Iams Small Medium Dog Food alternative

Stanthedog

Hi
I've been successfully feeding my three terriers with Iams Small and Medium Adult food for several years. They take well to it and they are fit and healthy. As well as their health, the other benefit of Iams is that what comes from them afterwards (i.e. dog poo) is about as "manageable" as it could be.

What does concern me is the cost of Iams, plus I'm getting concerned by a number of stories about the ethics of its manufacturer. I generally take advantage of purchasing 12KG bags and many of the online pet food suppliers will typically supply these 2 x 12KG bags for approximatley £45. I shop around and swap between suppliers depending how has the best price on offer.

My question is, has anyone experience in moving their dogs from Iams food to an alternative lower costing brand and have you had successful results? Or does anyone know of the closest lower cost equivalent to it?

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.
Regards

smithers1981

Hi after a lot of research our dog is now on Skinners he's taken to it really well, we get ours from https://fetch.co.uk/skinners great service next day delivery via ocado van.

Stanthedog

Hi
Thank you. I think replacing the Iams is going to be a challenge. Even my cat eats it. He flatly refuses any form of cat food and he happily sits there eating Iams Small and Medium dog food. He even shares the bowls with the dogs

toontastic

Have you tried raw food ? Can't get much better really. It's not particularly expensive when you work out measures.

As I've mentioned in another thread I use Nutriment.co but others like Natural Instinct or Jack Wolf and loads others are available.

Cuilean

Personally, I feed my dog raw (And I could go on for hours explaining why I'd choose that over Iams, Science Plan or Bakers), but I understand that it's not for everyone.

Have a look at the website All About Dog Food, which is essentially a directory of all the major dog foods available in the UK. Type the name of the brand you're interested in into the search box, and choose the variety you'd like to know more about from their search results.

There's an easy to understand graph to show how well the food fulfils the basic nutrition components which your dog needs, a list of ingredients (Helpfully coded green for good, grey for neutral and red for bad), and a score out of 5. In some cases, the website creator has created their own written assessment as well. Tell it your dog's weight and it'll calculate how much it'll cost you to feed that food to your dog each day.

For reference, I'm not connected to the website at all. Unfortunately, my last dog suffered from pancreatitis, and I had to be incredibly careful about what I fed her, and I found that to be the most comprehensive source of information.

I wish you the best of luck getting your terriers off Iams. Ethically, they're very questionable, and you're to be commended for taking action and moving your money elsewhere.

gettingtheresometime

toontastic wrote: »

Have you tried raw food ? Can't get much better really. It's not particularly expensive when you work out measures.

As I've mentioned in another thread I use Nutriment.co but others like Natural Instinct or Jack Wolf and loads others are available.

We bought a chest freezer so that we could bulk buy from Nutriment - we usually buy about 40kgs of food at around £120 and that lasts our beagle around 6 months.

krlyr

I agree with https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk

To be honest, you can probably get a lot better quality food and still save some pennies compared to Iams, it's well-known but not top quality. It only scores 1.8 out of 5 on the AADF website because of the lack of meat and the amount of cereals/low quality ingredients.

Also, just a tip, but when costing food - work out the cost per day, not per bag. You will probably feed less in volume of a better quality food, as there are less bulking/filler ingredients, so although a 15kg bag may cost more than Iams, it may last you twice as long.

For examples, using AADF's 16kg dog default Iams small & medium is a cost of 40p per day, vs Skinner's duck & rice at 36p per day (and a better rating at 3.5 out of 5)

The reduced amount of fillers will likely result in better (smaller, firmer, less smelly) poo as well, as an added bonus

I personally raw-feed mine and don't think you can get much better in terms of lack of filler and subsequent lack of poos, but I do know it's not for everyone - but something to consider I pay about £60 a month to feed both my GSD and my Rottie x so it's not an expensive way to feed either, depending on how you do it.