Puppy food

[elmwood]

Has anyone heard of Exclusive dog food? I stumbled upon it at the store, read the ingredients, (the first 5 being lamb, lamb meal, rice flour, brewers rice and whole grain brown rice) and thought it would be a good healthy dog food for the pups. However, they also say that the food is not frozen. Would that mean that there are preservatives to keep it from spoiling? I am kind of confused about that.

 

[gmacleod]

Actually, those first five ingredients aren't especially good. Not unless you're comparing it against the real junk foods like Pedigree and Science Diet, anyway.

Lamb and lamb meal are fine. But rice flour is a grain fragment and a filler (think floor sweepings) and brewers rice is actually a spent grain that is a by-product of the alcohol industry.

Further down the ingredient list you also find beet pulp. Some dog food manufacturers claim that beet pulp is a good source of fibre. Others say it is added to dog food to slow down the decomposition of rancid fats and causes stress to the dog's liver and kidneys in the process. Whichever version you prefer, beet pulp is certainly a waste product, being the remnants of sugar beets after the extraction of sugar. It is also a common cause of allergy problems and yeast infections for dogs.

I note it also contains fish meal. That is potentially a second good meat protein source in the food. BUT: fish meal in dog food is one of those ingredients you need to be cautious with. Fish destined for meal that is fished in US waters is required to be treated with Ethoxyquin. Ethoxyquin is a chemical preservative that is banned from human food because it is carcinogenic. You should thus never feed a food containing fish meal unless the manufacturer guarantees it to be an ethoxyquin-free source (ie. farmed fish). I see no such guarantee on PMI Nutrition's website.

In short, this is an average-quality food only. There are much better alternatives out there.

Incidentally, to answer your specific query about the non-frozen meats, I think they simply mean that the ingredients come to them fresh (possibly they're attached to a rendering plant). The preservative they state they are using in the food (tocopherols) is a naturally-occuring anti-oxidant.

 

[morcas]

Please give recommendations for puppy food. At best I'm completely confused. It would be nice to have specific brands, thanks for any help.

 

[gmacleod]

There are quite a few very good quality foods around to choose from. Nowhere near as many good ones as junk foods, of course, but still there is plenty of choice.

I'd recomend taking a look at this page for information on how to choose a good quality food www.boxerworld.com/feeding No food can be better than the ingredients used to make it, and that page tells you what to look for, what to avoid, and why

Some specific brands I'd recomend are Timberwolf Organics, Canidae, Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul, Fromms Four Star, Innova, California Natural, Blue Buffalo, Merrick and Wellness. With the possible exception of Blue Buffalo, you probably won't find any of those foods in the big chain petstores like petsmart (usually they carry only low-end foods that they can shift in bulk) but you'll certainly find them in feed stores, and some smaller petstores too. Alternatively, do an internet search for the foods by name and you'll find the manufacturer websites. I'm pretty sure that all of them have store locators.

My suggestions above are all excellent quality foods, but that's not an exhaustive list. Here's a longer list of choices that the Whole Dog Journal picks out using selection criteria very similar to that in the link I gave above. All foods on their list are not equal, but all of them meet minimum decent standards and any would be a perfectly good choice: http://boxerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66384

Incidentally, Morcas - please take a moment now to introduce yourself to the community in the introductions forum. Per the site rules, that is supposed to be the first post you make on this site, before participating to the rest of the forums

 

[elmwood]

Your choice of food

What exactly do you feed your dogs? It seems as though nothing is the perfect match for any one type of dog.

 

[gmacleod]

I feed a natural raw diet And that is a perfect match for most dogs (a few individuals excepted).