Why Give Dogs Yucca?
If you have taken a look at our ingredients, you may have noticed yucca is one of them. Unless you have a semi-tropical garden, you may be unfamiliar with this plant that’s part of the agave family. So why did we decide to put it on your dog’s food?
What is Yucca?
The yucca plant has stiff leaves – sword like – with beautiful white bell-shaped flowers. It’s a root vegetable that grows in sub-tropical climates like Mexico and South America.
And, like everything we put in Stay Loyal, it has some great properties!
Why Put Yucca in Dog Food?
Yucca is full of great nutritional value. For example, yucca is an excellent source of vitamin C, B vitamins, protein, and magnesium, to name a few nutrients it contains.
Then there’s the saponins contained within the yucca root. Saponins are plant glycosides that react to water by foaming. This foam aids in digestion by helping those vitamins and minerals pass through your dog’s intestinal wall. This basically means it helps your dog absorb and digest his food better, giving him more nutrition at each meal.
Yucca is known for helping with arthritis pain, so it’s good for aging dogs! In fact one study found it significantly helped 59 percent of the dogs in the study with knee and hip pain.
BONUS! Yucca helps keep urine and feces odor down – something every dog owner appreciates.
Yucca can be used topically as well. In shampoo form, yucca is good for all kinds of skin issues.
A Note of Caution
While yucca sounds like a wonder root – like all good things, too much can be harmful. An over dosage of yucca can cause vomiting, diarrhea and bloat. If you decide to feed a supplement, it is vital you give the right dosage. It is recommended that any food with yucca in it that is fed daily, should have less than 2 percent. We are careful with all our ingredients to make sure we have the correct balance for the health of your dog, taking the guesswork out of feeding these supplements.
If you are thinking of feeding an extra yucca supplement, do your research and make sure you know the correct dosage. For example, to aid in digestion, it is recommended to add 2- 4 grams of dried yucca root per kilogram of food fed each day. As you can see, if your dog is only getting 120g of food a day – say for a small or medium sized dog – they are going to need very little yucca.
For this reason, it’s easier to feed a food with yucca already in it – making those small measurements is time consuming! Not to mention doing the math to figure out how much your dog needs.
Fed correctly, yucca is a great additive to any dog’s diet. It helps boost the amount of nutrition being absorbed, with the added bonus of decreasing smells! Who could ask for more out of their dog’s food?
