
Also, any males that do result can be affected by cryptorchidism, which is like one retained testicle, which is quite common, especially in some breeds more susceptible to that problem.
The sources of these dangerous plastics include the wrappings on meat that’s gone off in big supermarkets and butcher shops. They won’t sit there and unpick all the plastic wraps from this meat, it’ll just be sent off for processing by a pet manufacturer, and the plastic containing these dangerous plastics will end up in commercial dog food. And even commercial dog food packaging, like the lining inside big plastic bags and those kinds of wrappers, they can contaminate pet food with the PCB plastics. That’s very hard to avoid when you’re buying commercial dog food for your dogs. And it’s a good reason to consider developing a natural diet for your dogs. (I’ll talk about a natural diet in the next email I send you).
Antibiotics in meat and dog fertility
So another one we should be concerned about is the level of antibiotics in pet foods in particular. Now, the one that is being measured and studied a lot is oxytetracycline. This is commonly used to treat sick production animals. They use them in broiler production, like meat birds. If they’re having a problem with enteritis for example, then they might give that to the whole flock. Now with humans there is a withholding period, which means that they’re not allowed to then slaughter those animals for human consumption for at least seven days. But if any of those animals die in the meantime after the enteritis outbreak in a shed, then they’ll just be picked up, and commonly they’ll make their way to dog food, as they’re “okay” for pet consumption.
The other similar issue is with beef cattle. Just imagine you’re a beef farmer, you’ve got sick beast and you’re treating it with antibiotics. And the oxytetracyclines are commonly used because they’re not considered to be as dangerous as some of the other ones for the development of antibiotic resistance, for example, in humans, which is a big issue in medicine. So you’ve got this beast that’s been ill and you’re treating it and then unfortunately it dies. Well, what are you going to do with it? Obviously you’ll try to get some money for it so you’ll call the knackers, and it ends up in pet meat.
Impact of dietary legumes on fertility and health
Unfortunately there are also natural foods to avoid. There’s been quite a fad, for example, for grain-free diets. What commercial dog food manufacturers done about that, is to replace those grains they used to put in there (like wheat and corn) with legumes: legumes such as soy beans, lupins and peas, for example.
Now, the problem with seeds in general, but particularly legumes, is that they contain high levels of what we call anti-nutrients. Anti-nutrients are the way the plant protects its investment in its seeds and tries to reduce the amount of predation of those seeds. These anti-nutrients actually interfere with the digestion and absorption of some of the nutrients that we actually need in our diet. This affects our dogs particularly because they’re carnivores, so they don’t have a natural flora normally in their guts to deal with this sort of thing.
So what sort of affects are we talking about here?
Taurine loss
Commonly the kinds of nutrients which are blocked, and therefore become deficient even though they’re present in the diet, are things like taurine and other amino acids. And this is why there’s been a link between the use of grain-free diets and heart conditions, because taurine is a really important amino acid for the function of the muscle of the heart.
Fat metabolism disorders
These anti-nutrients in legumes can also interfere with fat metabolism, and we’re seeing quite a rise in problems with pancreas function, like pancreatitis in dogs, especially my breed, mini schnauzers, but other breeds as well. And legumes in the diet can exacerbate issues like that.
Calcium loss
Also, legumes are very high also in oxalates. Now this is of particular concern to breeders because oxalates directly interfere with the absorption of calcium from the diet. So you might be feeding adequate calcium, but your dog’s not actually getting that calcium because it’s being blocked from being absorbed. The resulting calcium deficiency can cause protracted labors and other issues that we’re seeing in breeding dogs: things like fetal absorption and lower overall fertility.
Phytoestrogens
Okay. Legumes also notoriously have very high levels of phytoestrogens in them. Now what are phytoestrogens? Phytoestrogens are just the plant version of the hormone estrogen. These phytoestrogens from legumes in the body of your dogs actually act exactly like natural estrogen. And they mimic the effects of that. So we end up with issues including bitches which come on heat too often during the year and suffer low fertility.
Conclusion
When it comes to dietary causes of low fertility in dogs, there’s a bit of a minefield out there, isn’t there?
I do think that if you really want to get a handle on the fertility and health of your dogs and be able to advise your owners on how to keep their pets healthy, then it really does pay to get a handle on natural feeding and supplementing your dogs the natural way, and try to steer away from commercial food. I see commercial food as kind of like junk food. For a start, they are highly processed. But more on that next time.
Very informative thank you