The American Beagler Forum

I have a male that I cannot keep weight on. He looks bad at times. He is wormed out and eats twice a day. Any suggestions?

I had that problem with my male. I tryed everything i could think of.

Then i tryed Purina Performance dog food 30/20 and that really helped. He put weight a good amount of weight on after a few weeks of using it. I was feeding 2 cups a day. He even put the weight on during hunting season when he was running everyday for about 7 hours.

I read on here one time to mix a drink called Ensure with their feed to help gain wait. This drink can be found at the drug store and is typically used for older folks that need some help with weight gain/nutrition. I tried this on a bitch down with 7 pups and it worked great. What I bought came in a six pack (cost me about 5 or 6 bucks) so I mixed it with her food for 6 days in a row and it made a noticeable difference. An alternative would be to mix in some vegetable oil with their food or something like that with a high fat content, but it makes their stool very loose and doesn't have the nutrition that Ensure has.

Is he eating all his food, or leaving some? If not eating all of it, mix a little hot water w/ the food and a couple tablespoons of canned dog food, this will add a heck of a lot of flavor w/o adding substantially to the cost. My next suggestion would be to change dogfoods. Some dogs just dont like a particular food. I would think this time of year he should be gaining weight as most of us arent running our dogs as much as we were during rabbit season, assuming that is the case, i dont know when rabbit season ended in your area, or if you run your dogs just as much out of season. Hope this helps.

in the past in the real cold months to help keep weight on dogs id boil some burger in water and drain it off real good and mix it with boiled rice and mix that (warm not hot) into the dogs food every other day. seemed to work good.

Although this was for a person and not a dog I have heard that slim fast may be a little cheaper then ensure. This person was trying to gain some weight because she was so skinny and a pharmasist said that using slim fast had the same effects as ensure but instead of only using slim fast and not eating use the slim fast along with eating.

I have had this happen a couple times. I started keeping Happy Jack tape wormer and using it on such dogs. Seems to do the trick. I feed Purina Dog chow and all my dogs are in great shape.

Thanks for all of the replies. The rest of my dogs look great, but this male is a tough one to figure out. Later on this week I am going to start him on calf milk replacer w/ real high fat content. Thanks again