Tracilee014

So I've been gearing up to transition my pack to raw full time but I have a question. Right now my pack are all on BB and I recently transitioned my pups to adult food at the request of my vet because she was concerned about their growth.

My pack are all doing well on the BB but my pups are definately in the teenage stage and seem extremely hyperactive. I'm wondering how the transition to raw will affect this if at all? I'm sure they are getting things in the BB that are affecting their hyperactivity but how much change if any will I see due to the food switch?

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Zeus050412

i am not sure about RAW, however, your pack looks HUGE at 6 months. Zeus ins 7 months and looks way smaller then them. why was the vet concerned about their growth?

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Dawna - Mommy to Zeus aka Monkey and Ciara aka Ci Ci

Ril-Mas

What exactly do you mean by hyperactivity? I mean are they out of control or difficult to manage?

Logan is just over a year and is very active. He's always been active. It did seem to increase when we switched to raw, but he's not out of control or hard to handle. He knows when it's time to settle down to settle down. We've only had Abby for 2 months and I feel she's still coming out of her shell. She's very active as well. Her and Logan can run laps around the yard all day and night if I let them. Again, with Abby though she seems to know when it's time to settle down.

I do remember reading that feeding raw can increase activity levels and where you have so many at the same young age it may seem to be increase a lot more than I would notice with just 1 or 2. I can easily see me pulling my hair out if I had 6 Logans or Abbys. LOL

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NikkiL

I haven't noticed much of a change either but I have a 10 month pup and a 10 yr old so one is naturally wild and the other is naturally slowing down...


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CaptainJack

We transitioned Jack from Taste of the Wild to raw at 4 months. The first week or so I noticed a burst of energy and excitement from him right after his meal. It was temporary, lasting maybe an hour or so at the most, and I attributed it to him expressing his enjoyment of the meal. He doesn't react that way anymore, I guess the novelty has worn off. I never noticed an overall increase in hyper-activity or engergy. He's still a medium energy boxer, and spends plenty of time resting in his crate or sleeping on his bed.

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Bosun ~ Fawn Male ~ August 21, 2010 to August 29, 2011
Captain Jack Von Dutch ~ Reverse Brindle Male ~ Born November 8, 2011

NikkiL

Yes, Nikki does that. After she eats she stretches and crawls along the floor, rolls around a little. It's so cute. And my dogs eagerly wait for their dinner. They love raw! They've been on it 2 or 3 months now..


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Tracilee014

My vet was concerned they were growing too big too fast. We attribute some of their size the mother's milk supplement we gave Pumpkin while she was pregnant. However, Dr. Thomas was more concerned about hips and joints and wanted me to take them off the puppy food and place them on regular adult food to see if it would help slow them down a bit. At just 30 weeks old, one of my pups is already head and shoulders taller than mom and dad and weighing in today at 68lbs but he's certainly not fat by any standard nor for that matter are any of my pups. My smallest pup Blaze is just about her mothers size already and weighed in today at 60.6 lbs but she's not at tall as Button.

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Tracilee014

Hrmm, perhaps you are right that they just seem more hyperactive because the fun is 5 times that of just one pup it just seems like they go and go and go and go and... Well, you get the point. They do take a mid day nap for an hour to two hours depending on the weather but if its nice outside, it seems all I can do to get them to sit still. Now, to make matters worse, they don't want to sleep at night.

I've considered changing their work time to around the mid day nap time to maybe encourage less day time nap and promote more night time sleep but since they are really still babies, I figured that wouldn't be good for them and I'd probably get less productive training time when they want to nap. I'd love to take the pack with my family to the park in the evenings to help wind them down some but everyone else's schedule seems so hectic that I hate to add more to their plate during the week days. My son is carrying an extra 2 classes beyond what his peers are taking and my husband has had to take over several ppls positions along with his own as cutbacks have kept them in a hiring freeze I just can't see myself trying to walk the entire pack of pups alone.

Anyways, so I was wondering if they are just being a busy pack of pups because there are so many of them or if the BB kibble is effecting their hyperactivity. It's been the last few weeks, they just seem to have more energy or restlessness. With their added energy from where ever it came, they have a difficult time settling down and sleeping throughout the night. If it keeps up, I'm going to have to take the night shift again with the dogs so hubby can sleep. I hate that I really do, but as he works and his job requires him to be constantly alert, I can't have him being kept awake all night because of the pups. I was sort of hoping that if I switched to raw a bit sooner than we'd anticipated, they might settle down a bit. It sounds like just the opposite will occur when we make the switch though.....

It's probably just got more to do with there being 5 pups though so like always, I'll just get through it and hope my sanity stays intact til I get to the other side with them

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Gypsiemouse

I don't feed raw, but read (somewhere) that it actually makes them less hyper.
It's the carbohydrates (which turns to sugar) in kibble that makes them more hyper.
Not sure if that helps you.

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Lynne- Owned by and Slave to Maggie and Mongo

Tracilee014

That's sort of what I was thinking when I originally posted but it sounds to me like other's dogs actually had more energy after the switch to raw. They aren't uncontrollable really, they are just constantly on the go. However, if it was the kibble, wouldn't they at some point crash and burn after the sugar rush?

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