I don't beleive feeding a dog or cat a vegetarian diet it the right thing to do for any obligated carnivore or meat-needing animals when it completely jepordizes the animals health. Dogs and cats CANNOT digest their protein from plant sources. Both cats and dogs do not have the ability to digest and breakdown vegetables for their nutrients.
I can say form complete experience i have never met a healthy looking dog that has been fed a vegetable only diet. And a cat, being an obligated carnivore, would just die from eating nothign but vegetables. How that dog lived is a complete miracle but don't expect every dog to do that. Just like humans every dog is different and maybe that dog could survive on vegetables ,but i don't think any other dog could. This applies to many breeds(especially ones that use alot of energy).
If you feel that you don't want to feed horribly treated animals to your animal then why not go for organic brands? There are many many brands of dog foods now that use organic chickens. These companies are small so you can trust they can use organic chicken(i know for companies like iams organic chicken would be ridiculous, and you'd know they'd be lying). These brands are not cheap, but they are better than feeding any soy-based or cheap chicken-based dog foods.
If you want to control what animal you feed your dog or cat, and you want to make sure the animal was well treated, why not feed raw? Raw(or BARF) feeding allows you to choose what chickens, or cows, or bison, or rabbit, ect. ect. goes into the dogs system. And you can make sure the animal has been well treated. But please before anyone ventures into feeding raw or barf do all the research you can so the animal gets all it needs.
It is completely natural and healthy for an animal to eat meat. Humans can thrive without meat because we are able to understand what we need and get it from other sources, our bodies are versitle and can adapt to alot of things. Our bodies are able to digest and get nutrients from both vegetables and meat. Dogs and cats cannot digest vegetables the way we do.
Just think of where dogs came from. they came from wolves and wolves are complete carnivores. They get their other nutrients needs from the stomach of the animal they have caught(meaning it is already digested). You can argue that dogs have evolved to be different but the fact remains the same that dogs eat meat naturally. (Look at our teeth and then look at your dog or cats teeth. Our teeth are flat and mostly meant to eat vegetables. dogs and cats teeth are sharp and they have large canines. They are designed to eat meat.)
Yes, there are suppliments, but why would you feed artificial suppliments to your animals? Is that really the best to their health? I'm sure you woudln't want to feed your children jsut suppliments so they could get their dailey nutrients needs. You would want to feed your children all natural things so they can get the vitamins and nutrients naturally, not artificially.
Jut like posted above a cat NEEDS meat as well because it needs something particular(forgive, i forgot what it was spacificially) that only meat has. So even if you were to get a suppliment i would question where they got this particular vitamin because if they say its from all veg source i would say they are lying. And if you are going to feed a suppliment that has an animal product in it why not jsut feed a all-natural organic diet that has real meat?
I agree that if feeding meat bothers you why not get a vegetable eating animal? I know rats need only minimal amounts of protein as well(which can be a vegetable source).
There is no reason to drag your animal into your opinion and veiws. Animals deserve the best and the best is not feeding them a vegetarian diet because of what you beleive in. To me that's greedy.
I hope i explained myself well and sorry if i respeated myself. I'm not the gresteast person in argueing ,but i feel this is an important point to get across. In the end research your descision. Please Don't just say 'because i am vegan my animal will be to'. With research i found the absolute best diet to feed a dog or cat(or any carnviore animal) was meat-based. If you do find anything that says feeding a vegetarian-based diet is good look at your source. Try to find unbias research and facts.
