Collie owners -what food?

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Hi
I have an 8 month old rescue collie. We have had him since 6mths and fed him on Arden grange puppy food with pedigree chum puppy time mixed in (he refused dry food but eats well when mixed with a tin).
I'm trying to test other dry foods partly as Arden grange is quite expensive and partly to move him on from puppy food.
Currently have Skinners ruff and ready, still mixed with cans, but he is hungry much more.
Just wondering what you use and approx quantities.
It might make more sense to go back to the Arden grange, but would be interested in other recommendations.
Thanks!

Raw food. No dry food.
Collies are prone to ibs/ibd and other digestive complaints.
Raw food is excellent and what most of the major border collie rescues recommend.

A close second would be a really good quality wet food like forthglade, natures menu or naturediet.

Though if you are feeding wet food (or anything without raw bones) you will need to be brushing those teeth every day.

5 (working) collies in this house. We feed mostly Natures Menu raw. Natures Menu

We supplement with CSJ XP (Dry) in an emergency/when we run out of Natures Menu or it's not practical for us to feed raw.

If you want a good quality reasonably priced dried food (who deliver), try CSJ CSJ They are also really helpful on the phone so can advise the best food for your dog.

Alternatively, Wainwrights (found at Pets at Home both wet and dry), the 3 brands that Butthole mentions, and James Wellbeloved. If you want to use tins, stick to "Butchers" tripe.

The most important thing is to keep food that you feed to collies (and any other dog, but especially collies) additive free.

Regarding CSJ, their flea powder 'billy no mates' is amazing.

We have been feeding Burns for years. It's very good for keeping the dogs in shape and you don't need to feed massive amounts. Raw feeding seems to be very fashionable at the moment. If you have a spare deep freeze, time to prepare and extra space. We don't. I have used CSJ to provide extra calories

People get very dogmatic about feeding. You need to find something that suits both you and the dog. If you are feeding a complete dry food, you may be messing up the nutrition by adding canned food. CSJ does a very good mixer.

Everyone will tell you different things and they'll all be right!

With respect, Border collies as a breed are prone to digestive issues and bad reactions to additives.
When most border collie rescues advise raw feeding, I think it's more than 'fashionable'.

I feel quite strongly about this because I have a border collie who spent the first year of her life terribly sick. She was in and out of vets, emergency out of hours vets, she never had a solid poo, sometimes she would rush outside and literally squirt out lines of blood. Vomited a lot, she tried every food going from cheap crap like pedigree to cheap hypoallergenics like chappie to expensive grain frees like applaws, you name it, she tried it.
She even ate vegetarian kibble for a while.

She eats raw now and has no digestive issues, I would hate to think that people thought I fed raw as a fad, because it's the 'in' thing.

If you like burns, then great. Different things work for different people but please don't suggest that raw feeding is some kind of trendy thing.
For a lot of people, it has made an incredible difference to their dogs.

p.s. I have a pathetic, tiny excuse for a freezer on top of my fridge and not that much time spare. I manage fine.

I agree with the raw feeding as Buttholelane mentions, I've an (now elderly) collie x who couldn't keep weight on till I switched to raw feeding. My youngest was an obese hyper horror when she arrived in rescue at 16 months; she's now sleek, obedient (unless it invokes squirrels!) and energetic as opposed to hyper, and loves her raw food; you can't do better imo

Buttholelane - had the EXACT same experience with one of mine. Constant runny poo, upset stomach, couldn't keep weight on... Put him on Natures menu raw, and bam. Stomach sorted. . Like you, I don't feed raw because it's a "fad", I feed it because it works.

Skinner Ruff and Ready is a really poor food (contains glucose syrup = sugar). I have a lab who is on Millies Wolfheart and does really well on it (quality UK protein, grain free, etc etc).

I have also heard Collies particularity do really well on raw, but if you cant manage raw Millies is excellent, but either way get him off the Skinners Ruff and Ready (and Pedigree Chum too!) crap as soon as you can.

I agree that collies often have digestive issues, both of mine did (one had allegic colitis), but I would like to point out that raw doesn't work for all dogs.

Raw worked wonders for our first collie but was a complete disaster for our second collie, who we fed on Eden.

I've heard so many good things about raw feeding. Unfortunately my first experience of it was not good. A friend raw fed her dogs and their teeth were great and their coats were fine, and they were well. However, her house smelt awful. Really awful. I think it really depends on how you live and what you want and of course what suits your dog.
I have spoken to various canine nutritionists and vets about dog food and feeding. They all have different ideas about what works.

My collie cross seems happy on James well beloved and nature diet. (And toast in the morning)

That is really interesting, do you know what she fed?
I feed bone in cuts of meat (for people) and there is no odour at all.
I also feed some whole prey, like whole ducks, whole partridge etc (again intended for human consumption but not dressed in any way) and they don't smell at all either.
I used to feed conventional foods like forthglade etc in the morning but don't now as my cat and dog both got food poisoning from a well known holistic brand.
The conventional foods are a bit pongy, natures menu especially I find to have a fairly strong odour.

I am 99.9% certain my house does not smell.
Mind you, most people with dogs say that don't they and non doggy people sniff out the stench straight away!

I think cats don't smell and dogs don't smell, but when things go a bit wrong...Being young and healthy helps!

Don't have a collie. But our small breed eats -

Millie's Wolfheart for brekkie.
Millie's Wolfheart for lunch.

And mummy's homemade meaty dinners consisting - Natures Menu mince, whatever frozen veggies in fridge, berries, apple, liver - boil it for five minutes once a week enough for seven dinners. Dirt cheap.

Absolutely no grains to into her at all - just Millie's kibble which is grain free and meat, offal and veg at night, great health, no crap goes into her, no treats except baked liver occasionally, and brilliant hard firm poos easy to pick up, no residue and no anal gland issues. Happy dog.

Dogs really don't need fruit, veg or grains, they get all they need from meat and bones, so all the adding of it is just making unnecessary work and cooking wipes out a lot of the goodness. As to smelling, maybe she just doesn't cleanser house very often?! Mine eat on a mat that is washed regularly, I clean the house regularly, and sincere feeding the dog smell on them has greatly reduced, and they don't have noxious wind either

Which tinned / kibble fed dogs often do!

I certainly agree about grains.

Not so sure about fruit and veg, focusfocus is following more a BARF style raw feeding model, the pure meat and bone more prey model raw.
I think both are fine.

I don't routinely feed my dog fruit or veg but I often give her an apple if I am having one as she loves them, I will sometimes give her cooked vegetables too if I have them leftover.
I don't know how much benefit they get from them, but they certainly don't do them any harm.

Oh one of mine is a good waste disposal and eats just about anything, and yes, loves a bit of fruit and veg, but it's not needed. Read Tom Lonsdale's stuff, he explains it in biological / physiological terms; it fest harm (excluding ones dangerous to dogs of course) but it's certainly not needed

The oldest collie lived to 27 and was fed a dedicated vegetarian diet. I have no idea if the lack of meat was anything to do with longlivety. I'm sure the owner is convinced that it is. Other dogs have lived longer on more conventional food!

OP Younmust have got lots of ideas by now, dog food is a minefield and can become quite emotive as well especially the kibble/cans vs raw feeding. In the end like toddler feeding, infant feeding or anything else really - you will need to work out the happy medium between what suits you (your likes, needs, budget) and what's best for your pooch!

I personally follow an absolutely no grains approach. She eats one of the very best of high protein grain free kibble, meaty bones and as far as her homemade dinners go - there's a sprinkling of veg and fruit in a pile of mince and good amounts of offal - so i don't think there's anything wrong with it at all. I enjoy the five minutes spent a week putting it together, and she is a very very healthy dog.

I won't feed raw- we all make our own decisions about how we feed our babies and fur babies. But what I do feed works very well and I am very happy with the content of it.

Focusfocus I notice you say you feed meaty bones, but then say you won't feed raw.

Please reassure me that the 'meaty bones' are raw and not cooked and that you meant you won't feed exclusively raw food?!?!
Because cooked bones, including the ones you get in pet shops are incredibly dangerous!!!
They are very hard and brittle and can break teeth or worse, snap off in sharp shards and cause bowel obstruction, internal bleeding and damage to the stomach and intestines!

My mum's ddog died as a consequence of a splinter from a cooked chicken bone she had chanced upon by turning over a bin. It was in a developing country, just last year, and my mother went from pillar to post but our beloved little d went away after a week of bleeding. She will never be forgotten.

So, No - my D does not eat cooked bones.

All the best OP in the choices you make, please just know there are many good choices, many correct choices, and you will find many people - from vets at fancy surgeries who are brainwashed by commercial food companies to well meaning friends - who will try to convince you that there is only one right option to a healthy dog who loves out a full life, but that isn't simply true.

Give them the best you can realistically afford. Closest to their natural diet of meat and offal that you can find. No fillers, grains and additives as far as possible for you. And lots of love of course.

Oh my goodness, so many replies, thank you!!

Well we totally ran out of the ruff and ready, so I grabbed a bag of JWB which is going down fine at the moment.

He literally would not eat for the first few days when he arrived with us, and being very skinny anyway, I was desperate for anything that he would eat and would stay down, which rightly or wrongly the ardens/ruff and ready/pedigree chum tins did. I'd read all the ingredient lists, looked for no additives etc. It's a mine field! He seems to have a pretty good constitution so we are lucky in that respect.

I've googled the Nature Menu and their stuff the comes in frozen ice cubes actually sounds pretty easy and about the same price as I'm spending now. We do have a second freezer too - filled with frozen fruit and other summer garden produce, but becomes progressively more empty in the winter.
And it turns out there is a CSJ stockist on our route to elsewhere next weekend, who apparently has been showing collies for 25 years so that sounds a fab place to further investigate.

Focusfocus - your last line made me smile. That bit, I know we are getting right!!! Endless love from 3 small adoring owners (and 1 large one).

So, we'll stick with what I have here until Saturday, and then go and see what alternatives I can find. Thank you all again for all your posts.

We have 3 working/pet collies and a collie retriever cross, all 4 are fed csj and people constantly remark how shiny their coats are and how healthy they seem. we have not experienced any behavioral or digestive issues using this food and recommend it to everyone that asks what we feed our dogs.

Wow at a twenty seven year old collie

I tried raw feeding but one of my collies developed acute gastritis and now I'm too frightened to try it