Good dog food at reasonable price?

philng

We are due to collect 2 new dogs later this week both cocker spaniels.

We are keen to keep coats shiny and digs healthy so any recommendations fir good dog food would be appreciated?


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bmthmark

Congratulations on getting your new dogs!
Are you crazy two cocker spaniels?? lol

I have a young 1 year old cocker spaniel and he is absolutely crazy. But he is also such a kind loving dog. How old are your new ones?

I give mine dry food, we use a company called Oscar: https://www.oscars.co.uk/
He has a beautiful shiny cost and is very active and healthy.

Good luck with your new dogs

Fosterdog

Have a look here

https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk

You put in your dogs breed (or size), their age, their weight (should be their ideal weight in case they need to put in or lose a bit) and your budget. It then brings up hundreds of brands to suit your specification. You can change the order to quality.

I recently helped someone change foods from the details on there, they went from a really bad 0.6/5 rating food (Hero) costing them £1.12 on average a day to a 5/5 food (Millie’s wolfheart) costing them £0.86-£0.93 per day depending on the variety fed. So they are feeding a much better quality food and saving 20p-25p a day.

Bmthmark even the Oscar brand is only a 1.8/5 to a 3.4/5 depending on variety fed. You can can much much better food for the same price or less. Eden dogfood, Millie’s Wolf heart, even raw wouldn’t cost much more and is the most species appropriate diet for dogs.

bmthmark

Thanks Fosterdog for the website.
I'm happy with Oscar brand, the one we use is the adult complete: https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/dog-food-reviews/0967/oscar-adult-complete which has a 3.4 rating. They may not be the cheapest but he has a lovely coat and he seems to like the food. Thanks for the info though - its a good website

philng

So do you have to feed less food with some of the more expensive per kg bags?

I see the note above re changing from asda hero but saving money?

sheramber

To prevent stomach upset, continue to ffee what they are being fed on at present.

Then gradually , over the space of a week, substitute the new food by reducing the amount of old food and adding some new food, until they are eating all new food.

mac.d

philng wrote: »

So do you have to feed less food with some of the more expensive per kg bags?

I see the note above re changing from asda hero but saving money?

Yes, generally speaking, if you go from the really cheap, poor quality foods, to any of the better quality foods, you usually feed less per day, so although the cost of a bag is higher, it might not work out quite so expensive as you think.

If you are on a budget, I always recommend trying Skinners Field & Trial range, either the Duck or Salmon & Rice. If you can buy from Amazon, you'll get a 15kg bag for around £25, and the feeding guidelines on the back are pretty generous so you'll feed less of it than your cheap supermarket brand. And although this is a fairly heavy grain based food and 'only' 25% meat content, the grains it uses are good quality (and it has a fairly simple ingredient list), and it is massively superior to the rubbish you get in pedigree chum, wagg, hero, etc.

If you can afford to spend more. There's a whole host of options, I personally have started feeding Country Kibble, for around £35 for a 12kg bag, you can feed grain-free with 50% meat content (albeit a fair bit of that is fresh, not dried).

Better quality again can be had from the Millies Wolfheart range of food. They do a whole load of grain-free options ranging from 50% meat/50% veg up to 80% meat/20% veg. Prices range for a 12kg from £38 upwards.

Anyone who has their dog on a supermarket brand, if you switch to the better foods, you should notice an improvement to their coat, and one thing you will definitely notice is an improvement to the amount of stuff that comes out the other end of your dog! (there will be less, and usually it'll be firmer and not so smelly too).

Change your food gradually, as shermamber has said. Otherwise they might end up with an upset stomach and runny poo! Also, some dogs don't necessarily do well on the really high meat content foods, some dogs do fine on rice/oat and other grains, while others really thrive on grain free.

philng

Thank you for your posts.

I have ordered Skinners Field & Trial Duck & Rice from the above & other comments seems to be ok. Will mix in with existing food (Simpsons) to start with.

Never realised supermarket brands were so poor. Always used to buy the ASDA Hero meaty chunks for our last dog which he loved.

HarryAzhar

Congrates My friend also have Cocker Spaniel and i asked him about this and he named few best dog foods for Cocker Spaniel but he himself using Royal Canin nutrition dry dog food for Cocker Spaniel. Though, you can research few others in order to get the right one .

Fosterdog

HarryAzhar wrote: »

Congrates My friend also have Cocker Spaniel and i asked him about this and he named few best dog foods for Cocker Spaniel but he himself using Royal Canin nutrition dry dog food for Cocker Spaniel. Though, you can research few others in order to get the right one .

Royal Canin food is an awful food, please get your friend to actually look at the ingredients, it is full of fillers and additives.

melbury

As per a previous post:

Switched our 9 month old puppy to this a month ago and he loves it.

It scores 4.5 out of 5 on the All About Dog Food site, plus great reviews on the Zooplus site.

http://www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/dogs/dry_dog_food/markus_muehle/14524?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0dP5g6LX2AIV7ZPtCh0yRwNyEA QYASABEgJJ2PD_BwE