food review

[dannie_kl]

its probably because minis are not meant to be as big as they are now! remember bitches should only be 13 inches and dogs 14 inches, for most pet dogs they are averaging a minimum of 2 inches over the size they should be so are ending up all round bigger and i dont think vets take this into consideration.

[dougietee]

After reading the review of the burns complete puppy food (what we've been feeding Honey) on the dog food analysis site I feel like I've been doing it wrong. I'm going to see about getting something with a higher meat content I think.

[dougietee]

Can you include this website;

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/

I have found it to have very good, honest reviews of most foods available in the UK (as well as some only available in the US, *sigh*).

Could you include this text as my review of Orijen, Ta;

"I feed Orijen, and unless I ever move to Barf will never feed anything else. My dogs love it, they have brilliant, firm dark poos, have good coat and skin condition, clean teeth, they maintain a nice, steady weight and have as much energy as they want. Neither have my two have ever had stomach or allergy problems.

When Cara was a puppy I stupidly fed Bakers Complete and it made her hyper, all those colours in it was like feeding an 8 yr old child blue smarties. I decided to change her food and in less than a week she had calmed right down. Mo was on Orijen from 12 weeks and was nowhere near as mental.

Orijen contains no grains, the content is 70% meat and 30% veg/fruit . I like the fact they are so proud of their ingredients that they list their suppliers on their website and each ingredient is individually listed, ie they say chicken fat, chicken liver and chicken meal rather than just chicken or chicken derivatives. They do three varieties, Original which contains chicken, turkey, salmon, and herring as the main meat ingredients, Regional Red which contains boar, lamb. bison and pork and 6 Fish, which has 6 fish varieties. They also do Puppy, Senior and Puppy Large Breed.

I get it direct from the Orijen site http://www.orijenpetfoods.co.uk/ its about 50GBP for a 13.5kg bag and they deliver. They also do 7.5kg, and 2.5kg size bags as well as a 400g trial size bag. Delivery is free for orders of 27kg or more. Other websites may offer free delivery but I have not tried them as I am happy with the exceptional customer service I have received from Orijen

If it is in stock I normally have it on my doorstep within two-three days. For my last order they had puppy in stock but no adult. The puppy was delivered on time but the adult took two weeks. To apologise for the delay they included a second bag of 13.5kg adult FREE! They also contacted my by email within an hour of my order to tell me they did not have the stock.

I happily recommend this to anyone that will listen as I am so happy with it (and to those that don't wanna know!).

To give you the cons as well I do know that some dogs have had difficulties with Orijen as it contains such large amounts of protein, so that may be something to consider if your dog is sensitive to high protein levels."

Thanks Dannie.

Following on from my post just above yours... this sounds like the perfect replacement for the burns. I'm going to give it a try

I'd like to BARF but need the convenience of dry food really, we can always give her some raw food occasionally.

[BeeBee]

Funny, we used to give Jasmine Burns as a back-up when we didn't do her food ourselves (at that time we just made it up as we went along, home made diet most her long life but not quite as balanced as ideal, we gave her pasta for a start, but she lived a healthy long life anyway), then when we got Renae I looked at things again, and started her on Orijen, I think it's excellent, we still keep a small amount as back-up and I occasionally use it as training treats.

But BARFing is our priority, Orijen is in my view the closest you can get in a dry food without doing the whole BARF thing.

[countrygirl]

If you want higher meat content but not ready to barf another convenient option I can recommend are complete balanced food trays from Natures Diet, Wainwrights or PAH also do their own deli range. I started with the Natures Diet but now use Wainwrights and PAH which are both 70% meat content, that is proper meat, not meat derivative and no nasty additives. You can get a mixed flavours box of 12 trays of the Wainrights for those dogs that like variety and cheaper than buying singly. I also recently came accross the PAH own deli range, they come in the same packaging so I suspect the same manufacturer but do different flavours, the tripe and rice is Widge's absolute favourite and always gets a third check on the empty bowl...just in case.

Cost wise, a single tray of 395g costs 88p and I feed my large 12.5kg mini half a tray a day. I buy in bulk so it works out cheaper for me.

[Merlins Mommy]

Just wondered if anyone has used Lilly's Kitchen dried food, i have looked at the ingredients and it seems good, does anyone else use it at the moment?

[BBG]

WHICH have updated their food review. I couldn't see the link on this thread although I know it's been posted before on threads that have fallen off the front page so thought it would be a good idea to post it here as well as it's a sticky. Apologies if it's here - had a quick trawl through but couldn't see it.




http://www.whichdogfood.co.uk/dog-food-directory.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


If you click on your chosen products you can get more information about contents, preservatives etc. and a feeding guide. It also gives an explanation of which additives are considered OK and other s that are a bit questionable to say the least. Anything thats highlighted in a different colour will have an explanation. For instance if you click on Pea Protein it says

"Pea protein
Pea protein is a byproduct of pea processing and is used as a protein source in some dog foods. Although it is far less expensive, we don't think pea protein should be used as an alternative to meat in dog foods since the quality and digestibility of vegetable proteins tend to fall a long way short of those found in meats."

Anything highlighted in red is not considered beneficial and maybe detrimental to health. For instance maize gluten

Maize gluten

Maize gluten (sometimes called maize gluten meal, corn gluten or prairie meal) is a by-product of maize processing and can be used to top-up the protein levels of dog foods, usually as an alternative to more expensive meat-proteins. Unfortunately, maize gluten protein is not as easy for dogs to deal with as protein from meat sources and as a result it can lead to health issues like skin problems and hyperactivity. For this reason, we would recommend steering clear of maize gluten, especially with sensitive dogs.

[terry1961uk]

I put Tilly on Arden Grange food when she was a year old unfortunately we have to change as causing skin problems.

[Dawnspell]

Just wondered if anyone has used Lilly's Kitchen dried food, i have looked at the ingredients and it seems good, does anyone else use it at the moment?

Barney preferred the Lilys kitchen puppy to Orijen puppy. His diet now is mainly barf but keep Lilys kitchen as back up mainly because you can buy smaller 1kg bags. I can only get 13kg Orijen over here . The pet shop gave me a small bag of Ancana prairie (sell by date was oct) which is basically Orijen but lower meat content he seems to like it.

[Smarties]

Poppy is on Canagan kibble and all seems well. It is grain free and apparently British made. Some of the blurb on the pack is a bit over the top but that's just marketing.
I've fed Poppy the chicken variety for small breeds pretty much ever since getting her and she's never had any digestive problems or otherwise. I get it from Pets Corner.

[lesleyn]

We changed Alan's food to Eden from James Wellbeloved about 3 months ago because he was due to come off of the puppy food anyway. We chose Eden because of the great whichdogfood review and other online recommendations. He did ok on it but I found that it was a very fine balancing act to give him enough and yet stop his tummy from being runny because it's so rich. We also noticed that his energy levels dramatically increased, which obviously showed he is fit and healthy but sometimes it was verging on what I would describe as hyper! He recently had quite a bad stomach upset so as we had to slowly get him back onto kibble anyway we decided to stop the Eden and try Acana and Naturediet. He doesn't tend to drink that much water naturally and when he was ill it really highlighted to us that maybe he would do better with some wet food in his diet long term to help with hydration. Acana is a 60/40 split of meat and veg so it means it contains about 10% less protein than Eden which is the sort of level I think would suit him more. It also comes in different flavours for variety! So far he's loving this combo. I've no doubt Eden is an excellent food but I don't think the super high protein levels in it suit every dog so Acana seems to be a good, quality alternative.

[Dawnspell]

We changed Alan's food to Eden from James Wellbeloved about 3 months ago because he was due to come off of the puppy food anyway. We chose Eden because of the great whichdogfood review and other online recommendations. He did ok on it but I found that it was a very fine balancing act to give him enough and yet stop his tummy from being runny because it's so rich. We also noticed that his energy levels dramatically increased, which obviously showed he is fit and healthy but sometimes it was verging on what I would describe as hyper! He recently had quite a bad stomach upset so as we had to slowly get him back onto kibble anyway we decided to stop the Eden and try Acana and Naturediet. He doesn't tend to drink that much water naturally and when he was ill it really highlighted to us that maybe he would do better with some wet food in his diet long term to help with hydration. Acana is a 60/40 split of meat and veg so it means it contains about 10% less protein than Eden which is the sort of level I think would suit him more. It also comes in different flavours for variety! So far he's loving this combo. I've no doubt Eden is an excellent food but I don't think the super high protein levels in it suit every dog so Acana seems to be a good, quality alternative.

I found the same with the poos when Barney was exclusively fed on Orijen which is same ratio as Eden. I was given a free sample of Acana which again had loose poos. He was better when he was barf for breakfast and kibble for tea while using up the kibble. He still has occasional kibble and has Lilys kitchen which causes no problems. He absolutely loves Applaws lamb variety (another freebee) so much so he's happy with that as training treats. This is 75%meat but hasn't given him any problem poos if he's had it as a meal. So with him I'm not sure its the % of protein just whats mixed with it for fibre and works for his digestive system. Barney is the same as Alan and doesn't drink a lot which is why I like the barf option.

[Cam2]

its interesting what you say about Alan's energy levels and being abit hyper
Sammy seems to have those "batteries" that never run out... .he seems quite hyper at times too. I have been considering changing Sammy's dry kibble - at the moment he has Canagan, which to be fair he likes and it seems a good food... the crude protein levels are 33% and the fat content is 17%
I was in PAH the other day and saw that Wainwrights have recently brought out a "Grain Free Kibble" there are several flavours - the protein level is 27% and the fat content is better at 10% (having recently had to put Molly on a fairly low fat content kibble...the fat content is one of the things that I always look at)
It reads pretty well on the Whichdogfood site, so once the Canagan is getting low, I'm going to try him on it

[lesleyn]

its interesting what you say about Alan's energy levels and being abit hyper
Sammy seems to have those "batteries" that never run out... .he seems quite hyper at times too. I have been considering changing Sammy's dry kibble - at the moment he has Canagan, which to be fair he likes and it seems a good food... the crude protein levels are 33% and the fat content is 17%
I was in PAH the other day and saw that Wainwrights have recently brought out a "Grain Free Kibble" there are several flavours - the protein level is 27% and the fat content is better at 10% (having recently had to put Molly on a fairly low fat content kibble...the fat content is one of the things that I always look at)
It reads pretty well on the Whichdogfood site, so once the Canagan is getting low, I'm going to try him on it

Yes I think Canagan is pretty close to Acana in its breakdown. So far he seems so much better on the Acana/Naturediet than he was on Eden both in terms of energy (he still has lots but can focus when we need him to and doesn't quite keep up with the whippets in the park!) and firm poo consistency (nice!) so hoping we've found a good combo. Wainwrights Grain Free sounds interesting too and one to bear in mind if we ever needed a lower fat option

I found the same with the poos when Barney was exclusively fed on Orijen which is same ratio as Eden. I was given a free sample of Acana which again had loose poos. He was better when he was barf for breakfast and kibble for tea while using up the kibble. He still has occasional kibble and has Lilys kitchen which causes no problems. He absolutely loves Applaws lamb variety (another freebee) so much so he's happy with that as training treats. This is 75%meat but hasn't given him any problem poos if he's had it as a meal. So with him I'm not sure its the % of protein just whats mixed with it for fibre and works for his digestive system. Barney is the same as Alan and doesn't drink a lot which is why I like the barf option.

We've got some Lilys kitchen for Alan's christmas dinner

[Tinarenee]

For the people who are feeding Orijen, isn't the fat content a little high?? I was told because of pancreatic issues, The fat content for Mini Schnauzers should be between 10 and 12%. Would love some advice because my Mini is 8 months old and I still haven't settled on a good food. Currently she is on Oven Baked Tradition Natural and Holistic Chicken. It is made here in Canada.