Love at first bite? Transitioning your dog to natural food

Read time: 3 mins

17 Aug 2020

By Team Butternut 

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At Butternut Box, we know that a healthy, natural diet is always the best for your dogs. Mass produced, heavily processed dog food is full of additives, chemicals and other strange products that your dog probably wouldn’t choose to eat if they could. We believe that plenty of super fresh, 100% natural ingredients, all slow cooked to retain their nutritional value, is the way forward. But, just like us humans, a big change to your dog’s diet isn’t always the easiest thing to achieve. In this article, the Butternut team will be looking at the ways you can help your dog transition to the all-natural diet of their dreams.

Why do they need a transition period?

Dogs are more like us than you might think. Just as we can find it hard to adapt to a brand new diet when we go away or decide to start eating healthily as our new year’s resolution, switching from normal dog food to a totally natural diet can be hard to get used to. Noses can be upturned and sensitive stomachs irritated if you rush into a new diet too quickly, so give your dog at least a week-long transition period to help them get used to their new diet. Once that’s done they’ll be healthier, happier and have a spring in their step in no time at all.

How to transition from processed dog food to natural goodness

Here at Butternut, we think the best plan of action for helping your dog to transition into the wonderfully nutritious world of natural dog food is to introduce it to their new diet incrementally. Bringing in their new food little by little is the best way to introduce a different way of eating into your dog’s diet. If you choose the Butternut way, we make this incremental introduction even easier by including a leaflet to really help you understand how transition works as you’re feeding. Following on from this, to help their tummies get used to this new diet, frequent smaller meals are also great for improving digestion. Rather than feeding two large meals for breakfast and dinner, go for a multitude of smaller, snacky meals. For two to three days during the transition period, you may want to offer a small breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper to slowly but surely introduce your dogs to their new diet. If your dog is having a ruff (sorry) time adjusting to their new diet on account of a particularly sensitive stomach you might want to consider helping them along by giving them some probiotics to promote healthy digestion. Just like you have your little bottle of Yakult in the morning, supplements such as Pro-Kolin Advance and Yudigest are out there to help your dog have the best digestion in town. Once their week-long transition period is up, it’s time to start feeding your dogs their new diet regularly. They’ll be more than ready to stay with food that’s nutritious and delicious, now that calls for waggy tails all round.

If you think your dog needs to make a nutritious change away from the dog food they’re used to, Butternut is here for you. Make the change and build your first box today!


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