Zicker et al. (2012) conducted a year-long evaluation on 48 Beagle puppies to assess the effects of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)-rich fish oil on development. Puppies were divided into three groups after weaning and fed diets with low, moderate, or high DHA levels until 52 weeks of age.
Puppies on the high-DHA diet outperformed others on multiple measures:
- Cognition and Memory: Superior performance on reversal learning and visual discrimination tasks.
- Psychomotor Skills: Better early navigation through obstacle mazes.
- Immune Function: Significantly higher antibody titers against rabies vaccination at 1 and 2 weeks post-vaccination.
- Vision: Higher retinal b-wave amplitudes correlated with serum DHA levels, indicating improved retinal function.
The high-DHA food also contained elevated vitamin E, taurine, choline, and L-carnitine, suggesting that synergistic nutrients may have contributed to these improvements. Importantly, DHA supplementation during the critical post-weaning period enhanced neurocognitive development, immune resilience, and visual capacity, supporting its role in healthy puppy growth.
Source: Zicker, S., Jewell, D., Yamka, R., & Milgram, N. (2012). Evaluation of cognitive learning, memory, psychomotor, immunologic, and retinal functions in healthy puppies fed foods fortified with docosahexaenoic acid-rich fish oil from 8 to 52 weeks of age. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 241(5), 583–594. Authors: Sharon Zicker, Dennis Jewell, Ryan Yamka, Norton Milgram. Journal: Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. https://doi.org/10.2460/javma.241.5.583
