Puppy Culture Potluck: Ep40 - Why and When to Give Egg Yolks to Pregnant Dogs

This episode is a follow-up question about one of our most popular episodes, “An Egg Yolk A Day Keeps Mastitis Away”:

“At what point in the pregnancy should I begin giving my dam egg yolk to help prevent mastitis?”

In this episode, I discuss:

• Why egg yolks are a benefit for pregnant and lactating dogs
• Best practices for when to begin feeding egg yolks to your brood bitches
• Cooked vs Raw egg yolks and egg whites

Visit our website www.madcapradio.com for further reading.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.
And this is a Puppy Culturepotluck podcast.
You bring the topics,
we bring the conversation.

(00:21):
This episode's
podcast is a follow up questionthat came in on a previous podcast.
Magda Chiarella and I did a podcast
a while back on dietary
choline and specifically egg yolks.
The choline and egg yolks for pregnantand lactating bitches

(00:43):
to help prevent obstructive mastitis.
If you haven'tlistened to that podcast yet,
you can find it on the MadcapRadio home page.
It's not under the potluck podcast.
It was a separate podcast.
You'll see it at the end of the home page.
It's a great listen, butI'm going to give you the Reader's Digest

(01:04):
that egg yolks are a supreme sourceof phosphodiester choline
which can help preventobstructive mastitis in lactating bitches.
And the question that
came in is, “Atwhat point in the pregnancy
should she start adding eggyolk to her bitches diet?

(01:25):
” And my answer is that egg yolk is alwaysa great addition to your dog's diet.
So by all means, whatever point you're
in, start adding that egg yolk.
If you're specifically thinking of theavoiding mastitis piece of the project,

(01:45):
I really don't have a specific answer
as tohow long it takes to load that choline.
I'm going to talk in a minuteabout some bovine studies that were done,
but when it comes to dogs and cholineand at what point
it needs to be added in orderto help prevent obstructive mastitis,

(02:07):
my short answer is the earlier the better,
because we really don't knowhow long it takes to load that choline.
It hasn't been studied in dogs.
My recommendation is that
you give an egg yolk a day to your dam,
at least from the timethat you're planning the pregnancy.
We're giving our dogs eggs and egg yolks

(02:29):
throughout their lives,periodically rotating it in their foods.
But I would start being more purposefulabout getting it into her food every day
from the time she's in seasonand you're planning to breed her.
My only caveat here with giving these egg
yolks is that in the beginning
part of the pregnancy,your dam does not need any extra calories.

(02:52):
So back out whatever the calorieswould be approximately.
You don't have to go crazy.
Just give her a little bit less of herregular food as you're adding in that egg
yolk daily, because it is fairly caloric.
Just as an
aside, dogs have an evolutionary strategy

(03:13):
where the fetuses don'tgrow much physically
for at least the first two trimesters
and even most of the third trimester.
It's onlyat the end of the third trimester,
and even the last days of the pregnancy,
that there's explosive growthand her caloric needs really increase.

(03:38):
So definitelyfor the first two trimesters,
you don't want to be increasing her
calories, even though she may be askingfor more food because a fat bitch
is going to have more trouble whelping,and is going to have a higher
cytokine leveland all kinds of other complications
can inflammatorycomplications can stem from that.

(04:00):
So we want to keep our bitcheslean, not skinny.
We don't want them gaining a lot of weightduring pregnancy.
In the early part.
So you just want to cut back her caloriesin her regular food
a little bit to compensatefor that extra calories in the egg yolk.
Now, someone else asked,

(04:22):
is the egg yolk raw or cooked?
My bitch got terrible mastitisin her first litter.
I was feeding her scrambled eggs.
Then we had a shortage here in Australia.
Once I stopped the eggs,the mastitis got worse.
Yeah, so interestingthat she saw that correlation between

(04:45):
not giving eggs and mastitis right away.
In answer to her question,
for the purposes of this discussion,
the choline content is there,whether the eggs are raw or cooked.
Raw egg yolks are always going to havea better nutritional profile
because there is some degradationof nutrients when you cook them.

(05:09):
But by all means, scrambledeggs are fine for choline.
Your, your bitch, even in mother'spudding, it packs a huge choline punch.
So by all means,you can cook your egg yolks.
Now that does bring upthe question, though, of the egg whites
and why we recommend raw egg yolks

(05:31):
and not raw whole eggs.
The problem
with raw egg whitesis that they contain avidan,
which theoretically,
if consumed in extremely large doses,
could cause a biotin deficiency.

(05:55):
The avidan in the egg whites
binds up with biotinand makes it unavailable.
However, if you cook that avidan,
the protein is denatured
and can no longer bind up with a biotin.
So now it becomes harmless.
So cooked egg whitesat any stage in a dog's life are fine.

(06:19):
It's the raw egg whitesthat you want to watch out for.
Now, having said that,
the animal studies where they showed that
Avidan could cause a biotin deficiency,I mean,
they were giving inordinate amounts of eggwhites, not one egg

(06:41):
white a day like you might giveto your pregnant bitch.
So this is why I say, theoretically,this could happen because really,
you know, I don't think one egg whiteis going to cause
one egg whitea day is going to cause biotin deficiency.
But then on the other side,
what we have is that pregnancy in

(07:03):
general is a,
a state where the organism is
at risk of biotin deficiency.
In fact, in human studies,
they found that 50% of pregnant women
are marginally deficient in biotin.

(07:25):
And this is becausethe metabolic demands of pregnancy.
It's just it's very biotin intensive.
You need a lot of biotin.
And so you are at riskor your dog is at risk
for biotin deficiency anyway.
So, you know, even though
I really think probably rawone raw egg white

(07:46):
a day is not going to causea biotin deficiency,
I err on the side of cautionand I leave the raw egg whites out.
The good news is
that the eggyolk is an amazing source of biotin.
So in addition to potentially
preventing obstructive mastitis,

(08:07):
you're giving her a nice hit of biotin,right when she needs it.
And, not
diverge too far off track, but by the way,
a biotin deficiency earlyin the very early part of the pregnancy
can be a teratogenic meaning to saycan potentially cause birth defects.
So adding that egg yolk into her dietfrom the time she's in season

(08:32):
and you're planning to breed her,you know, it's just a good practice.
Now, I want to circleback to the original question,
which was for the purposes of potentially
preventing mastitis in lactating bitches.
When should you be introducing

(08:54):
an egg yolk a day into your bitches diet?
If you go to the showpage at Madcap Radio,
you will see that I put a study up there,
under the original,
podcast that we did, which is an eggyolk a day keeps mastitis away.

(09:15):
That was with me and Magda Chiarella.
And I put a study up there,
a bovine study,
which, to summarize, found that there was
a benefitto giving rumen protected choline
from three weeksbefore calving to three weeks after that.
That was the best outcome for preventingmetabolic diseases

(09:37):
like, milk fever and mastitis.
And they call this in cowsthe transitional period.
So what's happening?
And it's it's the same process in dogs.
Okay.
I mean, it'show can I say it's not an exact parallel
because cows, for instance, are pregnant

(09:58):
for nine months,whereas dogs are pregnant for nine weeks.
And cowshave a different digestive system, but
the process of switching from a dryto a lactating state
is the same in cows and and dogs,
in that in a dry state,most of the calcium

(10:21):
that an animal uses or needscomes from diet.
And it's a it's a specific set of hormones
that allow the animalto extract what they need from their diet.
But then when they start lactating,their entire endocrine system
has to do this sort of flip overto a different set of hormones

(10:43):
that are going to allow the animalto extract
calcium from its bones. And,
that's because
there comes a point with lactation,because it's so calcium intense
that the animal just could not get enoughcalcium from its diet alone.
It actually has to liberate calciumfrom its bones in order to keep

(11:07):
from going hypercalcemia, which is whatwe call milk fever or eclampsia.
And that is life threatening.
Okay.
In cows,
that would be the three weeks before up
to the three weeks after.
Interestingly, even though dogs
have a much shorter gestation period,

(11:30):
I don't think that you can extrapolate itdown and say, well, it's nine months.
So for cows.
So if it's nine weeks for dogs, it'sthat much shorter
and just do proportionately shorterand say that's a transitional period.
I don't think it works that way.
I actually think three weeks before
to three weeksafter is probably a pretty good practice

(11:52):
as far as that's like your safe margin
for that transitional period in dogs.
But, you know, that's just my hypothesis.
If it were me, I would just be giving her
the egg yolk at least once or twicea week.
Her whole life.
And for sure startingto give her one of those raw egg yolks

(12:14):
every day from the time she's in seasonand I'm planning to breed her.
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(12:38):
at puppyculture.com.
Well, that's it for this time.
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.