# Egg Yokes?????



## SMARTY (Apr 19, 2007)

This past weekend I was told the havanese need to be feed an egg yoke a day for the chorlestrol. Do any of you do this? If so why do they need it? Do you know of an artical that I might read on the subject?


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## Lina (Apr 26, 2007)

Havanese tend to have low cholesterol levels, which is bad when it is too low. It is recommended that you add an egg yolk to their food. I read it in the book The Joyous Havanese, but I'm not sure if there's an online article available on it.

Edit: I do mean a cooked egg yolk or whole egg... not raw.


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## LuvMyHavanese (Apr 13, 2007)

Hi again Sandi! It was so nice to meet you on Saturday. I saw you with Smarty & she was so cute! Anywhoo, my breeder(who was there on Sat) asked me to continue feeding them an egg yolk a day if possible(said egg whites gave them the runs!uke: ) she said it was also in part to help the eyes.
I wish someone told me i need to raise MY cholesterol!


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## Havtahava (Aug 20, 2006)

Yes, I do it and I buy it online at eggstore.com. They sell dried egg yolks for $7.00 (sometimes it is $8.00) per pound. The egg yolks do not need to be refrigerated and they last a long time.

Here's a direct link to the egg yolks on their site: Powdered Egg Yolks


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## LuvMyHavanese (Apr 13, 2007)

Kimberly, how did you attach a link to your underlined 'Powdered Egg Yolks' without showing the long web address? I have tried to find how to do it but just cant!


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## SMARTY (Apr 19, 2007)

Shannon, it was great meeting you and your husband. Dreamer and Tripp are so pretty. Sorry you could not make Sunday, it was an interesting show.

:focus: we need to raise their cholesterol to prevent cateracts? I'll need to get the Joyous Havanese, I have several others but not this one. Does it talk about research? This just seems so strange to me.


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## Lina (Apr 26, 2007)

Cholesterol does not have anything to do with cataracts as far as I know... it's important instead to maintain the membrane stability of cells. Although it is important to keep your cholesterol level low, it is also important not to keep it TOO low.

Too much cholesterol, which integrates itself into the cellular membrane, aids in making the membrane more soluble and it allows more molecules - in particular ions - (good and bad) to come into your cells - this is bad because each cell in your body is made such that they have the correct amount of ions and other molecules to survive and/or proliferate. However, when you have too little cholesterol, the opposite happens and things that SHOULD be getting into the cell cannot and it changes the composition of the cell, which can seriously damage it. This can happen in all cells. Cholesterol is also an important protein modifier that allows for the uptake and diffusion of signals to cells (this tells cells what they should or should not be doing at a specific time point).

There's a lot of confusion about the importance of cholesterol since everyone just thinks that cholesterol is bad since nowadays everyone talks about how you shouldn't have any cholesterol. This is incorrect. You shouldn't have *too much* cholesterol (there's also bad and good cholesterol but I won't go into all of that). Having absolutely no cholesterol is actually a very bad thing and can lead to serious defects.

Sorry for the long explanation, but I hope it makes sense. I'm not basing this off of any dog article, mind you, only on my own knowledge (I'm a biochemist).

There is research out there that says that Havanese do not produce enough cholesterol for themselves and as such they need to be given that supplemental cholesterol in their diet.


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## Suuske747 (May 9, 2007)

Doesn't that also depend on the kind of food you give them?
I mean whether or not to give them the egg yolk supplement....

Basically, you'd have to find out the daily amount they need, check it with the contents of the food you give, to balance out if necessary.....

Purina Proplan, I've been told, has excellent content for Hav's, especially the Salmon and Rice, as it also contains the good Omega oils.....


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## LuvMyHavanese (Apr 13, 2007)

Well, all i was told is that (my breeder) was part of a study that showed the yolks possibly helped with them. She went into detail but i really dont remember the details-sorry!


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## SMARTY (Apr 19, 2007)

Lina, thank you, that makes a lot more sense than what I was thinking. 

With a good diet should we have our Havanese checked for chlesterol before the daily egg yoke or do we assume they all need it? Also could you cause problems if they did not need it? And is this a life long thing?


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## SMARTY (Apr 19, 2007)

This is very interesting. Joanne Baldwin, DVM was there this weekend and several of her comments told us she used Pro Plan. Diane Klumb is who mentioned the egg yokes but I did not get to ask why.


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## Lina (Apr 26, 2007)

Ok, so I found that the egg thing I saw was actually in The Havanese by Diane Klumb. She states, and I quote:

"Research currently underway indicates that the Havanese breed, as a whole, may benefit from more dietary cholesterol than is generally present in commercial dog food, so the addition of whole egg (scrambled, fried, poached, boiled, and even shirred are all equally acceptable) if the dog tolerates it, or an egg yolk if he doesn't, is probably a good addition as well."

She goes on to state that dogs are recognized as a "cholesterol-insensitive species" so they don't suffer from high cholesterol no matter how much they take in.

So you could feed them and egg yolk a day for the rest of their lives with no problems.


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## SMARTY (Apr 19, 2007)

Don't know how I missed that in the book. OK, do you feed the "whole egg if the dog can tolerate it?" Or do we now say just the yoke?


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## irnfit (Nov 21, 2006)

My dogs only like eggs if hey come with cheese on them. :biggrin1:


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## Sunnygirl (Jun 1, 2007)

We agreed in our contract with our breeder to feed egg yolk to our Havanese every day. He's 9 weeks old and gets half an egg yolk a day now. It works out well for us because my kids always want hard boiled eggs and they only eat the whites. So now instead of tossing the yolks, they put them in a little container in the refrigerator for the puppy. We otherwise feed Purina Pro Plan (which is what the breeder fed him).


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## Lina (Apr 26, 2007)

I think do the whole egg if the dog will eat it as it will be much easier on you (instead of having to separate from the whites). Plus, egg white doesn't have anything bad in it, so feeding it with the yolk is a-ok.


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## Havtahava (Aug 20, 2006)

Some Havanese are sensitive to the egg white and will get loose stools as a result of it. None of my current Havs have sensitive digestive systems, thank goodness, but my first Hav could not handle any egg white or any rich foods at all. My second male would also get an upset stomach when eating egg white, so I just quit using it altogether and only buy the powered egg yolk, which is very convenient.


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## Tom King (Aug 2, 2006)

We don't, but it's our choice and not a recommendation one way or the other. We had three generations of healthy dogs without supplementing eggs before the study started. Starborn had several dogs in the study and we did feed the egg diet then. One dog developed a skin problem that was diagnosed (without taking skin plugs to see if she actually had sebaceous glands) as SA. As we weaned the dogs off the eggs her skin cleared up and the hair grew back.

It does appear that some dogs or maybe lines do need the supplement and that it can actually help some of the problems.

We'll simply stick to "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." If we were to have a problem pop up we wouldn't want it masked by anything.


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## SMARTY (Apr 19, 2007)

Thanks Tom, that is how I normally feel about feeding, but I sure do not want to have a problem due to the fact I did not feed the egg yokes.


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