Today, it cannot be taken for granted that mothers milk is best for nursing kittens and puppies. Unless your kitten or puppy's mother was healthy before, during and after pregnancy, it is very likely the litter will suffer from personality disorders, that they will be susceptible to a wide range of immune diseases, genetic predispositions, and that their life expectancies will be shortened.
Once people bond with their pets, most will spend whatever it takes in an effort to get them better, or prolong their lives. The good news is that by taking an active role, most problems can be prevented!
This article addresses:
1. What to do if you fall in love with a pet store or rescue kitten or puppy
2. The role of nursing and weaning to their immune system
3. Best food for kittens and puppies
Where you buy your puppy or kitten matters
Pet Stores
Buyer beware! Pet Store kittens and puppies have a high risk, throughout their lives, of developing illness. Why?
Since the mid-1980s, families and empty nesters' have been buying puppies and kittens at a pace that has turned breeding facilities (often called puppy mills) into big business.
Even though you may spend a lot of money for your new pet, price is no guarantee of health! Commercially bred mothers are bred too frequently. Their bodies do not get a chance to fully recover before they are bred again, and again. Complicating matters, puppy mills tend to cut corners when it comes to food costs. Nutritious food is always important for good health, but especially important to a breeding mother. Commercial pet foods, despite label claims, are sorely lacking in nutritional value.
Stress: Stress is documented to compromise strong immune systems: Imagine the effect on weakened ones. The living conditions in puppy mill are highly stressful to mothers. This stress can be passed on to puppies and kittens affecting their disposition, personality and behavior.
Premature weaning stresses the developing immune system. Moreover, the time they spend away from their mother while in the puppy mill, subjected to the same stressful living conditions, is highly stressful.
But that is not the end of their stress. Shipping to pet stores puts them through a great deal of stress. If they get acclimated there at all, they experience travel and transition stress all over again coming to your home. No wonder they suffer with diarrhea, and eating disorders.
Rescue Facilities
Most of the animals sold in rescue facilities were abandoned; the kittens and puppies are largely from feral mothers. Feral mother's diets consist of weak and diseased rodents, putrefied carcasses, or discarded leftovers from trashcans. These leftovers likely harbor pathogenic bacteria, causing the mothers to be sick and diseased.
Feral females are impregnated by feral males who are likely to be equally as sick. Another problem confronting the feral female is that they are often impregnated before they are physically ready, and often become pregnant again, while puppies or kittens are still on the teat!
The health consequences to the offspring of feral mothers and premature weaning may be immediate, or they may not develop until the animal is older.
Today, pet owners are paying a very high price. Although this article seems to paint a dismal picture, by introducing an all-natural formula as soon as you bring your kitten or puppy home, you can minimize their health risk, and, you can actually take part in reversing the poor health predisposition to their offspring!
Stress: The stress of living a feral life takes a toll on the puppies and kittens immune systems. If their mother was constantly on the run to avoid harm or capture, the litter is likely to be skittish, reclusive, and defensive. Each generational decline adds to the genetic predisposition to poor health, bad behavior, and personality disorders.
The Importance of Mothers Milk
Milk from a healthy mother provides the building blocks necessary for puppies and kittens to develop strong immune defense systems. Unfortunately, most female cats and dogs that are bred have not gotten neither the diet nor the supplements necessary to fortify and nourish their bodies, before, during, and after pregnancy.
Kittens and puppies nursed on low quality mothers milk, or weaned prematurely, are more likely to have undeveloped immune systems. This need not be a problem if proper care is given during their transition from teat, to solid foods.
The Best Food for Puppy or Kittens
The best food for kittens or puppies is a diet that is most natural to their ancestry.
You can domesticate an animal's behavior, but the domestication of their diet to commercial pet foods has been the primary cause for their decline in health, behavioral issues, personality disorders, and predisposition to disease. It is a fact that over 80% of all chronic disease is caused by an unhealthy digestive system.
Kittens and puppies given an all-natural nursing and wean support formula, as a supplement while nursing, and prior to being weaned to solid foods, are not only likelier to be healthier and live longer, they are smarter, happier and better adjusted.
Vitality Science recommends weaning kittens and puppies to a raw diet, complimented with soil-based probiotic supplements, like Pet Flora, that are essential to maintain intestinal balance.
The author of this article is Robert Hart, the co-founder of Vitality Science, Inc., a company that formulates scientifically proven, all natural supplements to restore and maintain pet health for cats, dogs, kittens and puppies. To learn more aboiut their products http://www.vitalityscience.com
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