Episode 39 - Yeast-Based Probiotic Supplements for Brood Bitches: When They Make Sense and When They Don't

1/20/2026

One of our fans wrote to me recently about a webinar she attended on the veterinary use of probiotics:

“The thing that intrigued me was… a study where one group of pregnant bitches was on a yeast-based probiotic, and the control group on no probiotic. There were benefits to both bitches and puppies, such as more stable GI tract and stool quality during whelping in the mothers on the probiotic, and they were less likely to have puppies of low birth weight.

I know Jane works a lot at supporting the gut biome, but interesting info about a specific yeast and a specific time."

This podcast untangles:

The difference between yeast and bacteria-based probiotics
How yeast-based probiotic supplements might help or harm a pregnant bitch, depending on the context
How to decide if a yeast or other probiotic is appropriate for your pregnant dam

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

Transcript - Episode 39

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist, and this is a Puppy Culture potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

This episode we're going to talk about the therapeutic use of probiotic supplementation for pregnant bitches. One of my fans wrote in to me recently about a webinar she attended on the veterinary use of probiotics. And this is what she said.

The thing that intrigued me was a study where one group of pregnant bitches was on a yeast based probiotic, and the control group on no probiotic.

There were benefits to both bitches and puppies, such as more stable GI tract and stool quality during whelping in the mothers on the probiotic, and they were less likely to have puppies of low birth weight. I know Jane works a lot at supplementing the gut biome, but interesting info about a specific yeast and a specific time. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting bit of info to put in our breeding and well-being toolkit.

They talked about the times to use probiotics, like to prevent GI stress and upset for dogs that are bothered by travel, company or antibiotic use, as well as dogs with chronic GI issues, but also in reproduction.

Okay, this is me again. Probiotic supplementation is really having a moment right now, and I do think it's particularly hot in the veterinary community, like as an as a new kind of tool.

But context is everything. And we need to talk about context when it comes to whether it's a good idea to supplement your brood bitches with probiotic supplements of any kind, and specifically with yeast based probiotics.

So let's talk just briefly about yeast versus bacteria based probiotics. This is not a course level detail discussion. It's just a primer to position it for you. Probiotics come from food sources. Things like yogurt, fermented vegetables, kefir, kombucha. Yogurt and fermented vegetables use a bacteria based fermentation process versus kefir and kombucha, which use a Scoby, which is a symbiotic colony of yeast and bacteria. S c o b y.

So kefir and kombucha are much more complex blends of many different probiotic bacteria and yeasts. But that's not to say that they're better or not as good as a yogurt, or a kimchi, or a miso or a sauerkraut. They're just different. Okay. All of these fermented foods have their contribution to make. Dairy and plant ferments use different probiotics to do their fermentation, and even different kinds of yogurt will have different probiotics in them.

So again, it's not that one is better than the other, it's just that yeast based probiotics have, number one, a better chance of surviving the high stomach acid in a dog's gut. A dog's gut is a carnivore gut. It's super short. It's super high acid compared to our long lower acid omnivore intestines. So those yeasts, they just stand a better chance of surviving that trip down that super acidic gut, than a bacteria does.

And second of all, the yeasts stand a better chance of surviving a round of antibiotics because the antibiotic, remember, is going to be an equal opportunity destroyer. It's going to destroy all the bacteria it comes in contact with. The good guys and the bad guys. So it's going to strip that gut, leave it vulnerable to dysbiosis, leave it vulnerable to a pathogen coming in and taking root.

And a yeast based probiotic in that instance can be helpful because the yeast will survive the antibiotic better and sort of crowd out the bad guys. And with any luck, placehold until the good bacteria can reestablish. After the antibiotics are gone.

All that having been said, we always have to remember that the name of the game is balance and diversity. When it comes to the gut biome. Food sources are always going to win for this. End of story. The co-factors and diversity in food sources is always going to be way beyond anything you can get in a pill.

The yeast based probiotic that's on everyone's radar right now is Saccharomyces boulardii. There are natural food sources of S boulardii, namely kombucha and kefir.

So your yeast Scoby based probiotics are going to have S boulardii. Now if you want to go down a rabbit hole, you may read that food sources do not have a quote significant unquote amount of S boulardii. But this is always in the context of talking about curing actual diseases with probiotics. So studies of IBD and antibiotic diarrhea and things like that.

So we as dog breeders have to make a distinction between therapeutic versus healthy diet doses, because it's really significant when we're making decisions about when and how to supplement with probiotics. Because when we start introducing nuclear amounts of a narrow band of probiotic of any kind to be a yeast or bacteria, we are taking up a lot of real estate in the gut and potentially crowding out bad guys as in that antibiotic scenario that I just gave.

But we're also possibly unbalancing the gut. So it's not something to just be taken lightly and thrown. It's not a completely benign intervention. It could have unbalancing effects that could lead to dysbiosis, ultimately. But you know, it is a tool that can be useful once dysbiosis occurs and you have symptoms or you have good reason to suspect that there's some sort of deficiency or problem brewing. It's sort of an emergency situation. And therapeutic doses may be indicated.

Okay. Circling back to that veterinary webinar context again, is everything. That webinar was sponsored by a pet food company that makes highly processed pet food. The vet that was presenting the seminar both works for the pet food company and is an emissary for that company. And the animals in that study were animals that were fed a highly processed diet with very little variety and no additional fermented foods.

So this is absolutely useful information in that context. And if you are a veterinarian and you have clients presenting to you with bitches that have been weaned on to this kind of diet and have been eating this kind of diet their whole lives, yes, these therapeutic doses of S boulardii may be beneficial at certain times during the pregnancy, but for those of us that have weaned for many generations onto whole food diets with a variety of fermented add ons, this supplementation would not be advisable, in my opinion, unless the dam had to be on antibiotics for some reason or some other symptom of dysbiosis pops up. I would not advise supplementing with a pill form of probiotic in that context.

Now, regarding pregnancy, I will say that pregnancy in general is taxing on the body and also it's an immune suppressed state. So if there are any underlying small things brewing that might have been kept in check normally, pregnancy can bring those out. So even if your bitch has been on a whole food diet with fermented foods her entire life, but she's pregnant and now experiencing a symptom of dysbiosis, such as diarrhea during pregnancy, then yes, I might be reaching for therapeutic doses of yeast and bacterial probiotics in that instance, but I would only do that after I had exhausted my remedies with food sources.

And if you have a dam who has not been weaned and raised on whole foods with fermented foods, this could be a good trick for you to have up your sleeve during pregnancy. But again, if your dam's been on Whole Foods her entire life and was weaned on to a diet that included things such as yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, and kombucha, I wouldn't prophylactically go in and introduce a new clear amount of probiotics because you worked hard the entire life of that animal to colonize and then build up a stable gut community.

And there's no implicit benefit to disrupting that community unless it's indicated by a specific symptom. At least that's my opinion, and that's what I do, just based on my experience and the science as I read it.

I think the easiest way to look at this is overall, is there a symptom or a reason to believe that there's a problem? A symptom would be something like diarrhea. A reason to believe that there's some kind of problem would be a bitch that has been fed a processed diet her whole life, or even one that perhaps was not weaned on to a whole food diet that was fed a processed diet early in her life. Because that's when the gut biome is colonized as early in life. We go over this in the upcoming weaning course, but I'm just going to drop it here that those first few foods that you feed are really going to be formative as far as how that gut is, is colonized.

So if you have one of those situations I'm going to say probiotic supplementation comes up higher on my list. And if I'm a veterinarian and I'm seeing a bitch presenting with a problem, probiotic supplementation is going to be higher up on my list.

But the message I really want to get out here is twofold. Number one, that there is a difference between yeast and bacteria based probiotics and the yeast probiotics can definitely have a specific benefit in certain cases where bacterial probiotics might fail, but also that supplementing in a pill form rather than getting from a food source, is not something to be done indiscriminately or taken lightly.

It is medicine, just like antibiotics are medicine and subject to the same overuse and abuse as other kinds of medicine.

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Well, that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.