What do you feed your dogs?

[BoysBoysBoysAndMe]

Getting a new pup in two weeks and she currently eats royal canine food from pets at home.

I don't mind feeding her that, but is there anything cheaper that will give the same nutrition?

Other kibble? D
Meat?
Raw food?
Home made?

Completely bewildered.

She's a cocker spaniel

We started with Royal Canin (dreadful diarroheoa so changed to Science Plan).

Now half way through transition to raw food, and also feeding more than the vet said we should - we now have one happy, non-chewing, pup. And you can still feel his ribs

I wouldn't do home made, personally (no time) but you can get pre-prepared raw food that doesn't take up too much freezer space. Its a little more expensive, but not much.

Royal Canin dachshund... recommended by the breeder and we kept on with it because it seems to suit ours (maintains healthy weight and perfect stools )

Supplemented with bits and bobs - meat trimmings, raw beef bones when the weather's good enough for him to have them outside.

Royal Canin Vet Breed for Boxers
I buy it on the internet from PetMeds- £7.00 a bag cheaper than pet store and free delivery.

Like Elibean, our puppy came with Royal Canin. She also had dreadful diarrhoea and didn't really do much better on either James Wellbeloved or Origen. We switched to a pre-prepared raw diet (Natural Instinct). It is more expensive than DIY raw feeding, but we keep costs down by feeding it to her only in the morning. She gets raw chicken wings in the evening and once a week she gets a meal of raw white fish, sardines, egg and a dollop of yoghurt. Since we started raw, she has had small, firm poos . Her coat and teeth are gleaming. In fact, I have been asked more than once if we have her teeth "professionally polished"!!

Mine arrived on Bakers Puppy so we changed him over to Skinners Puppy over a few days and he was fine with it, much cheaper than Royal Canin but decent quality stuff IMHO.

Now on an adult food from the same range, nice tidy poo. Had a day or so of Iams through DH's error the other week and farted like a trooper all day.

RAW. Little firm poo's. excellent condition and really easy once in the swing of it

elibean what do you mean by non-chewing??
Sam is feeling a lot better but is now destroying our home as soon as our backs are turned....

Want to move him onto raw asap but vet not happy with that idea..

Sorry for thread hijack

Royal Canin is a very good brand, and there are many other good brands too. I would suggest that you continue to feed the same food for a good couple of weeks while you settle your puppy in.

Diarrhoea is a common problem with new puppy's - its a new enviroment, stressfull time, away from little mates etc etc and so you should continue to feed the same food during this transition (unless directed by your vet or your pup is very poorly).

Dry kibble is the best sort of food you can offer and so ideally you should continue to feed kibble, but whatever your budget can afford.

FWIW I worked for Royal Canin for a few years and know that it is a very good product, but there are also other good products on the market. James Wellbeloved (same owners as RC but completely different products and factories) and Lathams (tesco own brand) are two that I would highly recommend.

Good point cravings about settling in.

Will definitely keep her on rc for the first few weeks at least.

I read that dogs naturally want to eat nest and bones like they would in the wild, but not many dog owners seem to feed a raw diet.

Anyone know why?

Royal Canin is made by Mars. Surely enough said.

We do homemade raw food. Our boy is absolutely thriving on it, plus it works out about half the price of other foods.

Orijen.

Hill's science plan gave them sore eyes and dry skin. Not surprising, really, when I looked more closely at the ingredients.

Tescos complete - used to be tescos finest complete but theyve changed the packaging (no idea why?) my dog didn't get on with royal Cain and won't eat any other dry food - we have recently moved and there is not a tesco for 15 miles-once a month we have to do an online shop just for him : D

Both Hills & Royal Canin are poor quality for the price IMO. I absolutely wouldn't feed either. They are both heavily laden with filler/cereals and use chemical preservatives rather than more natural ones.

Skinners is pretty good for the price, Burns and Fish4Dogs are also very good. James Wellbeloved suits some as does the Wainwright's range from pets at home. Orijen, Arden Grange, Symply, Natural Dog Food Co all offer really good quality foods too.

Avoid foods which list their first few ingredients as maize, wheat etc. Try and find one with rice/oats/potato instead. Avoid additives and chemicals. A Raw diet suits some, but not me.

To answer your question about why a lot of owners dont feed a raw diet is a number of reasons. A lot of it is laziness as its much easier to just grab a bag of food with your shopping than fuss about with meat & freezing/defrosting.

Also, the marketing for all brands is massive, all stating they have this health benefit or are value for money or will suit your dog best. The one thing a dry kibble diet does should have is the right balance of protein, carb & nutrients.

If you are unsure of what to choose, as a general guideline look at the ingredients on the back of the pack - they will be listed in order of what it contains most.

Royal Canin is, at best, a mediocre food - same kind of grain content as a lot of cheaper feeds, you appear to be paying a premium for the shiny packaging and pseudo-scientific claims (breed specific food?!). Same goes for Hills etc.

Mine are fed on a raw diet including whole carcasses (inc. fur and feathers), offal, tripe, fish etc. and some pre-prepared elements like Prize Choice, minced meat/bone mixes and so on. I started out with raw because one of mine is intolerant of grains and, with the exception of Fish4Dogs, did poorly on every complete dry diet I tried.

Since I started thinking about it I realised how wrong it was to feed dogs on a diet that can be up to 96% grain and with only one protein source. In any given week my dogs may eat chicken, beef, lamb, pork, rabbit, pheasant, fish, offal of all of those, tripe, fish oils, eggs and cooked veg (not convinced on the necessity of this but they enjoy it). I would never serve them a bowl of wheat, corn and a teaspoonful of mechanically reclaimed chicken slop, why buy a pelleted version of the same?

Disclaimer: I totally understand why people may not want to pursue a raw diet but would urge anyone to take a proper look at what they're actually feeding their dog and consider a higher quality (not necessarily higher priced) kibble.

So, (sorry for the simple question), if you feed a raw diet to your dog, does he eat the bones?

I thought some bones were bad for dogs?

And at what age would you start a raw diet?

And what quantities etc do you use for a meal? Do you prepare a bulk load?

Yes, they eat bones - always raw, never cooked, as cooked bones tend to splinter. The bulk of their diet is chicken wings/legs/carcasses on the bone.

You can wean a pup straight on to a raw diet, I haven't had a pup in a very long time but would probably start out with minces, pure meat off the bone and then slowly introduce softer bones like wings.

I bulk buy but there's little to no preparation to do. You can order a lot of stuff online, companies do boxes of minced meat/bone/offal mixes, chicken parts, freeflow pelleted minces/chunks. I get bags and boxes of stuff cheaply from the butcher - tripe, hearts, chicken carcasses, liver. Sainsburys do a bag of value chicken pieces in a big freezer bag for just a few quid. I get pheasants and rabbits for free which can require prep but mine are happy to tackle a whole one.

I aim to feed roughly 3% of the dog's body weight a day. I don't actually measure anything any more, it's all by eye, if the dogs are running up a bit thin they get more, if they start to put on too much they get less.

I keep a stocked freezer (you can do it really cheaply if you have a chest freezer but I manage with a standard upright fridge/freezer), take out a few bits every few days, leave them in the fridge to defrost, throw it at the dogs at mealtimes. If you forget you can defrost a few lumps under running water, grab a packet of wings/mince from the shop or give them a tin of mackerel in oil or something. No great inconvenience at all if you get into the habit.

We're only on the pre-prepared stuff so far (Natural Instinct), so no bones as such - but yes, raw chicken carcasses are fine. Cooked definitely not. Its because cooked bones splinter, I think, whereas raw are crunch-able!

We got a month's supply into the bottom drawer of our freezer, plus a couple of pots tucked away here and there. We have a medium sized lab x.

dh (who is on poo duty in the garden ) reports harder, crumblier, non-smelly poos since we started - and we're still weaning him off the Science Plan, so not 100% raw yet.

Raw eggs are fun too - the first time Mouse had NO idea what to do with it, now he adores them!

We use Pedigree Complete for our collie, but only a little bit a day. She didn't really enjoy it and was always on the skinny side of what she should be, so we started filling it in with any meat that we were having. It was always cooked though, because it would just be part of what we were having for dinner - although obviously we would take it out before we added seasoning etc. She does also get a bit of left over veg and occasionally mashed potato but we have really noticed the difference. We started it properly in November, and she has filled out nicely, her coat is so glossy we can't believe the difference! I'm sure it probably isn't a recommended diet (for example, last night she had pork with her biscuits, a heaped serving spoon of mashed potato and then gravy to mix it all together) but she certainly looks healthier and I think she feels it too.

It'd be the Pedigree poisoning her if anything! There's worse diets than cooked meat and veg. Adding in a raw bone or two would help her teeth a lot though. :)

That was our reasoning toboldlygo, DP is from a farming family and he recalls his GP's dogs being fed out of 'the leftover bucket' and being absolutely fine. I don't necessarily think that I want to feed her out of a bucket, but I do have specified plastic containers that the food for her goes in to, which are stored on her very own shelf in the fridge

Can you tell I don't have DC yet?

I think once the weather gets nicer I will get her boooooooones to chomp on outside. Will the butcher give them to me for cheap do you think?

Meat is definitely better for them than grain-heavy kibble. IF you use kibble you have, as pointed out by several people here, to make sure that meat really does feature as the primary ingredient. I reckon it was the cereal part of the Science Diet that was bothering my terriers. They were so dry and itchy all the time.

Orijen isn't cheap (though a little goes a lot further than cheaper brands) but it is good value for money.

Mine were on James Wellbeloved then Arden Grange but both were really expensive and my spaniel has never been very solid...sorry tmi!

Now they are on Chudleys for working dogs. My spaniel has put on some weight and now looks healthy rather than some abandoned starving street dog. I have to keep an eye on my collie though as she gets fat quite easily. She has about half as much as the spaniel.

Good ole Dr Johns Gold.