Feeding Your Beagle

Beagles are generally easy to feed. It is very rare to find a beagle who won’t eat anything you offer so you should be able to find a diet that will suit, in fact you will have to calorie count with most beagles as they have never learnt when to stop!

The easiest way to feed beagles is to use a good quality complete dried kibble style diet. There are many on the market and you don’t need to pick the most expensive but a medium priced product should suffice. Pick the life stage that is suitable for your dog. Some beagles are sensitive to certain ingredients with chicken and dairy products being quite common and wheat from the cereal components. For these dogs a single source protein diet such as a lamb/rice or salmon/potato-based diet would be a good one to try. Bear in mind that it can take 6-8 weeks with only this diet (and no titbits or treats at all) before you would see an improvement.

Many people use the so-called BARF (bones and appropriate raw food) diet or a basis of this to feed their beagles. This means including such things as raw meaty bones (raw beef ribs, raw beef shin bones to name a couple) and raw chicken wings. Raw chicken from a safe source is fine. It is cooked bones, which are more likely to splinter and cause problems to the dog.

Another good alternative is the natural meat based diets using raw minced foods and or tripe. These should include a biscuit meal of some sort to balance the diet and there is a lot of good information with the web sites of most of the suppliers, as they will endeavour to help you feed your beagle a balanced diet.

For treats pieces of raw fruit and vegetables such as apple and carrot are good, not grapes or onions (see toxic section). Dried empty hooves, raw shank bones and hide chews can be used to help keep teeth clean. All chews should be under supervision particularly if you have a greedy dog, which might try and bite off pieces. If you have more than one beagle make sure you have extra chews around so that they can swap without any aggression or put them in separate areas to chew. Beagles can be food possessive because they like food so much, if you have a problem with this then please do spend some time teaching your dog to accept swaps. This means teaching the dog to let you take things for a reward (don’t just take it away). This may take time but it will teach your beagle that he or she should let you remove something but he will get rewarded for doing that. It means if they grab something dangerous you can take it away safely.