Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats – May 31, 2006

Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats (Nutrient Requirements of Domestic Animals) Hardcover – May 31, 2006

Author: Subcommittee on Dog and Cat Nutrition | Language: English | ISBN: 0309086280 | Format: PDF, EPUB

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Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats – May 31, 2006
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About the Author

Subcommittee on Dog and Cat Nutrition, Committee on Animal Nutrition, National Research Council

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Series: Nutrient Requirements of Domestic Animals
Hardcover: 424 pages
Publisher: National Academies Press; 1 edition (May 31, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0309086280
ISBN-13: 978-0309086288
Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.7 x 1.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,046,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Because this book is nearly $300, I didn't buy it - I borrowed it from my university library via interlibrary loan. However, since it only has one review so far, I want to write a review.

I considered buying a huge variety of different books written for laypeople about canine nutrition and homemade dog food because I wanted to start making food for my dogs. However, I found all the books (including several that were very highly-rated here on Amazon) to be either not sufficiently complete or not adequately referenced. In many cases, different highly-rated books plainly contradicted one another. I decided I needed some real science.

This book is published by the National Academy of Science and was put together by the Committee on Animal Nutrition. A team of international experts was involved - by which I mean academic experts/researchers, not celebrity veterinarians. It is a essentially a compendium of peer-reviewed research findings on canine and feline nutrition. Each macro and micro nutrient has a section describing what is known about it, and there is other information on items such as water, total caloric intake, weight, feeding times, etc. At the end of the book are tables indicating what is known about minimum, maximum, and optimal intake of a large list of macronutrients, mineral nutrients, microminerals, amino acids, etc. for dogs and cats. There are also many helpful notes on bio-availability, which I found particularly lacking in many of the popular books.

It is important to note that this book is written for a scholarly and/or technical audience. To use it, you will have to be able to understand some of the terminology used, do unit conversions, and calculate how the recommendations apply to your dog (or cat).

I am rather disappointed by both the uncritical reviews of this book as well as the book itself. If you read the Acknowledgements you will find that this book is funded by several parties among which the Pet Food Institute. The Pet Food Institute is an organisation with the purpose of promoting commercial pet food. While the pet food industry might have its merits for people who don't want to spend time making homemade food for their pets I do not think such an institution should fund a book about pet nutrition (for the obvious reason).

More intriguing than the funding is the fact that I could not find

(1) Feeding habits of feral or semiferal cats (it seems fairly clear that they feed on rodents and birds but this book was the place where I expected to find reference to a study confirming this). Instead, on page 22 in the section entitled "Food ingestions by feral dogs and cats" the reader is bored with anecdotes ("a male Labrador once ate 10 percent of its body weight").

I give 2 instead of 1 stars since they still mention that the prey of pet cats allowed outside includes "...mice, birds, lizards and insects". I am also happy that they mention that cats are strict carnivores.

(2) Given the above I expect the book to explicitly state that a cat's diet should not include carbohydrates (since neither mice nor birds do). But disappointingly, on page 54, there is a paragraph with "adult maintenance diets for cats contain .... 16 to 37 percent " of carbohydrates. Although this does contradict the previously stated habit of feeding on mice and birds (less than 2 percent carbohydrates) this does nicely support a commercial pet food diet.