What is the best dog food?

[TigerSwallowTail]

What is the best food to feed a dog? I had my German shepherd on raw meat and some mixers in the past but we've not got the space anymore. She is on Bakers complete at the moment but apparently that isn't really that good for dogs, any suggestions?

I feed my GS on a raw diet, because she won't eat anything else.

I first tried her on James Well-beloved, which is well recommended. My previous dogs have looked well and lived healthily on Vitalin mixed with a small amount of tinned dog food, or a gravy, low in salt etc obviously.

www.whichdogfood.co.uk/

That's a good website for comparing foods. Bakers has some pretty horrible ingredients.

We feed ours on raw or Burns, depending on time and freezer space.

When we are on holiday we feed ours Bakers for 3 days because we couldn't find anywhere that sold decent food. Within a couple of days they had bad breath and they poo'd huge amounts. They also developed what I can only describe as doggy BO.

Def don't recommend.

I would buy Burns if money no object. its too expensive for us though so we get Skinners, really good value. about same price as Bakers but massively better quality.

I feed mine Barking Heads , not the cheapest but he looks great on it and he loves it .

Definitely have a look at the which food for dogs site that tabulahrasa linked to.

Almost anything would be better than Bakers to be honest, it's addictive and can cause hyperactivity.

Burns is ok, but worth noting it has a very high rice content and there have been a lot of dogs reacting badly to it since the changed the formula recently.

Personally I'd go for something like Canagan, Eden, Barking Heads or Fish4Dogs. None of them is cheap, but they're all top quality with excellent protein sources and about the best you're going to get in a kibble.

Next level down from that would be Burns, James Wellbeloved etc.

Basically you want a food that lists a good quality meat/fish (not meat/fish meal) as the top ingredient and as low a cereal content as possible - preferably cereal free.

Basically you want a food that lists a good quality meat/fish (not meat/fish meal) as the top ingredient and as low a cereal content as possible - preferably cereal free.

Absolutely agree with you on the cereals but meat meal is actually a good thing, potentially better than fresh meat. The meal just means it is meat with the moisture removed so the percentage of meat meal is actually a more accurate representation of how much meat is in a food. Some sneaky companies like to crow about how much meat they have in their foods when the percentage listed is actually fresh meat and once the moisture is removed (as it has to be if it's going into dry food) there is actually far less meat than it appears.

Which Dog Food on meat meal

Fish4Dogs changed their formulation a while ago and it's now got far less meat and far more filler with little or no reduction in price. Both the Finest and the Superior contain more potato and pea or pea flour than meat.

Acana and Orijen are also excellent foods which would be worth looking at.

My boy is on Barking Heads puppy food at the mo. He's also had Arden Grange a couple of times when we've run out of food and borrowed someone else's.

He gets raw meat as treats if I'm making dinner and have a bit left over.

That's interesting PinkFairy. Thank you.

Things have obviously moved on since I did my module on canine nutrition. Meat meal used to be the way manufacturers avoided having to admit using poor quality meat and byproducts on the label.

I would still avoid a product that listed 'meat meal' instead of a specific type of meal though, iyswim. Otherwise surely you don't know what protein source your dog's actually getting. Eg The product name might say chicken, but it could potentially have any other meat source in there if they have lumped the protein source in under generic 'meat meal' and the formulation could then change regularly without you being aware.

I believe that Euro labelling regulations also changed a year or so which means that most things now need to be labelled meal rather than meat unless there are specific guarantees. Meal is fine - what you need to avoid is animal and meat derivatives.

I would still avoid a product that listed 'meat meal' instead of a specific type of meal though, iyswim.

Absolutely, stuff like that is referred to as 'mystery meat' in this house

Some companies use dehydrated named meat rather than named meat meal on their ingredient lists. I'm not sure if either is superior to the other. Again though, dehydrated means you're getting more meat than the same percentage of fresh meat.

Bohemond, so I'm a year or so out of date. Yes, definitely avoid meat and animal derivatives, although I think most manufacturers are aware that people have got wise to that one now and try to cover up dodgy ingredients in other ways.

Interestingly we feed Canagan and they don't list meal. They list chicken twice, separately, as deboned - 26% (which they say is steamed) and dried - 25%. Not quite sure how they could use deboned chicken unless it's also dried in some way in a dry kibble food though.

Thanks for the replies everyone, you've been a great help. We need a new fridge/freezer so may look into getting one with quite a big freezer and try going back to raw meat. I'll check out the which site and compare all the dog food mentioned.

I have 2 GSD's and the only food they actually eat when I put it down to them is Wainwrights or the Chubb Rolls with mixer. If I try other food then they have a sniff and walk away in disgust!

I'm using Lily's kitchen for my 2 allergy prone dogs and they're doing really well on it. I get it delivered from amazon every month and it's far cheaper this way.