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

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I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist.

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And this is a Puppy Culture
potluck podcast.

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You bring the topics,

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we bring the conversation.

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This episode's

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podcast is a follow up question
that came in on a previous podcast.

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Magda Chiarella and I did a podcast

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a while back on dietary

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choline and specifically egg yolks.

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The choline and egg yolks for pregnant
and lactating bitches

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to help prevent obstructive mastitis.

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If you haven't
listened to that podcast yet,

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you can find it on the Madcap
Radio home page.

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It's not under the potluck podcast.

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It was a separate podcast.

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You'll see it at the end of the home page.

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It's a great listen, but
I'm going to give you the Reader's Digest

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that egg yolks are a supreme source
of phosphodiester choline

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which can help prevent
obstructive mastitis in lactating bitches.

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And the question that

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came in is, “At
what point in the pregnancy

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should she start adding egg
yolk to her bitches diet?

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” And my answer is that egg yolk is always
a great addition to your dog's diet.

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So by all means, whatever point you're

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in, start adding that egg yolk.

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If you're specifically thinking of the
avoiding mastitis piece of the project,

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I really don't have a specific answer

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as to
how long it takes to load that choline.

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I'm going to talk in a minute
about some bovine studies that were done,

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but when it comes to dogs and choline
and at what point

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it needs to be added in order
to help prevent obstructive mastitis,

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my short answer is the earlier the better,

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because we really don't know
how long it takes to load that choline.

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It hasn't been studied in dogs.

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My recommendation is that

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you give an egg yolk a day to your dam,

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at least from the time
that you're planning the pregnancy.

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We're giving our dogs eggs and egg yolks

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throughout their lives,
periodically rotating it in their foods.

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But I would start being more purposeful
about getting it into her food every day

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from the time she's in season
and you're planning to breed her.

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My only caveat here with giving these egg

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yolks is that in the beginning

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part of the pregnancy,
your dam does not need any extra calories.

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So back out whatever the calories
would be approximately.

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You don't have to go crazy.

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Just give her a little bit less of her
regular food as you're adding in that egg

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yolk daily, because it is fairly caloric.

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Just as an

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aside, dogs have an evolutionary strategy

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where the fetuses don't
grow much physically

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for at least the first two trimesters

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and even most of the third trimester.

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It's only
at the end of the third trimester,

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and even the last days of the pregnancy,

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that there's explosive growth
and her caloric needs really increase.

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So definitely
for the first two trimesters,

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you don't want to be increasing her

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calories, even though she may be asking
for more food because a fat bitch

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is going to have more trouble whelping,
and is going to have a higher

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cytokine level
and all kinds of other complications

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can inflammatory
complications can stem from that.

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So we want to keep our bitches
lean, not skinny.

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We don't want them gaining a lot of weight
during pregnancy.

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In the early part.

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So you just want to cut back her calories
in her regular food

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a little bit to compensate
for that extra calories in the egg yolk.

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Now, someone else asked,

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is the egg yolk raw or cooked?

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My bitch got terrible mastitis
in her first litter.

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I was feeding her scrambled eggs.

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Then we had a shortage here in Australia.

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Once I stopped the eggs,
the mastitis got worse.

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Yeah, so interesting
that she saw that correlation between

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not giving eggs and mastitis right away.

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In answer to her question,

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for the purposes of this discussion,

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the choline content is there,
whether the eggs are raw or cooked.

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Raw egg yolks are always going to have
a better nutritional profile

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because there is some degradation
of nutrients when you cook them.

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But by all means, scrambled
eggs are fine for choline.

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Your, your bitch, even in mother's
pudding, it packs a huge choline punch.

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So by all means,
you can cook your egg yolks.

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Now that does bring up
the question, though, of the egg whites

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and why we recommend raw egg yolks

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and not raw whole eggs.

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The problem

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with raw egg whites
is that they contain avidan,

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which theoretically,

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if consumed in extremely large doses,

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could cause a biotin deficiency.

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The avidan in the egg whites

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binds up with biotin
and makes it unavailable.

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However, if you cook that avidan,

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the protein is denatured

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and can no longer bind up with a biotin.

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So now it becomes harmless.

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So cooked egg whites
at any stage in a dog's life are fine.

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It's the raw egg whites
that you want to watch out for.

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Now, having said that,

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the animal studies where they showed that

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Avidan could cause a biotin deficiency,
I mean,

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they were giving inordinate amounts of egg
whites, not one egg

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white a day like you might give
to your pregnant bitch.

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So this is why I say, theoretically,
this could happen because really,

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you know, I don't think one egg white
is going to cause

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one egg white
a day is going to cause biotin deficiency.

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But then on the other side,

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what we have is that pregnancy in

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general is a,

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a state where the organism is

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at risk of biotin deficiency.

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In fact, in human studies,

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they found that 50% of pregnant women

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are marginally deficient in biotin.

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And this is because
the metabolic demands of pregnancy.

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It's just it's very biotin intensive.

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You need a lot of biotin.

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And so you are at risk
or your dog is at risk

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for biotin deficiency anyway.

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So, you know, even though

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I really think probably raw
one raw egg white

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a day is not going to cause
a biotin deficiency,

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I err on the side of caution
and I leave the raw egg whites out.

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The good news is

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that the egg
yolk is an amazing source of biotin.

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So in addition to potentially

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preventing obstructive mastitis,

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you're giving her a nice hit of biotin,
right when she needs it.

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And, not

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diverge too far off track, but by the way,

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a biotin deficiency early
in the very early part of the pregnancy

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can be a teratogenic meaning to say
can potentially cause birth defects.

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So adding that egg yolk into her diet
from the time she's in season

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and you're planning to breed her,
you know, it's just a good practice.

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Now, I want to circle
back to the original question,

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which was for the purposes of potentially

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preventing mastitis in lactating bitches.

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When should you be introducing

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an egg yolk a day into your bitches diet?

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If you go to the show
page at Madcap Radio,

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you will see that I put a study up there,

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under the original,

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podcast that we did, which is an egg
yolk a day keeps mastitis away.

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That was with me and Magda Chiarella.

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And I put a study up there,

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a bovine study,

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which, to summarize, found that there was

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a benefit
to giving rumen protected choline

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from three weeks
before calving to three weeks after that.

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That was the best outcome for preventing
metabolic diseases

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like, milk fever and mastitis.

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And they call this in cows
the transitional period.

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So what's happening?

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And it's it's the same process in dogs.

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Okay.

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I mean, it's
how can I say it's not an exact parallel

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because cows, for instance, are pregnant

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for nine months,
whereas dogs are pregnant for nine weeks.

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And cows
have a different digestive system, but

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the process of switching from a dry
to a lactating state

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is the same in cows and and dogs,

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in that in a dry state,
most of the calcium

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that an animal uses or needs
comes from diet.

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And it's a it's a specific set of hormones

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that allow the animal
to extract what they need from their diet.

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But then when they start lactating,
their entire endocrine system

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has to do this sort of flip over
to a different set of hormones

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that are going to allow the animal
to extract

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calcium from its bones. And,

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that's because

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there comes a point with lactation,
because it's so calcium intense

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that the animal just could not get enough
calcium from its diet alone.

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It actually has to liberate calcium
from its bones in order to keep

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from going hypercalcemia, which is what
we call milk fever or eclampsia.

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And that is life threatening.

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Okay.

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In cows,

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that would be the three weeks before up

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to the three weeks after.

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Interestingly, even though dogs

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have a much shorter gestation period,

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I don't think that you can extrapolate it
down and say, well, it's nine months.

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So for cows.

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So if it's nine weeks for dogs, it's
that much shorter

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and just do proportionately shorter
and say that's a transitional period.

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I don't think it works that way.

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I actually think three weeks before

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to three weeks
after is probably a pretty good practice

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as far as that's like your safe margin

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for that transitional period in dogs.

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But, you know, that's just my hypothesis.

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If it were me, I would just be giving her

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the egg yolk at least once or twice
a week.

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Her whole life.

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And for sure starting
to give her one of those raw egg yolks

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every day from the time she's in season
and I'm planning to breed her.

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If you

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Well, that's it for this time.

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Thanks for listening. Bye bye.