Grain free or not?

[DottyHarmer]

I’m still dilly-dallying about what to feed my puppy as he moves from raw to dry plus wet food. So many products trumpet that they are “grain free” but after extensive googling I am none the wiser as half the internet says grain is bad and the other half says no grain is just as bad.

Help!!

Not.
A correlation has been found between grain-free diets in dogs and heart disease, with a suggestion as to how one might be leading to the other.
Also, the vast majority of dogs are fully equipped to digest starch.

So, I feed mine a mid-range kibble with grain. I do switch their food around depending on availability and what the picky one will eat, so now and again some grain-free does into their diet, but yesterday I was tidying up in the kitchen and they each got a stale hunk of bread.

Not. You won't find out if your dog is affected by the heart problem exacerbated by grain-free food until it's too late.

Unless they show an actual intolerance which is quite rare it’ll be fine. The explosion in grain free dog diets followed that in humans and is a bit of a fad… your now seeing an increase in “vegan” dogs as people like to mirror their lifestyle choices in their pets.

Just seen your message we have a staffy who is has a bad stomach die to being starved and he gets on well with Butchers food with a bit of dried food mixed in
He is 13 or 14 now but we don't know his history as a young dog

www.vetshop.co.uk/Autarky-Puppy-Junior-Delicious-Chicken-Dry-Dog-Food-2Kg sensible priced kibble plus some Butchers tins. Swap it around a little bit we also use Fish4Dogs especially the sardine one. We tend to have two open bags of kibble at a time and just weigh out a random mix each morning.

If you suspect food intolerences www.rehomingcypruspointers.co.uk/product/puppy-super-premium are single protein kibbles, most have sweet potato as the starch.

We use grain free kibble and our dogs are thriving on it

Our girl found grain difficult till she was around a year old. When she was with a dog sitter at that age, she kept trying to steal the other dogs food which had grain. She didn't suffer any of the ill effects she did as a puppy so we changed her food to the same as the dog sitter and magically my fussy dog isn't fussy anymore.

She used to get funny with chicken too, but that's become less of an issue as time has gone on. So it's worth keeping an open mind about these things.