I need advice on what to feed our dogs please

lipsthefish

Hi all

Will try to keep this short as I am well known for waffling

We have 2 dogs, alfie who is almost 3 and Angel who is 15 weeks.

Since a puppy Alfie has eaten wet food as the older dog we had at the time ate it too.

Angel was weaned onto dry food (none named brand puppy dry food). When we brought Angel home we introduced her to 2 wet feeds a day when Alfie got his and left dry food for her to graze. Her bum became a concern as she was having 5 to 6 poos a day :eek: they were never diarrhoea but were never firm either and they were massive!

Fast forward and we have now managed to get them both on dry food only, poo situation is great.

Here is the problem - we asked for advice on dry food from our local pet shop and he recommended Iams. We took his advise and it was on special offer at Argos at the time so we got 9 kilos for £14. Now of course I have read the stories of how Iams were treating the animals they were testing on and that it's not really a good food.

So we need to try and find something that is good for the dogs, not massively expensive but not the cheap rubbish, somewhere in the middle would be good.

Thanks muchly :beer:

Cyril

I swear by James Welbeloved for my two who were rescue girls and had poor coats and were ' lean'. They pood all the time on the cheap stuff they were fed in rescue ( not rescue fault they have to feed what they are given ).

I didn't want to feed two different diets and JWB suits them both. About £48 a bag.

chatbug

This will be an interest to me. I had to have my old boy PTS 6 wks ago he had Royal Canin all his life did great on it but the price is ridiculous. At the weekend got a 12wk old puppy he was on Eukanuba but does not seem to like it. We went to the pet shop and was recommended a food called More has any body heard of it and is it any good. Sorry to join in Lipsthefish but so much choice it gets confusing. Thanks

lipsthefish

Cyril wrote: »

I swear by James Welbeloved for my two who were rescue girls and had poor coats and were ' lean'. They pood all the time on the cheap stuff they were fed in rescue ( not rescue fault they have to feed what they are given ).

I didn't want to feed two different diets and JWB suits them both. About £48 a bag.

thanks Cyril, it is massively expensive for us though, not sure we could afford that

lipsthefish

chatbug wrote: »

This will be an interest to me. I had to have my old boy PTS 6 wks ago he had Royal Canin all his life did great on it but the price is ridiculous. At the weekend got a 12wk old puppy he was on Eukanuba but does not seem to like it. We went to the pet shop and was recommended a food called More has any body heard of it and is it any good. Sorry to join in Lipsthefish but so much choice it gets confusing. Thanks

No problem Chat, I hope we get some good ideas :j

krlyr

The cheaper a food, the more filler ingredients used in it (corn, wheat, vegetables, etc), and the less digestable their food is- so you end up with more waste product. The trick for firm poos is a well-digested food. This can also make a better quality food more economical - you may pay more initially but you feed less because the ingredients are better quality.
Brand names aside, look at the ingredients of a food to give you an idea of how good it is. Look at Iams for example:
Chicken (>24%), Maize, Wheat, Animal Fat, Poultry Meal, Sorghum, Barley, Dried Beet Pulp, Chicken Digest, Fish Meal, Dried Whole Egg, Brewer's Dried Yeast, Potassium Chloride, Sodium Chloride, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Dl-Methionine.

So, first up, they have chicken as the main ingredient. Hooray, a dog food with meat as the main ingredient! But wait - they've used a sneaky tactic here. In dog food, if they say it's "chicken" then they are allowed to go by the weight of the chicken pre-production. If they put 2 whole chickens, say they weigh just over a kilo each, into each 9kg sack, they can claim that as their 25% chicken. But what they fail to point out is that a whole chicken can be as much as 80% water! Your 2.16kg of chicken in that 9kg bag can suddenly shrink to as little as under 500g. And that can include bones, feet, feathers and beaks - not necessarily bad ingredients on their own, but of little nutritional value (chicken feet are supposedly a good source of glucosamine though!).
A food that states "chicken meal" will refer to the dry matter, the meat taken from a chicken and processed into a powder form. Doesn't sound as appetising (and manufacturers will use "fresh, tasty chicken" as a selling point) but you know that 24% chicken meal really is 24%.

Next up we have maize - a common red flag for cheaper quality foods. Maize is corn, it's poorly digested (passes right through us as humans, and we're omnivores designed to eat more plant matter than dogs) and it's cheap. Also a common cause of allergies and intolerances in dogs.
Wheat is next, another filler ingredient, and wheat gluten can be another trigger for stomach upsets, skin irritations and other symptoms of allergies or intolerances.

"Animal fat" - cheaper foods often use vague classification. What animal? By choosing not to specify, they are legally allowed to use any animal fat. One batch might use lamb, one batch beef, one batch pork - or a mix of various fats. If you don't know what they use, how can you know if it agrees with your dog? This is often the reason why a dog that may suddenly show problems like an upset stomach or a skin problem despite no apparently change in their diet.

Iams is probably one of the "better" cheaper foods out there - with one problem, they're not really in the "budget foods" price range. £14 sounds cheap but they're doing the sneaky ploy of offering a smaller bag. To compare to others, 15kg of it works out at £23.33 - and that's an offer price! Pets at Home are currently charging £36 for 15kg of adult small/medium breed food, so it's on par with the price of premium brands. Take a look at James Wellbeloved, which can be sourced for a similar price. Compare the ingredients of that and you'll see they're much more specific on what they put into it, and they avoid the cheaper cereals:

Composition rice, turkey meal, oats, whole linseed, turkey gravy, turkey fat, sugar beet pulp, alfalfa meal, natural seaweed, sodium chloride, omega oil supplement, potassium chloride, chicory extract, calcium carbonate, yucca extract Minimum levels: turkey (26%), rice (26%), oats (19%), linseed (3%), turkey gravy (2%), alfalfa (1%), seaweed (0.5%), yucca extract (0.02%), chicory extract (0.1%) Additives per kg Antioxidants: E306/Natural antioxidant, 150mg, Vitamins: E672/Vitamin A, 15.000 iu, E671/Vitamin D3, 2,250 iu, Trace elements: E1/iron, 40mg, E2/iodine, 2mg, E4/copper, 5mg, E5/manganese, 25mg, E6/zinc, 100mg, E8/selenium, 0.2mg

So as a general rule, when looking at foods:
- Don't get sucked in by clever wording. "Whole/fresh chicken/lamb/beef" etc. includes water content, "Chicken/lamb/beef meal" is much more accurate in the quantity you're getting
- Watch out for fillers. Maize, wheat, etc. are cheaper ingredients and the higher up the list they are, the lower quality the food is likely to be. If they fail to even specify and go for the generic "cereals", beware! They can (and will) chop and change depending on the market price of grains and will go for whatever is cheapest (and you won't know how much of what is in each batch)
- As above, avoid generic ingredients as opposed to specific ones
- Another clue is how easy it is to find their ingredients online. You'll notice the premium foods list them very obviously, but cheaper foods like Pedigree, Bakers, etc. will rarely state them on their own website. They tend to put a few vague bullet points about using "tasty fresh meat" and "25% meat" etc. - again with that vague, misleading wording. They know that their ingredients aren't that good so they don't make them a selling point
- Work out the price per day. Cheap food doesn't necessarily mean economical. I've worked it out for Bakers vs James Wellbeloved for someone - their dog was needing 6 cups of Bakers a day. JWB (£35 a bag at the time), only 2 cups. 1/3 less, but the Bakers was less than half the price at £20! So if a bag of Bakers lasted them 30 days, a bag of JWB would last 3 times longer and work out at £11.66 a month. So don't look at a bag of good quality food and think "They want how much?!", look at the feeding guidelines and work it out that way - it's a bit like the supermarket trick of putting prices per 1l, 100ml, 100g, etc. to make it hard to compare, they want you to buy the least economical one to make more profit from you.

I haven't fed dry food to my dogs for a while (coming up to 2.5 years raw-fed) so don't know which particular brands are best, I only mention JWB as it's one of the few names I recognise, so do your research but the above principles still apply.

lipsthefish

Thanks KLYER, that is exactly the info I needed. I had heard of the maize been no good for dogs and noticed it was one of the main ingredients of Iams. I have heard a lot of good things about the James Wellbeloved and it is interesting how much less they would need compared to the cheap stuff. Our dogs are only small too so I think to be fair nothing is going to cost an absolute fortune as it will last quite well. I think as you say I just looked at the prices and thought :eek: but when you go into the detail of working out how much to feed against the cheaper brands it doesn't seem too expensive at all. Off to find a website that sells it, will need to introduce it gradually with the Iams won't I?

Thanks loads x

krlyr

Yes, switch over slowly - 90% Iams, 10% of the new food for a few days, then 80:20, 70:30, 60:40, etc.

lipsthefish

krlyr wrote: »

Yes, switch over slowly - 90% Iams, 10% of the new food for a few days, then 80:20, 70:30, 60:40, etc.

sorry for spelling your name wrong in my last post

I'm getting a bit confused over how much too feed and how much it would work out. Angel is 3 pound in weight and is 15 weeks, her projected adult weight is around 5 - 6 pounds.

Alfie is 11 pound and nearly 3 years old, at the moment they are both on the Iams small breed puppy food. Will it cause Alfie any harm to stay on puppy food while angel still needs it? If you have any spare time would you be able to help me work out quantities please.

I have found this http://www.hyperdrug.co.uk/James-Wellbeloved-Puppy-15KG-DUCK-or-TURKEY-ONLY-3599/productinfo/JWBCP%20%20%20%20%2015KGTURK I am looking at the turkey/rice 15 kg for £35.99

thanks muchly

krlyr

If you wanted to stick to the one food you would probably be better off feeding both on adult food - you could bump up the protein in Angel's diet by giving scraps of chicken, scrambled egg, fish, etc. I'm not an expert in canine nutrition though so please don't take my view as gospel, but I know that many people feel puppy food isn't a total necessity so I feel it would be better to feed a puppy on adult food rather than an adult on puppy food. Maybe speak to someone at JWB first though. The other option would be to buy 7.5kg bags for now so you can have one of each, puppy and adult.

The feeding guidelines for Iams are:
Small Breeds (2-10kg): 40-115gm;
Medium Breeds (10-25kg): 115-210gm.

And JWB (this is for small breed, adult):
Toy (2-5kg): 55-115gm;
Small (5-10kg): 115-190gm;
Medium(10-20kg):190-320gm
Medium/Large(20-30kg):320-430gm;
Large(30-40kg):430-520gm
Large/Giant(40-50kg):520-620gm;
Giant(50-60kg):620-710gm,(60-70kg):710-790gm,(70-90kg):790-950kg.

6lb is about 2.5kg and 11lb is about 5kg. Comparing those two, it doesn't actually work out much different - so if you can find JWB at the same price as Iams, it's not going to cost you any extra to feed but it will be better quality. You may find that you have to feed less than the suggested guidelines because of that too.

gemmalouanna

I have found Skinners to be great for my dog who has a very sensitive stomach. A bag lasts ages as need to feed less and there is a massive difference in terms of poo (much less, smaller and firmer consistency lol). A few of my friends have now got their dogs on it. One friend was especially impressed with the added joint care supplements as she was buying something similar separate so money saved in buying this food.

Medicanimal website is great as free delivery! Quidco too if you do that and 10% off when 2 bags are ordered - overall great value for a decent food in my opinion.

http://www.medicanimal.com/product/~skinners-hypoallergenic-field-trial-duck-rice/~product_id=B20955