The Schnauzer Forum

Oscar 12345 wrote: ↑30 Nov 2020, 10:15 Hi there, to be honest I would never feed dry kibble as the main diet to any dog, it is so highly processed and dogs to better on a natural fresh diet in my experience and opinion. However, your choice clearly and I would recommend going on to the allaboutdogfood.co.uk website, filter on dry food and puppy or wet food and puppy and filter on nutritional ratings and you will see the range of quality to help you choose.

Dawnspell wrote: ↑30 Nov 2020, 10:31 I wouldnt feed what a vet recommends its normally got a cash incentive for them behind it as they want you to buy from them.

GoEmGo wrote: ↑30 Nov 2020, 13:35 Monty has a 80% wet to 20% (ish) dry ratio of food. Forthglade grain free turkey trays for his wet. And Lily's Kitchen Woodland Walk dry. He only has 25g a day of the dry so it lasts ages and it suits his tummy perfectly. We took so long finding the perfect grub for him and this works a treat. He loves it.

zeta1454 wrote: ↑30 Nov 2020, 17:29 As said above, don’t rely on the vet’s recommendations which are usually the brand whose manufacturer gives a financial incentive to the surgery to promote the brand. Many of the large well known brands of dry dog food (kibble) found at vets are from companies that have little or nothing to do with dog welfare but have bought up brands to add to their portfolio of businesses. Hills is owned by Colgate Palmolive.

The problem with dry kibble is that the food is generally highly processed at excessive temperatures which destroy the vitamins and certain other nutrients which are then artificially added back in. This can lead to less efficient absorption of the nutrients by the dog as they are not naturally occurring in the way they would be in fresh meat as well as the risk of accidental toxic overdosing which happened in 2019 with some Hills products:

https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2020-02 ... procedures

Many of the dry dog foods made by multinational businesses also use the cheapest ingredients and bulk them out with cereals and plant proteins which are biologically inappropriate rather than meat which is what the dog’s digestive system is designed to absorb efficiently.

Always check the ingredients label of any type of food you decide to give and make sure that you are confident the meat /fish is from named sources not just ‘meat’ and that this makes up the largest percentage of the food (70-80%) and preferably no added grains.

I would also recommend the All About Dog Food website to check nutritional content of a range of different food for dogs. For our own dogs we have fed raw for well over a decade and would never go back to dry food for them.

UrbanGypsyViv wrote: ↑01 Dec 2020, 19:16
Thanks for the reply! I will definitely check out Lily's kitchen. I've read some articles about mixing dry&wet food to feed and they say 2/3 dry and 1/3 wet. Is there any reason you give more wet than dry? Do you mix them together or give them separately in different times?

I did just as the article says for my previous dog for about 10years and he was always in great shape with muscles and he was very healthy. He was mixed Jack russell terrier.