i owned ckcs but my sister as a irish red setter who is very thin his hips are raised and you can see his ribs he eats all his meals and he is feed on eukabuba large breed she as increase the amount she feeds him on but this just causes large amounts of pooh which are solid and very bad wind he is 7 months old and very active and other than his weight very healthy -any suggestion to increase his weight with out the excessive pooh and wind, he is wormed regulary and enjoyes 2-3 hours a day in the woods.

Hi Sharon, I too have Irish Setters.  Firstly at 7 months old I would not be excercising this dog for 2-3 hours a day in the woods.  He should be having no more than half an hour max at a time, some of this should be lead walking otherwise he will just burn off all of his food as if he is like my boys he will run non stop :rolleyes:  One of my boys has had issues with food which made him quite thin and to be fair he still is on the thin side at 20 months but he is putting the weight on.  Tell your sister to try adding tripe to the eukanuba I found this helped put weight on my boy, he doesnt have complete food much any more I tend to just stick to meat as he prefers this. 

Give me a shout if you need any other info, another good source of info would be the pups breeder they are usually happy to help :)

Hello Sharon, at 7 months this puppy is very much a baby, Irish Setters do not mature in body until they are 3- 3 1/2 years old. It is entirely normal for a baby this age to be skinny. The issue of exercise is another thing though, 2-3 hours is way too much for his age, and will wreck his developing joints. He should be having 30-35 minutes of controlled exercise and a little playing in the garden.

I personally would not be adding anything to his food, he will learn to pick out the tastiest titbits and maybe turn up his nose at the rest.

He will mature naturally and your friend should not be trying to build him up with overfeeding. Just good quality food and a sensible exercise regieme is all that is required. I agree with Claire, your friend should contact the pups breeder for the most valid advice though.

Dawn R. (Irish Setter owner since 1973)

Hi Sharon

I too have Irish Setters and agree with the above posters concerning exercising a 7 month old puppy. The only other option I could reccomend is changing his food. Eukanuba has been known to have a really high protein level and in my experience high protein and Setters in general don't mix. I had a similar problem with one of my Gordon Setters that was about the same age in that she wouldn't carry any weight at all and that was without being over exercised. We gradually changed her onto burns adult food and worked her up to the full amount for her size. We then found for her to put on weight that she was being fed huge amounts hence huge poohs and lots of wind, so on the advice of her breeder we lowered the amount of burns to the recommended amount and added raw tripe to her feeds, at that point she was still on 3 feeds a day and slowly but surely a nice covering appeared. This diet is by no means the "right one" for your sisters dog, however just giving my experiences. I would definitely suggest putting him back onto two or three feeds a day as he is still growing and he'll get more from his food over a few feeds as opposed to one big one a day. As mentioned before the breeder is definitely the best person to advise as every Irish line develops differently, and the breeder will know if this is fairly common for a dog of their breeding. Tell your sister not to worry about contacting her breeder as the majority of breeders would be glad she phoned for advice, after all the breeder wants what is best for a puppy they produced.
Keep us posted on how he's doing. It's lovely to hear from other Setter owners (even if it is your sister :D )

Lovely to hear anything about setters, they and the spaniel breeds are by far the most beautiful in my opinion! :-D

Sharon - is she worming him every 3 months, as advised, with Drontal +? 

If so, that rules out worms.

Is the Eukanuba a Junior food, because at 7 months I would expect him still to be on Puppy or Junior food, not adult food yet.

Personally, I wouldn't be feeding Eukanuba because I don't think the ingredients are very good (I also have problems with their animal testing policies).

However, since she has a problem keeping weight on him, I wouldn't advise Burns in this case either - since Burns tends to be on the "lean" side and several people have reported that they find it hard to keep weight on their dogs when feeding Burns (which is otherwise an excellent food, btw).

I'd suggest James Wellbeloved Junior for him: www.wellbeloved.co.uk  This comes in 4 flavours (Fish, Lamb, Duck and Turkey).  Their Junior food should be fed up to 12 mnths.

sorry got it wrong she takes her working cocker spaniel to the woods for 2-3 hours her red stetter has an average of 1 hour per day 1/2 on lead, i dont think it is too much walking as he as just come out of the kennels who at most walk on lead only 30mins a day (he was thin before he went but was even thinner when he came out) he is wormed as he should be using vet products. what about the really bad wind! any suggestions he stinks she tried him on burns but lost even more weight. He is still feed puppy food she feeds him on eukanuba because he does not seem like to eat any other dog food she adds a liittle warm water which makes it smell and this seems to encourage him to eat, but he will try and eat anything else like try to empty the bin for food scraps so he seems still hungry to me.

Sharon, an hour of exersise is still double what this puppy should be having, it's too much. His baby skeleton is very fragile and delicate, please advise that the exercise is reduced for the sake of the puppy's health.

Most dogs will scavenge if the opportunity presents itself, it hasn't got much to do with being hungry.

Dawn R. (32 years experience of Irish Setters)

Dawn is that all :rolleyes: ;)

Dawn sorry I didn't mean anything by that post and do sincerley apologise :) Have Pm'd you as well :)

I wouldnt personally feed burns, tried it on my boy and he lost loads of weight.  Nursery I do think he sounds very thin if his hip bones are showing, my boy was this thin as a pup and his breeder nearly cried when she saw him.  As I said earlier my boy didnt put on weight until I added tripe to his food, I must admit though he did become picky at a later date and up until a few months ago I was force feeding him as he went through the refusal to eat stage :( Now he eats everything which is great.  My other boy has always eaten everything :rolleyes:

I know large breed pups arent supposed to get loads of excercise,but how can people possibly stay sane with some of these high energy breeds with only 1/2 hour excercise? I was talking to a lady yesterday who had a 5mth. old FCR,who she takes down to the park/river,let's him off lead and allows him to do his own thing at his own pace.I asked her if she followed the 5 minute rule,per month of age,she told me that herself and her dog would go balmy if she restricted his exercise that much,i had to agree with her :O She did know her stuff however,her hubby wants to take him jogging but she said not until he's 2 years old :)

I have springers and i must admit i did the same thing as this lady,mental stimulation games at home just didnt cut it,they needed to get out and about and run off all their energy,i would be in the nut house by now if i had kept them on the lead and only gave them 1/2 hour walks or whatever,this just wouldnt have been enough. I never took them running with me and instead of one or two big walks we did a few smaller ones through out the day,they were always off lead and were allowed to go at their own pace,i have done this with all of my dogs and i havnt had any problems yet.I just cant imagine high energy breeds being happy and stimulated with short on lead walks!

Sharon i would give the raw green tripe a try,it has helped manier a dog put on body,tinned fish in oil a few times a week is also good,raw lamb breast will work too. Eukanuba wouldnt be my first choice due to the reasons 123 stated and Burns is NOT known for putting weight on,but rather,dogs tend to lose weight on it :(

If he has bad wind, this is often a reaction to grains in the cereal.  I can't remember exactly why, but the way the gut of some dogs processes some grains tends to produce wind.  If you feed a food like James Wellbeloved which only contains rice as a grain, he should be a lot better.  JWB is still my suggestion.

My skinny boy has REALLY bad wind and he is on BARF, he does loud and smelly ones

<he is on BARF>

We should not be allowed to put this as a food :-)

We should say he is on lots of brassicas / root veg / fruit / lamb / chicken / eggs etc etc.

Mine are on a primarily rmb diet with a little veg and most wind occurs when fed brassicas

My girl still trumps from time to time and looks around to see where the noise came from - makes me laugh.  Anyway before changing her on JWB she could clear a room regularly on a daily basis.  She is much much better on JWB and so are we :D

Abnormal amounts of wind also suggest poor digestion of food.I think the best bet for this dog would be to get him onto a better food,preferably a highly digestable food so he can suck out as much nutrients from it as possible,supplement with raw green tripe which is chock full of enzymes which will both help with any gas and the digestion of his food,the latter in turn will help with the weight gain.

Some/most dogs just dont do well on loads of grains,the bad ones such as soy,wheat and maize tend to ferment in the gut creating huge bouts of wind,which can be very uncomfortable for the poor dog :(

I've found the dogs  i've met who have been fed pedigree,gusto and other equally 'not so nice' foods have had voluminous poops and unbearable toots,these 2 symptoms can usually always be traced back to inappropiate feeding/food.