dog food

[amomschoice]

I'm currently feeding Bandit pedigree which I'm changing after reading how bad it is for him. What does everyone feed their dog?

[Maxy24]

What country are you in? I currently feed Acana, used to feed Taste of the Wild and stopped when they were recalled recently.

[Erica]

There's a nice big thread right here viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14948 where this question was recently asked.

And remember that whatever food you switch to you will probably have to feed less of than Purina; my dogs ate 4 cups a day of Pedigree but only eat around 1.5 - 2 cups a day of Taste of the Wild (we're looking at alternates for that now though; the recall is unnerving).

[amomschoice]

I bought iams him today from Kmart. at least it's not full of corn. I got a small bag for now. I feed him some fruit and veggies. He has colitis.

[Wes]

Iams is full of corn. Try and look for a grain free formula, and you'll typically have to go to a pet specialty store for good brands.

[ClareMarsh]

I've just had a look on Iams website, the first ingredient in the first product I looked at is Maize. This is not good.

You say your dog has Colitis, I know someone who's dog had severe Colitis, here is her story about how she helped her dog using a raw diet http://tinkerwolf.com/2012/05/14/coliti ... bes-story/

Even if you don't want to switch to raw, it may give you some ideas.

[amomschoice]

The puppy food is chicken. I've not looked at the adult food. I took him off pedigree for the same reason.

[Maxy24]

Iams isn't really a good food either. It's better than pedigree but I certainly wouldn't call it a good food, there are a lot of better foods out there!

Do you have any small, non-chain stores in your area? they usually sell better foods. Look for foods with NO corn, wheat, or soy. You want no by-products. Remember, the food should be mostly meat! if they have a whole bunch of grain listed (like 4 or 5) then that's probably too much. If they have a ton of potato or peas listed (like 3-4 times) that's probably too much. If you don't have any small pet stores then petco (not petsmart) sells some good foods too. Check out Innova, wellness core, Nature's Variety, and Blue Buffalo Wilderness.


If you do have a small pet store then you have a lot more choices. Try typing your zip code on these sites to see if anywhere sells them near you. Chances are someplace that sells these foods will have other high quality foods.
http://www.earthbornholisticpetfood.com ... stores.php
http://acana.com/store-locator/


ETA: Sorry, I didn't even ask what country you are in, the foods I listed are sold in the US, not sure where else they can be found.

[emmabeth]

In case you are in the UK, try Taste of the Wild, Acana, Orijen or Applaws - all grain free and FAR higher quality than either Iams or Pedigree.

Do be aware that although manufacturers must list ingredients, they must do so largest single ingredient first...

What that MEANS is that they can produce a food that is 75% cereal if they WANT to, and still list a meat ingredient first, IF.. they break up the cereals into different types..

So they could list it like this:

Chicken meal (20% - chicken meal is ground up chicken, bones, feathers, feet, beaks etc its the stuff that is left over after everything else has been removed)
Oats (15%)
Maize (15%)
Barley (15%)
Wheat (15%)
Rice (15%)
Chicken fat (5%)

They do NOT have to put the percentages on either - now you can add up those percentages and see that my made up dog food is in fact 75% cereals, 5% fat and 20% ground up chicken based byproduct that has no other value except as dog food. Does it look like a good food now?

Using a real dog food:

Dried Chicken and Turkey (>28%), Maize, Wheat, Animal Fat, Dried Beet Pulp, Sorghum, Chicken Digest, Fish Oil, Dried Whole Egg, Brewer’s Dried Yeast, Potassium Chloride, Sodium Chloride, Fructo oligosaccharides (0.15%)

Dried Chicken and Turkey (>28%) - that means that more than (>) 28% of this food is dried chicken and turkey. You have no idea how much is chicken and how much is turkey, and that will vary from batch to batch so sometimes it might actually be 27% chicken, 1% turkey, sometimes it could be 25% turkey, 3% chicken, etc etc - it is done like that so that the manufacturer can change the exact recipe according to which ingredients are cheapest/most available at any given time.

Maize - this is because its in second place, the SECOND largest single ingredient in this food.. so we know its less than 28%.. but it could be 27%.. we don't know.

Wheat - this is the third largest single ingredient - all we know is there is less of this than there is maize, could be by 1%, could be more.. however

All the other ingredients are stuff you wouldn't need all THAT much of.. animal fat makes it palatable and shiny, dried beet pulp is a filler, its indigestible fibre and effectively it bulks out poo. It is a very cheap ingredient (a by product of the sugar industry)

Sooo once you know how to read ingredient listings, you can see that actually that food is most likely mainly maize and wheat with indeterminate quantities of chicken and turkey, fat and fillers (the rest of the ingredients are things to make the dog able to digest it, provide nutrients missing from the first few ingredients, produce poo that isn't too runny, and preserve the food for a long time.

It is not a good food - also, thats the listing for Iams puppy food.

[ladybug1802]

Emmabeth....Im considering changing Dylans food...would you say something like Applaws is better than Fish4Dogs? Its a minefield out there!

And do you know anything about Forthglade?

[emmabeth]

I know nuffink about Forthglade, but mm, Applaws v Fish4Dogs..

Applaws I think is the better food, its mainly meat - Fish4Dogs is actually probably mainly potato and beet pulp.

On the other hand, Fish4Dogs has a much more simple ingredients list, but thats only really important if you are dealing with a dog allergic to something (and still nowhere near as good as feeding a limited, novel protein diet).