Can you imagine having to eat the same meal every day for the rest of your life? This is essentially what most of our pups have to go through when it comes to mealtime. Starting a rotational feeding routine for your dog can not only make him more interested in his food but also has an overall benefit on his health.
What is Rotational Feeding?
Rotational feeding is the practice of rotating your dog’s food—protein, type of food (wet food, dry food, raw)—instead of keeping them on the same type of food for the rest of their lives. This type of feed became popular as a new holistic approach to how you should feed your dog. Rotating your dog’s food can have a lot of overall health benefits for your dog but make sure that it is done properly to avoid any stomach issues.
Benefits of Rotational Feeding
While rotating your dog’s food helps with keeping mealtime exciting, there are also a lot of benefits for your dog’s health. The four major ones are: keep mealtimes exciting, helping with food allergies, a healthier digestive system, and benefits of different types of proteins.
Creates Excitement: Some dogs might become uninterested in their food once they are accustomed to certain textures and flavors. With rotation feedings, every day is a tasty new adventure for your dogs.
Food Allergies: Food allergies and intolerances in dogs can be due to the constant exposure of the same protein. This oftentimes leads to itchy paws/skin and upset stomachs. Over time your dog’s immune system will have an adverse reaction to the same protein that is being fed. By rotating proteins, your dog’s immune system will be stronger and will reduce the sensitivity to food allergies.
Healthier Digestive System: Changing up the proteins given to your dog can also promote a healthier digestive system! Your dog’s GI tract needs good bacteria to help with the digestion process. Only having one diet can limit the different types of beneficial bacteria. By varying their diet with rotational feeding, your pup’s digestive tract can become stronger, making it easier for them to break down new proteins—leading to less upset stomachs.
Benefiting from Different Protein: Rotating different proteins for your dog can help with overall health. This is because different proteins can provide your dog with various amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein for your dog and keeping the same diet will restrict your dog from getting a wide variation of these amino acid profiles.
How to Start Rotational Feeding
Now that you know the benefits of rotational feeding, how do you get started? It is important to have patience with transitioning your dog to a rotational feeding diet to eliminate any upset stomachs.
First, pick a type of dog food—like a grain-free kibble—and rotate the protein sources within that type. For example, switch from Zignature Turkey, to Zignature Lamb, to Zignature Pork and so on. Because our Zignature formulas are single protein and limited ingredients, rotation feeding is easy!
You can also rotate different types of food, such as changing from dry food to wet food, to raw food. This type of rotation enables the pet to receive the benefits of each variety of food. It is always important to feed a high-quality nutritionally complete and balanced diet when rotating different types of food.