Sounds to me like Fromm’s marketing department is doing a pretty good job.
No, but word of mouth from many, many reputable breeders, showers and animal nutrition experts has. Fromm doesn’t advertise anywhere near the level of the grocery store brands, even proportionally to company size.
Just look at Purina’s web site - it’s page after page after page of animal junk food.
Go ahead and compare product listings between Purina’s page, with only a short, selected nutrition info panel for each product, and Fromm’s, which has nutrition and technical analysis information that goes on for pages - and depending on your pet’s breed, age, size and health issues, you need to know many of those details.
Feel free to feed your pets Purina from the local Safeway. And your kids all the McD’s they can eat. I wouldn’t be smug about it, though.
Cats usually don’t chew kibble which is why it is small enough to be swallowed or the inverse it’s too small to really chew so they just swallow it. 70% of the cat puke kibble I clean up is whole. The other 30% was probably already broken. 2 of the 4 cats are pukers… one gobbles down food too fast (20+ pounder) and the other is getting pretty old (15 YO).
I’ve thought about buying “feeder” mice for the crew but only one (the 20#er) would actually eat them. #2 would catch and kill but leave it laying in bits and pieces. #3 would try to catch but he doesn’t “get” how a mouse can be hiding behind a slipper or anything that slightly blocks his vision. #4 only eats dry food and (select) people food… he doesn’t mouse and gags at the smell of canned food.
I am skeptical of “pet food stores who know their stuff” ever since I got the antivaxer of animals treatment from an anonymous store (Pet Food Express, Market Street, SF). Apparently vets only recommend food because they get paid off by companies, and your dog’s gums bleeding means that it’s working properly.
I must be seeing a different Fromm. I’m greeted by what looks like a a chef kitchen in the midst of preparing a Thanksgiving dinner. The canned cat food is called “pate” and the dry is called such things as Beef Livattini Vegetable, Game Bird Recipe, and Hasen Duckenfeffer. My Purina Cat Chow is “Cat Chow flavor”.
Yup. Purina is a company that’s trying to make some money. Imagine that…
However, their “Chow” is nutritionally complete, cheap, and pets thrive on it.
Breed isn’t a real thing. It’s a construct we made up to show how much we can genetically mutilate our animal friends.
Too late! You’re smugness is already showing.
I know what you mean, but I have some friends with reptiles and one guy with a serval who raise rats/mice as a food source for their pets.
Sample information on Purina, with Guaranteed analysis.
Sample from Fromm. I’m guessing you are referring to the technical analysis, which can be derived from the guaranteed analysis (at least in the case of Purina).
Actually, Purina has the same information as the technical analysis, only that it has it in the “Purina for professionals” site.
But guaranteed analysis aside, there IS something that bothers me about Fromm.
In the page about the Purina Bright Minds, you will see this statement:
Note that you will find a very similar statement in almost all if not all, the products from Purina (I’ve had several different ones over the years).
In the page for Fromm, there is this statement instead:
If you go to the page about reading labels, you will see what they mean, and the differences. Basically, Fromm guarantees that their food conforms to the AAFCO standards, based solely on the guaranteed analysis. Meanwhile, the Purina version goes further and points out that they even had a feed trial (following the protocols set out by AAFCO) to make sure their food did meet the standard. Which one is more thorough?
This is the part that bothers me. I don’t mind so much the brand, as long as AAFCO approved, especifically, the feeding trials. IF Fromm put their food through a standarized feeding trial, I would’ve been OK with them.
As to the Blue company… They got sued by Purina and had a consumer class action settlement.
The point is that Blue Buffalo repeatedly in their ads belittles/d Purina for serving by-products and by the way they put their ingredient list. Blue Buffalo basically said they don’t do that, they don’t use those products and that they know where their products are sourced.
Turns out Purina did an independent testing and found the same ingredients Blue Buffalo complained about, present in their products. Despite using that as a selling point against Purina.
So they got sued for “truth in advertisement and labeling”.
What is nutritionally adequate for the average, usually overweight, and relatively inactive family pet is not necessarily going to sustain a working, or active dog. In the same way that eating a healthy diet affects our skin, hair and general well-being, so to with dogs.
Ever pet someone’s dog and then wanted to wash your hands because of the greasy feel of their coat? Or the more than usually noticeable funk? I have. Usually because the dog is eating some crap diet.
That low price comes because the food is full of low quality ingredients. Corn, corn gluten meal and soy… filler and cheap protein. Paying more won’t necessarily get you a better product, but paying less definitely means the manufacturers cut expenses somewhere.
And no, not all dogs thrive on crap like Purina Chow. Breed is not just a construct. There are dogs that are “easy-keepers”, like Labs and Beagles, and prone to obesity, and then others that are hard to keep weight on. Current dog is a high metabolism Malinois. Anything but premium food and he starts to drop weight and even with doubled portions, starts to look like I starve him. Then there’s the issue of more food in, giant cow patties in the yard to clean up.
I pay for expensive pet food, not because I’m swayed by the advertising or pretty pictures of meat and vegetables on the packaging, but because I’ve done my research, read the ingredient lists and nutritional analysis, and I care about what my dogs eat. Dog Food Advisor is a great site for analysing the ingredient lists of pet foods.
Why not? They’re cheap and easy to raise. And you know yuppie foodie types would buy it to brag that they only feed their precious kitties on what nature intended them to eat.
Right on the front page are carrots, leafy greens, peas and other non-meat vegetables. Looks like Big Marketing has struck again.
Meanwhile, my cats all made it to eighteen years of age and beyond eating cheap food like Fancy Feast. Plus they avoided being poisoned by Chinese antifreeze that was in Hills Science Diet and Blue Buffalo back in 2007. Cutting costs indeed.
If there was a market for it, someone would be doing it.
How exactly would you plan to sell and serve - whole frozen? ground whole mouse? Ground and cooked and pelleted? Live? Reptile stores already sell mice (live or dead and frozen at my local store) as snake food, no reason cat owners couldn’t purchase as well.
Raw feeding cats is catching on, perhaps frozen ground mouse will catch on.
On a side note, my neighbour, who also has a dog, dropped by one afternoon and was horrified that I had given each of my dogs a whole dead feet, feathers and all chicken to eat. A bit messy, what with feathers all over the yard, and the dogs didn’t eat the whole thing, so the leftovers went back into the fridge. I think that there are many people, like my neighbour, who don’t want to think too much about what exactly their dog or cat is eating, and prefer a bowl of kibble over seeing real meat in it’s original form
I’m not your neighbor and don’t own a dog, but I’m horrified too.
Why? What do you think is in pet food? Why is it more horrifying in it’s original form, than ground up and canned or kibbled? The chicken is still dead.
I had one dog that wouldn’t eat raw meat. He was a Labx, so had a wide range of foods, including fruits and vegetables that he was happy to eat, but for some reason, he didn’t seem to recognize raw as food.
Wow, quite a bit of discussion about pet food, about the only thing I can add is from 40 years of owning an embarrassing number of cats. Pretty much strictly Purina Cat Chow, regular. All my cats have lived long healthy lives (except the one that was fucked up from birth and even she lived 8 years). I’ve known people who insist on that fancy shit that can only be bought at the Vet’s office and such and they’re constantly off to that same Vet’s office for kidney failure, cysts, cancer, excessive vomiting and bloody stools.
Maybe I’ve just been really lucky … or maybe a cat’s diet is that simple.
I feed our three dogs Merrick Dog Food (dry and canned). It’s a little expensive, but I feed each dog the amount needed to maintain them at their ideal body weight. I regularly have people compliment me on their appearance, and their health is excellent.
Wait, you used to consider Iams a good pet food? Iams? :dubious:
My cats eat Purina and they’re healthy as horses. One of them was the runt of the litter and an itty-bitty thing when she came. You should see her now.
I don’t want to come too hard on Fromm (or Merrick) because if your dogs are thriving on them, more power to you all, and long live the pups (or cats).
But it seems silly to want to demonize some other pet food company, when that pet food company has done more extensive research to make the case that their food does what it says it does (feeding trials). You know what other companies go by just the guaranteed analysis and not feed trials? The really cheap (as in cost less) types. If I were paying premium price, I’d prefer that they actually do the much costlier feeding trials. Research as backup instead of hearsay and anecdote.
The truth is pets can thrive in many diets, and some would no doubt thrive in the premium while others will live long happy life in the cheaper one. I hear what brainstall says also about owner consideration (poop piles), this is the reason why I do Purina instead of Hills. Healthwise, my dog was fine in Hills, but the amount of poop diminished greatly when I switched to Purina (and my dog is a lab mix).