Puppy food

[MrsMaisel]

About to get our new pup... and looking into the various kinds of dog foods. Thinking of dry food as well as raw meat. For the dry food, I'm looking at Simpsons which is made in the UK and also Gentle, which is cold pressed from Germany. Anyone with any experience of either? Or another recommendation?

www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk has great, independent reviews of many of the foods in the uk, including Simpsons and Gentle.

I have no experience of Gentle but remember looking at, then deciding against, Simpsons.

In case it's useful, I feed a mix of foods (mainly raw but wet/dry when away from home). I try and keep it very varied between brands but normally source from...

Wet: Forthglase, Millie's Woldheart, Aatu
Dry: Millie's, Eden, Akela, Aaatu, Canagan
Raw: Akela, Basils', Cotswold, Luna & Me, Nutriment, Natural Instinct, Jack Wolf

Thanks for that, I'll check out the review web site. When they're puppies is it ok to feed them a variety of things? If I mix raw and dry, is there a chance it will only want raw and refuse the dry?

I think it depends on the pup.

Lots of people don;t recommend mixing raw & cooked foods for a couple of reasons:

• they may digest at different rates and they believe this causes problems
• raw food requires a lower ph of digestive juices than cooked and they think this can cause problems

I did a fair bit of reading and couldn;t find any evidence for either (and a little bit of evidence contradticting the above) so made the decision to feed a variety of foods for a few reasons:

• dogs' scavenger history suggested to me they were better built for this
• I didn't want to be tied to one type or brand of food for convenience
• I didn't want a picky eater
• As there is no single, agreed nutritional requirements list for dogs (and it probably has some variety between breeds, sexes and ages) I didn't want to gamble that the food I chose had everything the dog needed to thrive. Mixing the foods up seemed the best way to acheve this.
• It seems bonkers to me that dietary advice for humans advocates varied diet is the best way to health but for dogs the official recommendation is that eating eaxactly the sam thing day in, day out was best.

I read up a bit on rotational feeding and decided that was the way to go for my/mine. Do read up for yourself, though. There are cons to my way of doing it and it won't suit every dog.

As a puppy mine would eat anything I gave him - kibble, raw, wet etc. I didn't mix in a single meal but would vary the meals. Over time he became less and less fussed about dry kibble (can't blame him). Now he eats raw almost exlusively at home - unless I've forgotten to get it out of the freezer in time! When we go away, though, raw is tricky to move and store so I take wet and dry and mix them both up together - he eats that fine.

Just want to clarify, I couldn't find evidence for either different digestion rates or different digestion phs causing problems.

Both the rate and ph aspects are true and there is eveidence that

• dogs digest diff foods at diff rates
• dogs fed on raw have lower ph digestive juices than dogs fed on cooked

I just could not find hard facts that this is likely to cause problems if you mix foods.

100% raw food
Don’t mix dry and raw

The day I brought my puppy home I put her on raw food

Look at cold pressed it give many of the benefits of raw food with the convenience of dry

We use Guru which gets a good score on allaboutdogfood.

Thanks all. Sorry I didn't mean mixing in the same meal, but alternating say. Missbattenberg I think what you say makes sense - if you feed only one thing, surely they get picky. And nutritionally surely it's better to feed a variety of things, nothing is going to be nutritionally complete. For the sake of convenience for us it's not going to be viable to feed just raw...
Geekone, Gentle is cold pressed - thanks I'll take a look at Guru. There's Orijen too, but it seems ridiculous and expensive to get one all the way from Canada...

I can't comment about raw as never fed it as not practical for us. However, I do take things about feeding with a pinch of salt now. Whilst I have struggled to find food that my dog likes and he can digest (he has inflammatory bowel disease) a lot of things haven't made any difference despite guidance to the contrary. I feed up to 4 different flavours of food, swopping daily, across two brands with no issues. Swopping over to new foods can be done instantly as the only time we have had problems were on the foods he couldn't digest well.

Therefore I tend to ignore everything that the guides say and just go on what seems best for my dog.

I use forthglade wet but I think they do cold pressed as well.

Yes, I'll try not to obsess too much! Must be difficult navigating inflammatory bowel disease with a patient who can't tell you how they're feeling.

When I used to feed kibble my dog was very, very fussy and I would have to change it a lot as she just wouldn’t eat it. Since I’ve switched to raw a few years ago she’s never left a meal.
There’s so much more variety in raw feeding that they can’t get bored.
Mine have ducks necks, chicken and duck carcasses, turkey necks, spines, lambs heads, beef chunks, hearts, chicken feet, etc.

Yes it's been difficult as we knew something wasn't right but he was nearly 1.5 years old before we got a definite diagnosis of Inflammatory BD.

I think the best thing is try a food but don't buy too much made that mistake before and see how your dog is on it. I like to give mine variety as I bloody love fillet steak but if I had to eat it every day I would get sick of it so I wouldn't want to do the same for BiteyDog.

The dog food you've said are good I would get a small bag to try.

I've had Orijen and it's brilliant but Nestlé are planning to buy the company so I wouldn't bother getting it.

I feed Markus Muhle, which is a cold pressed food. I spoke to someone on the Guru stand at an event this summer and asked what the difference was. She was very honest and said they came from the same factory so it basically came down to flavours.

I prefer Markus Muhle for two reasons - one because you have the option to get mini pellets, and two because it's half the price of Guru!

I think I did read somewhere that it's possible to combine cold pressed and raw, but don't quote me on that.

Try not to worry too much.

My DOG tries to eat shit.

We've fed AVA and pup was fine on it. About to change now as she's just turned 1..

We started with Eden, but it gave our lab terrible diahorrea and smelly wind even though we persevered for weeks as recommended by their "experts", switched to millies wolfheart and it sorted everything within a couple of days.

It is really trial and error to see what suits your dog best and judge by the output. It should be small firm (and easy to pickup) and there shouldn't be any smelly wind.

Thank you all - excitement is mounting as we wait for puppy's arrival. Yes I guess it's like formula and babies, one kind may upset them but the other suits them... I won't buy any 5kg bags!