Hill's Science Plan

[shafto]

Tess has been on Hill's Science plan Lamb and rice for quite a few months now. She is not a big eater and can be quite fussy some days and never eats at the same time, which is a bit of a pain as the bowl seems to be up and down like a yoyo.

Recently we find that to get her to eat we may have to put Sardines in oil in her food, or a third of a tin of any tinned food to coax her to eat.

We would change the food, but have found that this is the only one that, up to now, has her stools quite firm.

My query is, does anyone have any good advice on the best feed for her here in the UK. we don't seem to have all the food that gets mentioned on the forums.

So any advice off anyone familiar with UK dogfood would be appreciated.

By the way, Tess is small for her age, 1 year old on 22/05/06, and no sign of first season yet either.

 

[gmacleod]

Well, I'd certainly support getting her off Science Plan. If you search the forums, you'll find it mentioned here quite a bit as Science Diet - and it's one of the nastiest, low quality dog foods it's possible to get. Really, it is.

Your choice of good quality dry dog foods in the UK, sadly, is not great. This is a fantastic place for good quality and reasonably priced raw food. It's not bad for cooked dog meats either. But the dry stuff simply is not great here. And, it's also worth noting that dry dog food is roughly double the price of anywhere else in the world also!! LOL - that's insult to injury - we're paying twice as much, and can still only get junk.

Anyway, all is not lost there. IMO the best thing you can do is actually to feed your dog on raw food instead. It's far better nutrition than the dry stuff anyway, you're far less likely to have loose stool issues and it's also much better priced here. If you're at all interested in going that route, here's a thread with some useful links to suppliers in it. As noted there, the sort of price you're looking at is around 30p per meal: http://www.boxerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90855

If you really want a dry dog food though, then there are still good options for you. Because the price is so incredibly high in the UK, it actually means that you can import the stuff from elsewhere yourself, and even with shipping costs, it's going to be delivered to your door for about the same price you'd pay if you went down to the vet or petstore and bought it yourself... If that option is interesting to you, here's a thread with a couple of links to (German) suppliers for two of the best quality dry dog foods available worldwide: http://www.boxerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97728

But if you really want something that you can purchase at a petstore here, then the best options available to you are Burns and Jameswellbeloved. These two foods are a million miles better than Science Plan, but I'd still criticise them as being too low in meat content (it's only 26% - wheras a natural diet should be a minimum of 70% meat). You can get around that problem to an extent by adding some cooked or raw meat to the diet yourself though.

There is more information and some reviews of the ingredients for all of these foods (remember Science Plan will be listed as Science Diet) on the following site: www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews

 

[shafto]

Thank you for your prompt reply.

I do want to try her on another food/diet as it is obvious she isnt fussed on the science plan. We just stuck too it because of the stool issue.

Daft question, but, is RAW mince ok for a dog her age?

Will it give her the trots?

What do you think of Arden grange?

I would like to try her on some timberwolf, maybe some clever petshop will start selling it over here. Not much chance with a market stuffed with Pedigree. though.

I am going to start her on some RAW feed this week, hopefully she won't be too fussy. Thanks.

 

[x19er]

She is not a big eater and can be quite fussy some days and never eats at the same time, which is a bit of a pain as the bowl seems to be up and down like a yoyo.

Our Dino was the same way and we have recently changed him to eating Burns food. He loves it and for the first time ever is eating all his food at every meal. We chose Burns as we did not want to import food from abroad in case he did not like it but as he has taken to Burns so well we now feel more confident in trying the food from abroad as per gmcleods post.

 

[gmacleod]

Raw is good for a dog of any age This is their natural food. It is unlikely to give her runny stools.

The only thing I'd say about raw mince is that - if you're talking about the stuff from the supermarket - it's not a balanced diet. Nothing wrong with the mince, of course - it's fine. But it doesn't contain any bone, and that's a very important part of a canine diet. Bones are nature's powerhouse of vitamin/mineral storage, not just dried up sticks of calcium LOL. Anyway, feeding raw mince is just fine, but you need to balance that with adequate amounts of calcium (phosphorous in meat needs a calcium balance). Preferably from raw bones, but otherwise from bone meal.

Re. the Arden Grange, I'm not too fussed on it personally. It has the same issue with too-low meat content as the Burns and JWB, but it also contains both corn (maize) and beet pulp - and those are two of the most common causes of allergy problems for dogs. Crappy nutrition too LOL. Better to choose one of the other two, they may be a bit light in meat content, but at least there's nothing actually harmful in them.

There is some good information on how to choose a good quality dry dog food at www.boxerworld.com/feeding and info. plus reviews of various foods at www.dogfoodanalysis.com Short of importing it, you're not going to find anything outstanding here in the UK, but you can certainly do better than the Arden Grange

 

[rmcbrair]

Your choice of good quality dry dog foods in the UK, sadly, is not great. This is a fantastic place for good quality and reasonably priced raw food. It's not bad for cooked dog meats either. But the dry stuff simply is not great here. And, it's also worth noting that dry dog food is roughly double the price of anywhere else in the world also!! LOL - that's insult to injury - we're paying twice as much, and can still only get junk.

gmacleod: Hope it's okay to ask here since it's a little off the subject, but I was curious. What are a couple of the dog foods that are typical there, and what do they charge for them? Is there a reason that availability is a problem in the UK? Thanks.

 

[Louise501]

I am in the UK, I feed mine James Well beloved kibble mixed with Forthglade wet meat or Natures Menu wet meat. I also cook chicken and liver and keep it in the fridge chopped up for treats and training

 

[gmacleod]

Sure, it's fine to ask The answer isn't entirely a simple one though LOL

Since the "big four" (or five LOL) of the pet food industry are the global multinationals - Mars (Pedigree, Royal Canin, and many other well known brands - including Jameswellbeloved, though that's sold only in the UK I think); Colgate-Palmolive (Hills); Proctor & Gamble (Iams, Eukanuba); and Nestle (Purina, Friskies, Alpo, etc), you find them everywhere in the world. So the junk brands you get in the US are exactly the same here. There might be a few minor variations on the names, but that's all. Nutro is also here - but only the Natural Choice line. There are precious few "independants" though. Burns is about the only one that springs to mind.

As for how much they charge, take a look for yourself :D Here's an online store with typical prices. A couple of conversions for you: 15kg is the same as the 33lb bags you get, and the cost - well, £1 is about $1.80US - so multiply everything you see by 1.8 to get the picture. http://www.pet-supermarket.co.uk/erol.html#275x0&&http:%2F%2Fwww.pet-supermarket.co.uk%2F

As for why it's so expensive, and so bad... well I think that's a mix of factors. One is just that everything costs more in the UK. Influenced by such a strong currency, I think. A second factor is that there simply hasn't been the uptake of kibble here (or really anywhere) that there has been in North America over the past 50 years. Now personally, I think that's a good thing - I think feeding natural foods is better than feeding kibble. But when you *do* want to feed kibble, you find that (a) the market demand isn't strong enough to drive down prices; and (b) because everyone isn't feeding their dogs on dry food, there isn't the same pressure for companies to produce better foods. The demand simply isn't there - people who don't like what's in kibble don't campaign for better kibble, they just feed natural food instead.

Well, probably there are other factors also. But those are a few influences that I can think of.

 

[rmcbrair]

As for how much they charge, take a look for yourself :D Here's an online store with typical prices. A couple of conversions for you: 15kg is the same as the 33lb bags you get, and the cost - well, £1 is about $1.80US - so multiply everything you see by 1.8 to get the picture. http://www.pet-supermarket.co.uk/erol.html#275x0&&http:%2F%2Fwww.pet-supermarket.co.uk%2F

Wow, that is expensive. You can get a 20-lb. bag of Iams in a grocery store here for about $17, whereas a bag just over 13 lbs. there is about $27. Ouch. Have to add I saw something on that website I've never seen before - Poop Freeze - :eek: ROFLOL!! Thanks for the info.

 

[gmacleod]

Poop freeze? What in the world?!? Now I have to go and look...