So long as you are prepared, you can start your puppy on a fresh food and raw food diet as soon as you bring them home.

Whether you fully transition them immediately or do it gradually over a period of time (say, a week) is really up to you, but there is no reason you need to wait for them to hit certain milestones before introducing dietary changes.

And if you need help on raw feeding meal plans for your puppy then check out our puppy recipe plan and eBook here

Puppies are resilient and there are so many long term benefits to exposing them to different flavours, textures, nutrients and organisms (the good kind) when they are still very young. 

This is partly due to the importance of the microbiome, which is made up of trillions of microorganisms, including bacteria, yeast, fungi and viruses, mostly residing on the skin and in the digestive tract of animals.

While we tend to view things like bacteria in a negative light, in fact most of these cells offer protective benefits, including making up a significant portion of the immune system.

Focusing on developing your puppy’s microbiome from a young age is a fantastic way to set them up for long term health, and failing to do so can have long term negative consequences. 

A puppy’s first microbiome colonising event is birth, when they are exposed to all of the good bacteria in the birth canal.

This is followed by food, initially in the form of colostrum and then milk from their mother.

Once they are weaned onto solid food at several weeks of age, this process of developing the gut microbiome continues, so it’s difficult to overstate the importance of diet in young animals.

Feeding a wide variety of nutritious foods with real, bioavailable vitamins and minerals, digestive enzymes, probiotics and prebiotic fibres, antioxidants, digestible proteins and healthy fats is an incredible way to achieve this