28/09/2026
๐๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ฒ๐ด๐ด๐, ๐๐ฎ๐น๐บ๐ผ๐ป ๐ผ๐ฟ ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ฒ๐?
๐๐ผ๐ ๐บ๐๐ฐ๐ต ๐๐ถ๐๐ฎ๐บ๐ถ๐ป ๐ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ต๐ฒ๐ ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐๐๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐ฝ๐ฟ๐ผ๐๐ถ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ป๐ด?
โ๏ธUnlike us, dogs need to get vitamin D from their diet โ they canโt rely on sunshine to meet their requirements.
Vitamin D is a little different from many of the nutrients we talk about because its active form actually acts like a hormone in the body.
It plays important roles in calcium and phosphorus regulation, healthy bones and teeth, muscle function and the immune system. Research in dogs has also found associations between lower vitamin D status and certain cancers, along with other diseases.
So yes, vitamin D is an important nutrient to get right.
But how do you know youโre actually getting it right?
Before I go any further, I want to make an important distinction here.
๐ฉ๐ปโ๐ณIโm talking about people who are trying to feed a 100% homemade diet on their own โ or replacing a significant portion of a balanced food and trying to โcover the basesโ by adding different foods.
Iโm not saying you need to pull out a calculator every time you add an egg, some broccoli or a few sardines to your dogโs regular food.
If fresh foods are making up around 15% or less of your dogโs overall calories in an otherwise balanced diet, you donโt need to worry about whether each of those foods is meeting a specific nutrient requirement.
But once fresh food starts replacing larger amounts of a complete diet โ and especially if youโre feeding 100% homemade โ we need to look at things differently.
This is something I see quite often with homemade diets. We know certain foods are good sources of certain nutrients, so we add a little of this and a little of that and hope weโve covered our bases.
Vitamin D is just one example.
You might even see a post of mine saying โthis food is a great source ofโฆโ and think, perfect, Iโll add some of that.
And thereโs absolutely nothing wrong with adding nutritious foods. But if youโre adding a food specifically to meet a nutrient requirement, you need to know how much of that nutrient it actually provides, how much your dog needs, and what else youโre adding along with it.
Otherwise, weโre really just guessing.
๐ฏ The amounts in this graphic help put that into perspective.
For a 40 lb adult dog, look at how much egg, canned sockeye salmon or canned sardines it could actually take to provide a weekโs worth of vitamin D.
Obviously, Iโm not saying anyone is feeding 28 eggs a week. But itโs easy to think, I feed some eggs, a couple of sardines and salmon now and then, so I must have vitamin D covered.
๐ And then thereโs the other side of this.
If you realize the diet isnโt providing enough vitamin D, the answer isnโt necessarily to just start feeding a lot more salmon or sardines.
When I add salmon to a diet, Iโm not only adding vitamin D. Iโm also adding calories, fat, protein, phosphorus, selenium, omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients.
I have to account for all of it.
Sometimes adding more of a particular food makes perfect sense. Other times, the amount Iโd need to add to meet one nutrient starts giving me more of something else than I want or changes the diet in other ways.
And this is one of the reasons I sometimes use supplements when Iโm formulating diets.
It doesnโt mean supplements are better than food. Sometimes a small, measured amount of exactly what I need simply makes more sense than adding a larger amount of a food just to get one particular nutrient.
๐ And the same thing applies in the other direction.
If the diet already contains supplemental vitamin D, adding a bunch of vitamin-D-rich foods on top isnโt automatically better. Vitamin D is fat soluble, and too much can be a problem too.
This is why I always come back to knowing what youโre feeding.
If youโre adding smaller amounts of fresh food โ around 15% or less of overall calories โ to an otherwise balanced diet, it doesnโt need to be complicated.
But if fresh food is making up a larger percentage of the diet, and especially if youโre feeding 100% homemade, thatโs when I think itโs worth getting professional help rather than trying to cover nutrient requirements with a little of this and a little of that. ๐พ
