Impact of diets with a high content of greaves-meal protein or carbohydrates on faecal characteristics, volatile fatty acids and faecal calprotectin concentrations in healthy dogs

Table 1 Analysis of body weight and faecal consistency scores, dry matter, pH and NH ₃ (n = 3 faecal samples for each variable per diet period) of 5 dogs

Variable	Baseline (DC)	DC¹	HPGM ²	HCS ³	Kruskal-Wallis	Mixed model
					p-value	p-value
Body weight, kg	19.0 [18.3–19.3] ^A	19.78 [18.15–21.10]^A	20.00 [18.60–21.65] ^A	19.40 [18.80–20.85] ^A	> 0.10	> 0.10
Faecal consistency score	2.5 [2.0–3.0] ^B	2.5 [2.0–3.0] ^B	4.0 [ 4.0 – 5.0 ] ^A	2.5 [2.0–3.0] ^B	< 0.01	< 0.01
Faecal dry matter, %	32.2 [30.1–36.2] ^A	32.4 [30.6–35.4] ^A	32.2 [13.6–35.9] ^A	32.5 [29.8–35.7] ^A	> 0.10	> 0.10
Faecal pH	6.9 [6.8–7.1] ^A,B	6.7 [6.5–7.0] ^B	7.5 [ 6.6 – 7.9 ] ^A	7.2 [7.0–7.5] ^A,B	< 0.01	< 0.01
Faecal NH₃, μg/g wet faeces	1 245 [982–1 482] ^A	1 079 [693–1 468] ^A,B	1 191 [710–1 778] ^A	835 [ 657 – 1,162 ] ^B	0.03	0.01

¹DC: dry commercial diet.
²HPGM: high-protein greaves-meal diet.
³HCS: high-carbohydrate starch based diet.
Values are expressed as medians and ranges [min–max]. For each variable, diets not sharing a common superscript (A, B) are significantly different at p < 0.05 and are marked in bold.

ISSN: 1746-6148