# how much poop is good? picking food based on poop volume?



## dogclass (Feb 16, 2011)

Hi,
I've fed my dog mostly Fromm dog food (chicken a la veg, not grain free). I tried Taste of the Wild (grain free) for a few weeks, and it seem that the more I increase the proportion of TOTW, the more poop he had. I stopped TOTW and went back on 100% Fromm, and his poop volume went back to small amounts.

I don't know why TOTW has this effect on the poop volume. Does this happen to anyone else? I thought since there's no grains in TOTW, the volume of poop would go down, it that evidently was not the case. In both cases, the poop is of a good consistency; looks healthy, and smells stinky.

I'm also concern that the amount of poop he makes on Fromm might be too small. But it seems like TOTW creates too much poop. Should I be worried, or am I just crazy?

Is there some type of guide on how much poop a 37lb dog makes?


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## doginthedesert (Jun 18, 2010)

I feed raw, and my dog poops tiny poops, but the other day we were at a festival and he got a lot of milk-bone type biscuits, next day huge poop. I don't think that poop size is a direct relation to dog health, as long as it is a good consistency. I didn't immediately think, oh no, big poop = no more biscuits. He didn't have a upset tummy or anything.

I am curious what others have to say on the issue. Obviously if the dog is pooping less they are absorbing more of the food, but if your dog is healthy and a good weight on a certain food I can't see it making any difference what the dogs poop size is.


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## RedChase (Mar 13, 2011)

My dog was on ToTW and his poop went from 2-3X a day to 4-6X a day. Normal poop, but it was too much. I took him off of it and put him on Performatrin Ultra, he now poops about 3X a day. It was also hard to keep weight on him with ToTW, with the new food he went from 36kg to 39kg.


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## dogclass (Feb 16, 2011)

RedChase said:


> My dog was on ToTW and his poop went from 2-3X a day to 4-6X a day. Normal poop, but it was too much. I took him off of it.


Did you notice any increase in water intake when he was on TOTW? We noticed a lot more water intake, maybe more than 50% more. But we weren't on TOTW long enough to notice if he was gaining weight or not. It's on Fromm that he's not gaining much weight, but his poops are small on Fromm.

Yeah, I've always thought the main goal should be to feed a food that minimizes the amount of poop. But like doginthedesert, I'm not sure how big of a decision factor that makes. If you're sure that brand A produces more poop than brand B, should you feed brand B, even though brand A is grain free and is better from a label standpoint?

Please chime in!


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## doginthedesert (Jun 18, 2010)

dogclass said:


> If you're sure that brand A produces more poop than brand B, should you feed brand B, even though brand A is grain free and is better from a label standpoint?
> 
> Please chime in!


I don't think that how good a food is suposed to be rated should make a difference if your dog dosnt do well on it (and for the record I was talking about individual poop volume, pooping 6x a day probably would concern me). For instance my dog does not do well on grain free kibble because he has reactions to potato, sweet potato and carrot (all used as binders in grain free food), so he can't eat a 5 star kibble.

So if brand A produced a little more poop than brand B I would go for the better rated brand. But if it was huge amounts of poop or the dog was loosing weight I would drop to a "lower rated" kibble. This whole rating thing makes me a little uneasy anyway, all kibbles have some sort of filler (to make it a extrudeable) so the arbitrary decision that potato and tomato poumace are better than grain dosnt work for me. Might be because the former cause liquid to squirt out of both ends of my dog


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## katielou (Apr 29, 2010)

I'm always shocked when i hear people's dogs poop 3 times a day or more. All my dogs are fed raw and poop one small poop a day.


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## doginthedesert (Jun 18, 2010)

katielou said:


> I'm always shocked when i hear people's dogs poop 3 times a day or more. All my dogs are fed raw and poop one small poop a day.


Even when we were on kibble our dog only pooped once a day (excapt for the bout of grain free diarrhea). Now he on raw poops once a day and it is tiny tiny. I read the 4-6x a day poop and was like :jaw: That is just nuts to me.


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## Emily1970 (Apr 15, 2011)

I have 2 lab puppies and a vizsla puppy who are on Taste of the Wild and I'm noticing that they're pooping many times every day and I have noticed they're all drinking constantly. My chocolate lab is also having gas issues.


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## dogclass (Feb 16, 2011)

Emily1970 said:


> I have 2 lab puppies and a vizsla puppy who are on Taste of the Wild and I'm noticing that they're pooping many times every day and I have noticed they're all drinking constantly. My chocolate lab is also having gas issues.


Yes, I've noticed the same thing on TOTW. Not only the increased poop, but also increased drinking. When I reverted back to Fromm (not grain free), he went back to drinking and pooping his previous amounts (smaller quantities of each). But, I'm also not sure which is better? Is there such a thing as too little poop? And because he is my first dog, I don't actually know how much water he should drink or how much poop he should make.

When I see dogs at the park poop (yeah, I look), their one poop is the same volume as my dog's two poops. And my dog only poops twice usually.


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## jennjenn (Feb 1, 2013)

Just wanted to chime in and say that I noticed the same thing as others have when I switched my dog to TOTW grain free. He pooped at least twice as much as he used to, drank a lot more water and started farting. He *never* passed stinky gas before TOTW so that was pretty surprising. We're back to Wellness grain free as soon as this bag of TOTW is gone.


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## taquitos (Oct 18, 2012)

My dogs poop twice a day. The one that is on kibble poops much more than the one on raw (also the one on kibble is significantly larger). Meeko, my raw fed pom (who weighs 7 lbs) poops 6 hours after his meal like clockwork, and they're pretty small and hard (probably half the size of my index finger, if not less). Gotty poops a bit more, but not a huge amount for her size. I don't really notice any issues with gas (unless she got to the cat food which has chicken since she has chicken insensitivities).


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## greyhound2 (Apr 28, 2013)

So after reading this, and a few other ones, I am assuming that 5-6x/day is not good? I have a Greyhound that goes at least 5 if not 6 times a day, sometimes twice or more in one walk. We have tried Blue Buffalo, Nutri-source, and Diamond's Naturals all with the same result. He does have chronic pancreatitist, so maybe his amount of poop has to do with that? Any insight?


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## BernerMax (Mar 15, 2013)

I think you need to look at the bag and note how many fillers are involved not just grains (actually my dogs do fine on a bit of rice and barley) but sometimes the "grain free" formulas really load up on carbs/ nonmeat fillers like, sweet potatoe, potatoe, pea flour and pea protein, tomatoe pomace, beet pulp etc.... just to get around the "grain free".... and BTW my dogs had bad diahrea/ poops on TOTW so that was that for us....
Just go and find a food that has meat, named meat/ fish meals and not too many fillers, and yes too many poops/ poop volume is telling you the dog isnt digesting the food well ( I think I remember low fat diet for pancreatitis as well)...


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