# How many eggs per week?



## MyHeartDogs (Aug 17, 2015)

Hi, I'm new here :wave: 

I'm hoping to start my 14 year old mini foxy x chihuahua on a raw food diet to help with her chronic ear infections and my 10 year old border collie will be fed 1/2 raw 1/2 grainfree kibble. But I was just wondering how many eggs per week do you feed and how many eggs per dog? 

Thank you!


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## Sighty (Mar 16, 2014)

My 42 lbs dog gets 1-2 eggs a week, shell and all.
Some dogs can't eat raw eggs, so start out slowly with just a bit and see if your dogs' stomachs can handle it


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## Dog Person (Sep 14, 2012)

Apparently there are issues feeding raw egg whites to dogs, it stops them from metabolizing protein ( I think). I don't feed raw but just finished reading "Dog Food Logic" and the author has a chapter on raw and she specifically mentions raw egg whites. Since both your dogs are older and older dogs can have issues with protein I would not just decide to feed raw without some in depth knowledge .... You may get that on the internet but you may not. A Vet may or may not be helpful, my Vet is against feeding raw so it may be a little difficult to find that help.


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## Kathyy (Jun 15, 2008)

Raw egg white contains an enzyme called avidin that inhibits the absorption of biotin. Egg yolk contains huge amounts of biotin, much more than the avidin can inhibit so feeding whole raw egg doesn't cause a problem. This seems to be mostly theoretical, as biotin deficiency is a rare condition.

Ginger and Max didn't care for raw egg so they got them scrambled. I could feed up to a small egg a day to 15 pound Ginger without it bothering her gut but that was half her daily food ration so not really a good idea to keep up for too long. I figure it is good stuff but part of the whole animal like heart, tripe and liver so ought to be more like 10% of the diet. 1-2 eggs a week is plenty for a small dog in that regards. If you are in a budget crunch or just had a lot of eggs you need to use up like I did then for a couple weeks it was fine by Ginger and Max to eat that much egg.

I start out a dog on egg by giving them the scrapings from the morning egg pan, then the bowl where I scrambled them raw to give a taste of it raw, then split an egg then the whole thing. I started the dog on egg after they were good on the usual proteins, livers and kidneys but so long as you start egg on its own after bony chicken is fine with your dogs' guts it should be fine.

Ear infections. Max got a doozy of one after eating raw sardines. A very slight spoilage of some kinds of raw fish causes 'scombroid poisoning' which resembles an allergic reaction. Resembles or not Max got a horrible ear infection from eating ground sardine! 

When Max was 13.5 years old he was having bad gas and tummy aches that lasted hours and hours. Turned out he no longer tolerated the raw diet he started when he was about 8 years old. If your elderly dog's gut is in good shape maybe switching to raw will be fine but Max was rapidly declining in health at that point and his gut was the first system to crash. 

Start your allergic dog out on a single protein and watch her carefully when you introduce new ones. I hope the simple clean diet will help. It didn't help Ginger's flea allergy at all, not really a shocker but she polished up her horrible looking teeth on her own and is loving it.


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## PatriciafromCO (Oct 7, 2012)

if your dog is (NOT) allergic to chicken would be important if you could feed eggs or not... My two chronic yeasty ears dogs could not have anything to do with chicken, turkey when I started them on raw .. After two years of other protiens on raw I reintroduced chicken, turkey a little at a time and they didn't have an reaction to it... we have 6 to 15 laying hens at times an my large reed dogs get eggs every day and will steel eggs from time to time from the geese.. Never seen an issue with the amount of eggs they eat (when they not allergic to them).. just starting out raw with an allergic pup... I would go slowly in adding ingredients go simple few ingredients for a 3 week period so you can observe if they are having a reaction to the ingredients,

my two guys their ear lining would turn bright red, less then 7 minutes from eating something, then the head shaking and later that night they would lick and chew their paws.. having a simple ingredient list helps to pick out what is not working. All my dogs got sick on eggs when I was buying them from the store before my own chickens... it turned out to be some new antibiotic they were feeding them... so do try to purchase organic if your buying in the store .. not just free range...


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## Dog Person (Sep 14, 2012)

The egg whites apparently inhibit tryspin, not sure if that is the same as biotin. And since raw fish was mentioned, certain types of raw fish apparently they can inhibit thiamine absorption. I can't intelligently explain or argue a point to any of this, I'm just repeating what an animal nutritionalist put in her book. 

As I stated, I don't feed raw and probably never will so these things are not something I would delve into to find the facts. 



Kathyy said:


> Raw egg white contains an enzyme called avidin that inhibits the absorption of biotin. Egg yolk contains huge amounts of biotin, much more than the avidin can inhibit so feeding whole raw egg doesn't cause a problem. This seems to be mostly theoretical, as biotin deficiency is a rare condition.
> 
> Ginger and Max didn't care for raw egg so they got them scrambled. I could feed up to a small egg a day to 15 pound Ginger without it bothering her gut but that was half her daily food ration so not really a good idea to keep up for too long. I figure it is good stuff but part of the whole animal like heart, tripe and liver so ought to be more like 10% of the diet. 1-2 eggs a week is plenty for a small dog in that regards. If you are in a budget crunch or just had a lot of eggs you need to use up like I did then for a couple weeks it was fine by Ginger and Max to eat that much egg.
> 
> ...


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## Kathyy (Jun 15, 2008)

Nice to know about the trypsin thing, I didn't know that. Wonder if my always on a diet dogs knew that eating raw egg wasn't adding as much protein as it seemed?? Yucky mouth feel and didn't make them feel good inside, don't want to eat?

I only mentioned fish because Max had such a problem with his ears that time. As for the thiamine thing, it is much discussed by those feeding raw fish to pets such as turtle keepers if you want to find a list of fish. I would feed fish on days I wasn't feeding pork as pork is very high in thiamine and I didn't want to be inhibiting its absorption. Fish is great for protein but compared to red meat is lower in vitamins and minerals dogs need so I didn't much care to feed it anyway.


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## nadia (Aug 19, 2015)

I give Cosmo about 2-3 raw eggs a week with his regular food, and eggshells are a good source of calcium! I believe the vitamin deficiency is a theory, and isn't backed up very well. He's been eating raw eggs since he was a puppy and he's happy and healthy! I usually give it to him with his food for breakfast since he only eats twice a day, that way he has a bigger meal and he's not hungry through the day. I mix it up throughout the week - sometimes I'll give him a couple forkfuls of plain mackerel (fish), sometimes it's plain yogurt, sometimes it's cooked plain oatmeal. All are good for skin and beneficial to your dogs health, just make sure your pup doesn't have any fish allergies before feeding mackerel by only giving him a small amount! My friend feeds her dog unseasoned and unsalted sardines, but I haven't tried those with Cosmo. For dinner sometimes he gets one of either raw carrots, cooked peas, apple slices, lemon cucumber, and on occasion cherry tomatoes from our garden. Raw diets are awesome, and when I have more money I'm definitely switching Cosmo to that instead of what he's on now. (1/3 raw 2/3 slice and serve roll food)


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