# For Those Who Feed Fish



## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

bubba and malia got fish yesterday....

smelt, to be exact. 

i don't remember where i read it, but i fed it to them frozen...

now i don't remember why.

i know that there are fishes that need to be frozen for a while because of parasites...

but, do fishes have to be SERVED frozen?

and how often do you feed your dogs fish?

what kind of fish do you feed?

so far, i have access to: (we do live in the pacific nw, so farmed for salmon and trout)

farmed salmon heads and tails
farmed trout
smelt
sardines (maybe)
talapia


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## jdatwood (Apr 13, 2009)

No they don't need to be fed frozen. If your dog will eat them frozen that's fine. We thaw them for our girls.

On a regular basis 2 of ours eat whole tilapia. We'll also feed tuna, sardines, salmon (and salmon heads), trout, mackerel, pretty much whatever fish we can get our hands on that they'll eat.


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

jdatwood said:


> No they don't need to be fed frozen. If your dog will eat them frozen that's fine. We thaw them for our girls.
> 
> On a regular basis 2 of ours eat whole tilapia. We'll also feed tuna, sardines, salmon (and salmon heads), trout, mackerel, pretty much whatever fish we can get our hands on that they'll eat.



when you say tuna, are you talking about canned? and sardines? canned? or no...

salmon heads, i would probably freeze and feed frozen, since mostly they are not farmed but wild and they are paicific northwest...

thanks...they loved the smelts.


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## SuriLove (Mar 28, 2010)

This is a good question, I see mixed things on Salmon (fresh anyway) 

We have water behind our home that has fish:

Blue Gill, Sunfish, & Bass - fresh water. Is this ok? I live at the ocean and fish is HIGH here unless I want to fish off the pier - cant see it lol.


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## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

magicre said:


> bubba and malia got fish yesterday....
> 
> smelt, to be exact.
> 
> ...


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

RawFedDogs said:


> magicre said:
> 
> 
> > bubba and malia got fish yesterday....
> ...


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

oh, i forgot.....fish heads, if i remember correctly, have more nutrients than the entire fish...

fish heads are wonderful.....and if they are wonderful for humans, they can't be bad for dogs.....

ps. we did freeze the smelts for a month...we'll do that with all of our fish.


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## Spaz (Sep 3, 2009)

I've fed Hannah whole Talapia twice. She's not crazy about it at all. I normally have to do the whole "tough love" game when it comes time for her to eat fish. And both times she left the head. Maybe I'll try another fish next time.

Has anyone ever fed catfish?


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

at first, my dogs dismissed the fish. i'm glad now i left it frozen because by the time they got to it after sniffing and walking around to it...it was probably defrosted....or starting to..it's just a smelt....they're small.

i am going to try tilapia....next...and see


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## xxshaelxx (Mar 8, 2010)

I started on fish the other night, whole Tilapia. At first, I only did Ryou and Kuso, because Amaya had just had her surgery that day, and we couldn't get her to eat anyways (on top of being hormonal after her period). It took them all of about an hour to finish their fish. We gave it to them again yesterday, or at least my husband did. So I don't know how long it took Ryou and Kuso to eat theirs, but we did start Amaya, and Adam says that she took an hour and a half eat half of it, then gave her the other half last night, but she left the head. I just turned around and gave the head to Ryou, who snapped it up (but we went into the shower after that, so I don't know if it took him long to eat it. haha). I plan on giving them salmon heads, just because it's salmon in a cheaper form, but it probably won't be a weekly thing. I'll probably do it about once every two weeks or so, and supplemented with a turkey breast meal or something, because the turkey breast never has bone.


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## Spaz (Sep 3, 2009)

ShopRite has canned sardines 10 for $10. After looking at this thread and seeing that canned is okay I think I'm going to buy them since they are on sale.

I bought catfish chunks one time and Hannah liked that. I don't think I'll be buying the talapia for awhile.


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## harrkim120 (Feb 2, 2010)

I feed canned only because that's all they'll eat. 

I bought a box of 50 pounds of tiliapa for $40 thinking that they'll eat it with no problems. Yeah, right. 

That fish is now owned by some gentleman in Orlando. LOL :tongue:


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

i have two dogs who think salmon oil gelcaps are a treat...so in this way, i might have gotten lucky...

i don't know if they ate it because they were hungry...or they liked it...but i'm giving it to them again today...i figure every few days, they should get some fish....

and we'll see about salmon and trout...i'm a little leery of salmon and trout, because of where we live (pacific NW).

but tilapia is on the list, and if they don't like it, that's okay...sardines and smelts and gelcaps should give them what they need.


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## Spaz (Sep 3, 2009)

Success! Hannah loves canned sardines. And I got them on sale. YAY!


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

Spaz said:


> Success! Hannah loves canned sardines. And I got them on sale. YAY!


yay!

i wonder if she'd like kippers and herring LOL

and clams and oysters? there are lots of canned fish....although you gotta watch out for those boneless skinless ones....where's the fun in that?


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## GoldenGirl (Mar 31, 2010)

harrkim120 said:


> I feed canned only because that's all they'll eat.
> 
> I bought a box of 50 pounds of tiliapa for $40 thinking that they'll eat it with no problems. Yeah, right.
> 
> That fish is now owned by some gentleman in Orlando. LOL :tongue:


I'm getting ready to start adding fish and I'm thinking about starting with canned first to see if Koda will like it, before purchasing something like whole talapia. 

With an 80 pound golden retriever, how much canned sardines/salmon, etc would you feed as one meal?

Thanks,
Jean


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

i think i read it here about fish and how dogs react to it....

i used to feed canned salmon and tuna and then looked at the sodium content...WOW...

we bought a little package of smelts and tried it. if that hadn't worked, we would have tried something else..

since we weigh our dogs food, the fish would be counted as part of the weight. we're not at that point yet where we know their comfort zone.

i know someone else here who has big dogs could answer this one for your golden retriever....


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## chanaka (Apr 10, 2010)

Sam gets 3 meals a day. about 1 pound each meal. I have given him 1 pound of fish many times.


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## mike487 (Mar 30, 2010)

Here are some good sites to look at if you are concerned about contaminants in fish:
Seafood - Health Alerts - Seafood Selector - Environmental Defense Fund
Freshwater - The National Listing of Fish Advisories (NLFA) - U.S. EPA 
Or your state's fishing dept. or state EPA eg for ohio - Sport Fish Consumption Advisory


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## harrkim120 (Feb 2, 2010)

GoldenGirl said:


> With an 80 pound golden retriever, how much canned sardines/salmon, etc would you feed as one meal?


You may want to start off with a smaller amount just to see how she takes to it first, but ultimately I would say that about 1 to 1 1/2 cans of something like salmon for a meal would be good. :smile:


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

GoldenGirl said:


> I'm getting ready to start adding fish and I'm thinking about starting with canned first to see if Koda will like it, before purchasing something like whole talapia.
> 
> With an 80 pound golden retriever, how much canned sardines/salmon, etc would you feed as one meal?
> 
> ...


when we intro'd fish, we gave it as something along with what they got normally, just to see if they'd eat it.

would you be up for that?


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## CorgiPaws (Mar 31, 2009)

GoldenGirl said:


> I'm getting ready to start adding fish and I'm thinking about starting with canned first to see if Koda will like it, before purchasing something like whole talapia.
> 
> With an 80 pound golden retriever, how much canned sardines/salmon, etc would you feed as one meal?
> 
> ...


Something to remember, some dogs will eat canned fish, but have NO idea what to do with whole fish. I had to totally mutilate fish, then chunk it, then slice it, then cut it open, then my corgi took to whole fish. 


For an 80lb dog, it depends on if you're feeding one or two meals a day. You'll be feeding roughly 2 lbs per day, and the ounces are printed on the can which makes it easy. I introduce new foods as "half meals" so half the amount they're used to eating at a time.


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## magicre (Apr 7, 2010)

> Something to remember, some dogs will eat canned fish, but have NO idea what to do with whole fish. I had to totally mutilate fish, then chunk it, then slice it, then cut it open, then my corgi took to whole fish.


now that i think of it, my corgi mix had no idea what to do with the single smelt we gave her. with time, she eventually ate the whole thing...

the pug, of course, would eat cement, so he downed it no problem.


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## harrkim120 (Feb 2, 2010)

No matter what, Brady would not touch that fish. Only whan I cooked it for a bit would he nibble on it. Canned was just easier for me...and he'll actually eat that. LOL


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## whiteleo (Sep 7, 2008)

My dogs won't touch whole fish, I've tried several times with different types of fish and I've given up. I just feed them canned salmon, mackerel and sardines, I make sure I rinse it first in water to help lower the sodium content.


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