Labrador - Burns or Skinners?

[chasingtail]

2yo lab bitch has been on Burns for most of her life. (Fed twice a day) She is in good general condition but moults horrendously and has very soft poo which is deposited at least 3 or 4 times a day.
Looking for advice please on whether this is the right food for her or if there are any cheaper better alternatives.
Also never seems full and is constantly prowling for food. When we are out she will eat anything (and I mean ANYTHING, poo included!). Obviously realise that Labs are greedy but this just seems ridiculous! This may also be contributing to the amount of poo coming out of her!
She is wormed regularly

Any advice gratefully received.

My first lab was on burns for a while and tbh i wasn't impressed. He was always hungry and on the leaner side.

I have happily used skinners. Both the duck and rice and salmon and rice, but also the maintenance and the crunchy. DDog 2 is currently on the crunchy and she looks fab- lovely coat , good weight (she is the very rare sort of lab that looks at cake and doesn't put on 10kg!). Her poo is a bit soft if i am honest but apart from that I'm very happy.

Depending on where you live costco's own food is reasonable if i remember rightly and is about 25 for 18kg. Costco also stock autarky for 11 per 15kg bag which is much cheaper than usual, and as a cheap food goes is pretty good, for the price.

The only food mine have ever been on which has resulted in really firm poos you could pick up with chop sticks is raw... but that's quite a lot of faff.

Worth cutting down on food if poos are soft and frequent before changing brands, to see if it makes any difference.
Labs are always hungry, even when full to bursting. Mine treats all walks as foraging expeditions and usually manages to snaffle something even when on the lead, apple cores, banana skins, used tissues etc. He once ate 2 dead ducks he found in a hedge, beaks, feathers, the lot. His stomach was really bloated, but he still waited expectantly for his dinner when we got home

Costco meaning Kirkland?
If so, a bullmastiff died recently, laboratory analysis showed the food was contaminated with salmonella....

To a degree I think it's a matter of trial and error to see what suits your dog . I used to raw feed and stopped for medical reasons , since then I've tried various combinations of wet and dry food and have finally got my dog doing 1 or 2 firm poos a day on Hills ideal balance chicken and potato ( dry) and Butchers chicken and tripe tins , may not be the best quality food but it suits us . Cost has never been an issue for me and we have tried all sorts including Lilys kitchen ( wet and dry) , Barking heads ( wet and dry) , millies and the list continues . I like to combination feed as I think it's more interesting for the dog and he likes it .

My lab is 10 now and has been fed Burns for at least six years, it really suits her, she is very fit and healthy. Definitely not soft poo though and not greedy at all - I could leave my dinner on the floor (on a plate of course) and leave the room and she wouldn't touch it.

I would probably try something else if she had poo issues - the greediness probably isn't related to the food you are feeding - some dogs are just greedy.

Have you got a local independent pet food shop? Ours would give samples of anything and everything if you were thinking of changing food.

Think I may try something else as for the money I would expect a better 'digestive result'. Feels like I'm constantly walking round garden searching for squelchy poos which are impossible to pick up!!!
(She is taken on 2 decent walks a day so it's annoying).
Got to be worth a go and if it's even worse I'll switch back to Burns.

Will also try feeding her a little less to see if that helps - am sure she'll make up for any shortfall with manky decomposed rabbits (vom emoticon!)

Highly recommend Millie's wolfheart !
Our lab was on burns but was a bit itchy & loose , switched to Millie's which stopped the itching & dandruff , plus perfect poo within a few days !

I feed my 6 yr old Lab Wainwrights Salmon & Potato it's from Pets at Home and they also do a grain free one. He's 32kgs and he gets 150 grams twice a day.

His coat is really shiny and the moulting isn't too bad......For a Lab and good solid poos

If you do change her food, gradually introduce the new one over approx 4-5 days to avoid an upset tummy.

My lab had coccidia and giardia when we first got him and we struggled for a long time to get the right food as he seemed to have trouble absorbing it. We still have trouble keeping weight on him. He was on Burns for a while and it gave him dandruff, runny poo and terrible room-clearing flatulence. Arden Grange Prestige was better but he was still a bit loose and had dandruff. He's now on Simpsons 80/20 and looks amazing, perfect coat and skin, rock solid poo twice a day, and because you need less of it, it's worked out cheaper than the Burns. My mother has her elderly lab on Lily's Kitchen and that works really well for him - he's taken on a new lease of life after she took him off the vet-recommended Royal Canin that was making him lethargic and dull. It's definitely worth experimenting with a few different ones to see what suits him best - different dogs respond differently.

Mine however still has runny poos if he's had less than about 9 hours to digest it - he's fed morning and evening and he'll poo whenever he gets walked, so if he gets an early and a late morning walk then the late morning poo tends to be runny, but if his second walk is in the late afternoon/evening it'll be firm. Early morning poo is always firm.

A whole post about poo, how charming of me

If you are happy to feed a grain based food skinners (field and trial turkey, duck or salmon/rice only, others are not so good) is the same quality as burns an much cheaper.

Our lab is on millies wolfheart and highly recommend it for firm poos and no smelly wind. It's good quality high protein, grain, egg, etc free. Great customer support to get your dogs output right. It's around the same price as burns but think you'll feed slightly less.

Never considered the effect of grain on poo but come to think of it there does seem to be a lot of undigested grain when her poo is particularly sloppy - naaaice!
Much grain in Burns?

Look at allaboutdogfood website for info on most brands of food, according to that Burns is 67% brown rice, not a very bad grain, but still grain. Iirc maize is the worst grain as its pretty much indigestible by dogs but used as a cheap filler.

Lab moult a lot, pretty much regardless of diet.