How to feed the animals? Eeekkk

yamsteroo

Our last dog (german shepherd) had a fussy tum and the only thing she could eat was Wainwrights cereal free. Once we started her on that her whole condition improved including coat but then you'd expect that when overall health was improved I guess.

It's a middle of the road one, price-wise (we get the big 10kg bags and I think it's about £36).

When she sadly passed away, we got another rescue dog and she finished off the remainder of the Wainwrights .... could we move her onto the cheaper Bakers Complete after that? Could we hell! lol

Laconic

The ultimate cause of the allergy (if it is an allergy) is genetics: labs and lab crosses are infamous for them. It could be worse, you could have a Westie. But there's nothing you can do there. What you can do

First things first then: food. The most common problems for an allergic dogs are not food, but mould, dust mites, pollen, flea bites (not that food isn't sometimes a problem, you note, but that it's not that common a problem). Dogs usually have more than just one thing they react to, just to make your life great. *When* food is a problem it is not the brand or price that will determine it but the protein. For example, if your dog is allergic to chicken, then chicken in any form from any place will trigger it: the 2p/kg kibble with chicken, the £20/kg kibble with chicken, the chicken-based treats, the sneaky piece of chicken from the table, the bits that fell on the floor, the bones raided out of the garbage, the bits tossed outside the local Chicken Hut and snaffled up before you could say anything... all of it will trigger a reaction. Randomly changing dog food is an exercise in frustration.

Slow and systematic is faster, cheaper and more certain than hit-and-miss approaches. Your dog is not going to suffer for eating what he's always eaten for a few more weeks while you make sure that you've crossed other possibilities off the list -- and if your dog improves markedly, so much the better.

If this is your dog's first flare up, then it's worth going to the vet anyway, just to make sure it isn't something else, like a spot of mange, that needs some other treatment.


With respect to shampoo, I'm always amused at the marketing flannel used to make people pay over the odds. pH of what exactly? If you take a clean-shaven part of a person's skin and an equivalent (this is important: skin pH varies a lot according to where you take it! [1]) clean-shaven part of a dog's skin, run deionized water over it and measure the pH, no, it shouldn't be surprising that that of people will tend to be a little lower -- we sweat, and that's often a little acidic (freshly-excreted sweat isn't acidic, but the bacteria that quickly colonize it make it so). Or are they talking about the stratum corneum, the actual outermost layer of dead skin in contact with the environment? If you lift some off, clean it, macerate it in water and test the pH, you'll be hard pressed to find a difference. Soaps and shampoos are normally alkaline -- acidulants are added to shampoo not because it matches the pH on your head, but because it makes the scales along the hair shaft lie down, making your hair feel smoother and look glossier. This is *also* true for dog hair. If you can use it on your hair on a daily basis, you can use it on your dog. Can shampoo be irritating? Absolutely: if you don't rinse it off, but that's an unacceptable standard of care, and no one here's doing that.

If you're feeling evil, ask the next person who intones that to give you the source and see if it actually goes back to original research -- or just repeated internet lore.

[1] See this article for instance: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18498454

optimistic

My recue collie cross had terribly itchy skin and we put him on Burns - rice based and wheat free and they were v. helpfu. However they stopped doing venison, and the duck one didnt seem to satisfy him.
He's now been on Skinners duck and rice for 18 months and hes doing v. well on it - no itchy skin and a lovely coat. Plus much cheaper than Burns - I would definitely recommend trying wheat free - and no bonio etc it worked for our little fellow.

vworried

We make our own food for our collie and lab/collie cross. Take 3 supermarket chickens for £10. Mince the meat, cook the bones in the pressure cooker for about three hours til they are really soft. Keep the stock for yourself. Crush the bones, mix with the cooked minced meat. Add rice, cheap porridge oats, cheap frozen peas etc. I bag them up and freeze them, and one meal does both dogs. I get around 10-12 meals doing this and our dogs are active farm dogs. I agree with feeding less than the manufacturer suggests because we certainly do and the dogs are an ideal weight - collies especially don't eat much and are not greedy dogs however the lab/collie is a binbag on legs.

Incidentally, since we have made our own food there are NO intermittent terrible smells arising from them either which is a bonus. :T

*Foolish*

Pets at Home's own brand, Wainwrights is the same as James Wellbeloved, only cheaper

rising_from_the_ashes

assj wrote: »

Anyway the big dog, she is a Lab X and has developed really bad skin/coat. So she needs something different I guess, maybe JamesWellbeloved.

Anyway it's really expensive, does anybody know what to do. I'd like to improve on wag, at leats go to the next best thing, but I'm on a mega tight budget.

Shepherd1 wrote: »

You could try skinners they are cheaper than james wellbeloved.

*Foolish* wrote: »

Pets at Home's own brand, Wainwrights is the same as James Wellbeloved, only cheaper

JWB sorted out Maisie's tum when I got her (it was the only food I found that didn't upset her) but at £50 / bag I'm afraid it's out my budget.

Wainwrights is excellent too and I'm sure that would've been OK to move her too http://www.petsathome.com/shop/wainwright-s-mature-complete-dog-food-with-salmon-and-potato-2kg-87667 around £40 for 15kg but I wanted her to have Rice (as I knew she was OK with that) and the WW uses potato as a filler

Then there's Skinners - a fantastic food at great prices. Stick to the Duck & Rice, Turkey & Rice and Salmon & Rice only (others not hypoallergenic) http://www.skinnerspetfoods.co.uk/store/working-dogs/salmon-rice/ I get a 15kg back for £28

Please try to switch from Wagg, it gets really poor reviews and apparently contains carcinogens http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/showproduct.php?product=1634&cat=all

Also bear in mind that with more expensive foods, you will usually need to feed a lot less than you do with cheap foods so that helps balance the cost.

Maisie's kibble (Skinners) costs me around £3 / week and her wet (high quality trays / tins such as Wainwrights or Rocco, Arden Grange, Lukullus etc) costs around £2 / week

So, I feed her good quality foods for under £1 / day which is doing well in my book

firesidemaid

i'd also take a look at CSJ - we use them.

Used to order two bags at a time mail order. Then a local cattery/kennel started stocking it.

maybe take a look at their website.

ti77gger7

I also use CSJ for my dog, and she is very healthy and happy on that, and one good thing is if you buy it mail order, the delivery cost is the same if you buy one or several bags, and a 15kg bag lasts a good long time.

savvykaz

Hi, we have a pedigree lab and our puppy trainer told us about CSJ. We've been buying him it ever since and he's got a beautiful coat and skin. A 15kg sack costs £20 and lasts him 4 weeks (he weighs 35kg), I buy it online and order 2 sacks a time with a £6.95 delivery charge, so £23.50 a month/ £6 a week

[Deleted User]

Hi All.

I have gone for the skinners. I'm now thinking I need to relate this back to "debt free wannabe" so I purchased it for £24 a month (15kg bag) it's via the Amazon monthly subscription. So they send me a bag each month for the set cost, the usual price seems to be about £26+

I thought about making it myself and I don't have the time nor the space, so I think I'll have to stick with the above.

I hope that I have made the right choice and I'm really thankful for the advice from you guys :-)