Iditarod dogs can work up enormous appetites. What do these canine athletes eat to give them the strength to pull a sled all the way across Alaska?
The Iditarod sled dog race begins the first Saturday in March. Teams of 16 huskies will pull their musher in a sled 1100 miles across the frozen Alaska wilderness from Anchorage to Nome. This trip typically takes from 9 to 15 days. What will these dogs be eating to fuel the energy needed for such a feat?
One calorie is the energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree at one atmosphere pressure. It has been determined that an average sized sled dog can burn more than 10,000 of these calories each day during the race. These calorie-burning furnaces can not consume all of this in one or two meals but must be fed small meals every few hours throughout the day. Their bodies require protein, fat, carbohydrate and fiber, with fat being the most calorie-dense. To cover their caloric needs, more fat may be temporarily added to their diet, especially when temperatures are most bitter. This is done gradually over several days as too much fat added suddenly can cause diarrhea.
Each musher calculates his/her own dog food diet but most feed a premium power-packed dog food with added options of lamb trimmings, poultry skins, hamburger, moose or salmon steaks, occasionally corn oil, and for some, seal oil or mink mixture, in addition to vitamin, mineral, and probiotic supplements. The musher aims for a food that is about 2500 calories per pound. Water is important too, and although the food is usually fed frozen and raw, snow may be melted for making a stew.
Though high performance snacks are carried on the sled, it’s not possible to carry two week’s worth of food for 16 huskies. Mushers must prepare the food a couple of weeks ahead of time, in pre-measured bags, and send it out to the eighteen checkpoints set up along the Iditarod trail.
The wiry little canine athletes can work up enormous appetites while averaging more than a hundred miles a day in front of a sled, in subzero temperatures, but tasty nutrition will be waiting for them at each rest stop.
