Which of these foods?

[VinnieLove]

Which of these foods would you pick for your dog(s)? Is there a chart listing the foods with ranks (1-10, etc) or something similar? I'm trying to read labels but I am really confused. I have been reading old threads, labels, websites recommended by Brandypup, etc, but I have about 10 foods I think are acceptable. What does everyone think?
(I included the price per pound... possibly which is the best food and the best value?)

Name of food(price per pound average)
1. Natural Balance($1.24)
2. ProPlan Lamb and Rice(1.10)
3. Eagle Pack Holistic(1.39)
4. Nutro Natural Choice(1.15)
5. Sensible Choice Lamb(1.00)
6. Eukanuba Natural(1.33)
7. Wellness Lamb(1.53)
8. Royal Canin Medium Breed(.91)
9. ProPac Premium Lamb(.70-.85)
10. Professional Lamb(.71-.83)

-As you can tell, I like the idea of a Lamb and rice dog food. Price is not REALLY important, but we do like to get our money's worth. Thanks for everyone's help!
```Ashley```

[RavenRose]

I feed Natural Choice and would definitely choose it over some of your list, but I don't know all of them. I don't know Wellness, Professional, ProPac or EaglePac. Royal Canin and Sensible Choice are good (I believe made by the same company) but I just noticed today that Royal Canin is high in protein, so if for any reason your dog(s) need to be on something that's not too high in protein, I'd avoid that. If you stick with the Lamb in the Natural Choice, there's no corn or wheat. There's also added glucosamine and chondrotin in both it and at least some of the Royal Canin if you have any concern about hips/joints. Natural Choice also has linolic(sp?) for skin and coat, and I believe they guarantee that it will improve them.

But, as I've said and I know others have in other threads, it will depend on your dogs. Mine do wonderful on it, but I know of others who have tried feeding it and it's upset their dogs' stomachs.

Hope that's helpful :)

[MaddiesMom]

I feed my dog Eagle Pack Holistic and she does wonderful on it. The main reason I put her on it was because it had a lower protein content than Nutro Natural Choice (which has 26%). My dog was growing too fast and would have ended up with joint problems. The Eagle Pack only has 23% protein in it.

Royal Canin and Wellness were also recommended to me by a breeder who's tried just about every dog food out there.

Good Luck!

[VinnieLove]

Thank you guys! A little background on this thread: http://www.petshub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42651

Sensible Choice and Royal Canin ARE the same company, and I thought that SC was the cheaper version of RC but look at the price comparison! Weird.
Natural Balance really seems to be the best, and we had a sample and the dogs liked it a lot, so that's a plus. But of course we're still comparing. The Royal Canin looks really good, as does ProPac Premium, Natural Choice........oh all the options!!

[VinnieLove]

Ok this is the info for ProPac Premium Lamb&Rice:

Ingredients:
Lamb Meal, Brewers Rice, Rice Flour, Rice Gluten Meal, Chicken Fat (preserved with mixed Tocopherols, a source of natural Vitamin E), Flaxseed, Yeast Culture, Potassium Chloride, Salt, Choline Chloride, L-Lysine, DL-Methionine Hydroxyanalogue, Vitamin E Supplement, D-activated Animal Sterol (source of Vitamin D3), Vitamin A Acetate, Niacin, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Ascorbic Acid, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Folic Acid, Manganous Oxide, Ferrous Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Ethylenediamine Dihydriodide, Zinc Proteinate, Manganous Proteinate, Iron Proteinate, Magnesium Proteinate, Copper Proteinate.

Guaranteed Analysis:
Crude Protein (minimum) 25
Crude Fat (minimum) 12
Moisture (maximum) 10
Crude Fiber (maximum) 3.5
Omega-6 Fatty Acids (minimum) 1.7
Omega-3 Fatty Acids (minimum) 0.25



Looks good to me, any opinions?

[Fran27]

Don't base your choice on price per pound. It means nothing. Because for a good food, you will feed less of it, because they have less fillers. You should take into account the price/lb AND the recommended dose of the brand. At the same time, the recommended dose is a good indicator of the quality of the food.

You should check this (http://www.mordanna.com/dogfood/index.php?page=money) if you have doubts.

As an example, I was feeding Nutro natural choice. It's $36 a 40lbs bag here. I switched to Innova. $36 a 33lbs bag. The difference is that, where I had to feed 6 cups a day of Nutro, I have to feed under 4 cups of Innova. So overall, Innova is actually cheaper.

In your list, Eagle Pack and Wellness are the best - and they won't necessarily be more expensive.

[eviloxygen]

Innova evo is a very good dog food, and i highly reccommend it if you cant feed raw. TO be honest i will never feed comercial dog food ever again, it was not ment to be, and your dog will thrive on eating what it should eat and would in the wild real raw food. Just my two cents, i dislike ALL dog food companies but if i had to choose it would be innova evo. :p

[lastunicorn86]

i really like wellness cause it's a really good food, but found it too rich for my dogs so i don't feed it to them. i feed royal canin, nutro, blue buffalo, and a few more brands. i found that my dogs like a mix of dry foods and this way they get the great additives from a few different foods than just one. i know some people say mixing causes pickiness but my dogs Always eat their food, mixed or not!

[brandy pup]

of your list I would pick the Natural Balance.


Food Links
http://www.dogaware.com/dogfeeding.html#TopDry

[K Dawg 81]

lastunicorn, I've read that mixing food can cause nutritional imbalances.

"Every brand of dog food is following a specific formulation and philosophy developed by the manufacturer. they are all formulated to supply a balanced amount of nutrients in a ration of certain size, based on the body weight of the dog. When mixing different foods you run the risk of your dog getting either not enough or too much of certain nutrients. Last but not least, if digestive upset occurs, it's going to take so much longer to figure out exactly what caused it compared to just eliminating either the commercial food or whatever extras were fed recently. If you want to offer more variety, stick to one line of food of the same brand at a time and rotate between brands every few months. Supplementing the dry food with fresh, "live" foods like vegetables, fruit, yogurt, meat, or a bit of canned food is also safe and healthy."

That is from mordanna.com. Honestly I'm not sure why they say you can mix other types of food with one type of dry, but not two types of dry, but I trust that site.

[shadowolf]

Which of these foods would you pick for your dog(s)?

Name of food(price per pound average)
1. Natural Balance($1.24)
2. ProPlan Lamb and Rice(1.10)
3. Eagle Pack Holistic(1.39)
4. Nutro Natural Choice(1.15)
5. Sensible Choice Lamb(1.00)
6. Eukanuba Natural(1.33)
7. Wellness Lamb(1.53)
8. Royal Canin Medium Breed(.91)
9. ProPac Premium Lamb(.70-.85)
10. Professional Lamb(.71-.83)
```
I feed my dog Nutro Natural Choice, small bites.. She is a siberian husky, she seems to be doing well on that diet.. I used to have her on Chicken soup for the dog lovers soul.. I love that food so much it is so healthy, but it made her so fat lol. so much protiens... gulp.

I absolutly loath Eukanuba, and Royal canin.. for my own reasons. :rolleyes:

[VinnieLove]

Thanks everyone. I actually didn't know this thread was still being posted on. But anyhow, for the price deal, I did mention it's not important but I put it on as a reference of sorts.

Looked over all the brands, labels, etc and decided on Nutro Natural Choice Lamb and Rice. It has glucosomine and Condroitin for joints, good ingredients, no corn, and is recommended by many vets and breeders. We are starting to transition the dogs over slowly. Thanks again!

[brandy pup]

lastunicorn, I've read that mixing food can cause nutritional imbalances.

"Every brand of dog food is following a specific formulation and philosophy developed by the manufacturer. they are all formulated to supply a balanced amount of nutrients in a ration of certain size, based on the body weight of the dog. When mixing different foods you run the risk of your dog getting either not enough or too much of certain nutrients. Last but not least, if digestive upset occurs, it's going to take so much longer to figure out exactly what caused it compared to just eliminating either the commercial food or whatever extras were fed recently. If you want to offer more variety, stick to one line of food of the same brand at a time and rotate between brands every few months. Supplementing the dry food with fresh, "live" foods like vegetables, fruit, yogurt, meat, or a bit of canned food is also safe and healthy."

That is from mordanna.com. Honestly I'm not sure why they say you can mix other types of food with one type of dry, but not two types of dry, but I trust that site.


I think that actually mixing two foods isn't good, however having a rotation diet of say 3 foods in a year is actually best.

The anaylist on each bag is MAXIMUMS and MINIMUMS non of which is OPTIMAL for each pet. You feed one food forever you will have excess maximums and excess minimums by haviong a roataion diet you can balance the extras and deficeincyes out.

This is why allergie pets 'seem' to do better the first month they have a food switch. It becuase the excess and minimums are balancing out. But then they sometimes go right back to the itching and scratching as if before they switched becuase the mins and maxs are acquiring.

[K Dawg 81]

Yeah, I rotate all of my kid's kibble every few months. Even the ferrets. I definitely believe in variety.