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Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
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Dog food question
I always encourage (i.e. tell - hehe) DH to buy organic, sustainable, hormone free, etc. meat where the animals aren't treated horribly but I've never thought about dog food. I feed my dog Canidae and it looks like they use some free range, antibiotic/hormone free ingredients but I'd like to do better. http://www.canidae.com/ingredients/thefinest.html Any suggestions for a high quality food? Do I need to make it myself - and do you have any good resources for going that route?
The catch - it absolutely has to be low fat and every grain free food I've tried gives her awful, room-clearing gas.
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
Re: Dog food question
Petsmart has a whole site dedicated to cleaner, organic pet food. Maybe some of these would work...
http://promotions.petsmart.com/landing/going-green/
http://www.gizzylu.com/35lirinlafo.html
This is a link to what we have been buying. It is a light formula because one of our dogs is a bit chunky. It does give him terrible gas though- like something died! We deal with it, though, because they really like it.
BFP #2: 8/26/12, EDD 5/3/12, M/C 9/4/12
Living Simple Blog
No animal is raised exclusively to become dog food. Dog food is produced from waste bits that people won't buy.
So I wouldn't worry about getting hormone free antibiotic free superdogfood. That's just my take on it, though.
I feed Wellness Super 5, but I believe Wellness Core is grain free. Definitely check on the pets board though - they can give a ton of good recs.
I get the Wellness at PetCo.
Thanks for all the replies! Do these brands use meat that is sustainably raised, hormone free, not finished in a feed lot, etc.? I guess that's the main thing I'm looking at right now. We do have a good locally owned pet food store that sells all the quality brands - Wellness, EVO, Canidae, etc. but they looked at my like I had two heads when I asked about the quality of the ingredients.
I am open to raw. I think. Honestly, meat kind of grosses me out but as long as I don't have to touch it with my bare hands, I'm okay. And what about containing the juices and stuff? My dog rarely just eats out of her bowl - she usually takes stuff and drops it on the floor and then eats it or takes bones and other tasty bits to her bed and eats there. I'd be open to learning more about it. I hope Alicia reads this post!
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
I was really grossed out by raw meat too, but you really get used to it. And we've found that it's about the same cost as buying good quality brand food, it just doesn't get a lot of marketing. We get it in bulk at the Farmer's Market and freeze it, and the great thing about that is they will cut it up at the market for us, so that takes out a lot of the handling of the meat. If you freeze it after you get home, there is far less juice (juicier meats usually = not as fresh). When we get home, we separate the meat into baggies (not EF at all, we're trying to find a greener way!) for each day for our 2 dogs, that way we just grab a bag for the day, and dump the meat out rather than handling it then as well.
Our dogs don't keep food in the bowl either, so we feed them outside (they don't care about dirt or leaves on the meat). They LOVE it, although it took them a little while to get used to it (raw meat doesn't smell as strong as kibble). Their teeth are 100% white, whereas before they were stained from the kibble, we hardly ever have to bathe them and I've heard raw-fed pets live longer than kibble fed. Here are a couple of really good websites:
http://www.rawlearning.com/
http://www.rawfeddogs.net/
http://www.wysong.net
This company says "to the degree possible, organic and humanely raised meats are used."
You could probably contact them for more info. We use this whenever we want to give canned food.
http://dogfoodanalysis.com/
Check this website out, and make sure you feed your dog something that is rated 4 stars or above. This is a very good site that is unbaised when reviewing the foods, etc.
The only food at PetsMart that is acceptable to feed your pet is Blue Buffalo (I'm sure I'll pi$$ someone off with that comment), the rest is crap. Complete Petmart has many more good food options. It sounds like you know to feed good quality food, but I just wanted to put that out there for any others reading.
I lurke over here from time to time, but spend a lot of time on the Pets board. Fell free to post over there, they are very educated about dog food, as well as other pet topics.
ETA: There are also quite a few girls over on the Pets Board that make their own dog food or feed raw, so they can give you great input on that also.
We feed Taste of the Wild (Pacific Stream), it's a grain free but it's good for my pup's tummy and her gas is basically gone. We had to switch her protein source which was causing her problems.
If you are considering this food, this should be the only one you consider feeding your dog, as it is a 4 star dry food, the rest are 2 stars.
http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/showproduct.php?product=2176&cat=all
Their canned food has a range of 2-6 stars, so check out what they are before you buy.
Whew, the one we use is 5. I never thought to check before. Our dry food is a 4 (Solid Gold Hundenflocken)
We feed our dog taste of the wild too. I get ours at a warehouse dog food place near us....So much cheaper!
doggiefood.com
I don't want to answer for Alisha--but I will. As far as I know, I don't think that even she feeds her dogs organic, humanely raised meats--simply because it becomes cost prohibitive. Remember she has like 4 great danes..so it might be different for your ONE dog, but I am *pretty* sure this is a reason why she doesn't do that. (And Alisha--sorry if I am wrong here!)
We feed CORE and I'd have to check but I think a lot of the ingredients are organic, they don't use "parts" and it is ethyoxiquin free which is important to us.
a good, organic, hormone-free kibble would be pretty cost prohibitive and seriously limit their market. there are organic kibbles out there, but they're expensive and heavy on the grains because organic grains are considerably cheaper than organic meat. i prefer to feed my carnivores a meat-heavy diet than organic grains.
i would love to feed my dogs local, grassfed beef...but that would increase dog food costs sixfold and i just can't afford that unless someone else in this house gets a job.
i feed the beasts in their crates, it's the easiest way to contain the mess. i'm used to it now...but i used to wear gloves any time i touched raw meat.
Have you seen my monkey?
http://www.dogaware.com/dogfeeding.html#TopDry
this page is a good starting point, you could contact the individual manufacturers for more information.
Have you seen my monkey?
Thanks so much for all the info. I posted on the pets board and got some great links for raw feeding so I have a lot to think about.
I won't lie - I am worried about the cost but my dog is only 35 lbs. so she can't eat that much, right? I hate that the decision really will come down to cost in the end. I keep thinking that if quality food is so important in humans, why isn't it for animals? My dog has had so many health problems over her life and I wonder how much of it was due to her diet of crappy Iams for so long. How many thousands of dollars would I have saved if I had been feeding her high quality foods instead of who knows what?
Tired after a long morning of hiking and swimming.
most dogs typically eat 2-3% of their body weight. my dogs are lazy bums, and eat between 1 and 2% daily. my dogs have their own deep freeze, so i buy in bulk from a meat distributor, and i end up spending about $50/month to feed my two (70 and 80 lb dogs)...but it's regular meat, not organic/ab-free, etc.
at 35 lbs, you will probably feed about 0.7 lbs/day,
Have you seen my monkey?