I know a lot about nutrition, and never felt “fresh” or pricy premium pet food was worth the money. Not because pet nutrition is not important to me. More because I cook fairly healthy food and give a portion of it to my canine. I supplement this with a good quality store brand which uses meat (as the first ingredient) along with egg, fish meal and quality vegetables. It is high in protein and has some omega-3s. It seems to me even basic dog foods have become more nutritious in recent years. I wish I had my dog’s energy level or healthy teeth.
But feeding a pet can be pricy. Wondered how other people do it, and why.
On the advice of our vet, I feed him Blue Buffalo chicken and rice formula. It’s about thirty bucks for a fifteen pound bag, but he eats less than a cup of it a day (he’s only fifteen pounds). As he recently turned ten years old, I’m thinking about switching over to the “senior” version. For treats, he gets frozen chopped green beans, which he loves.
Sunshine brand dog food for the Beagle Pack.
Betsy the house pet Beagle will/would eat anything. I have her on low calorie Ol’Roy. She gets a tiny bit of canned food while ‘force feed’ the Yorkie Grace. She won’t eat unless I make her. Usually it’s lil’ Caesers (god, how do you spell that word?)
Everyone seems happy with this diet.
For the first few years, I made chicken and rice for him. I still do from time to time, but typically it’s a mix of dry food and a couple cans of those gravy foods. We don’t have a particular brand we stick to. I think he’s on the Kibbles and Bits canned food, but he also likes the Alpo and Pedigree. He also gets plenty of table scraps and finishes up leftovers.
My dog is a picky eater. After a week(sometimes more sometimes less) she would go without finishing, and sometimes not eat at all. We tried adding gravy/juice/bacon fat/whatever and the change would entice her for a few days* sometimes*. Every other dog I have owned would always eat anything put in it’s dish and still want more.
She started out eating cheap ol’ Purina because that’s what she was getting at the shelter and I didn’t want to change her food right away. She’s also the smallest dog(35 lbs) I have ever had, so I thought ‘why not give the good premium stuff?’. I started out with small(5 lb?) sacks of various flavors of various foods, including Taste of the Wild, and she seemed to be less picky about “4health” a Tractor Supply house brand, conveniently a little cheaper than the more heavily marketed brands. How could she resist duck, turkey, salmon, beef, or whitefish with potato? She could, and did.
That went on for about a year or so, and I noticed that when we visited my in-laws she would always try to steal their dog’s food. I thought it was just because it was ‘different’ to her, and she would tire of it just as quickly. But I did try a small sack of it and she went through it without getting picky. She stuck with it (with only a few fits of pickiness), and I have been buying 31 lb sacks of Beneful for over three years now.
Yes, Beneful - a variety of cheap ol’ Purina:smack:
We had a dog with chronically inflamed ear canals. Figuring corn was high on the list of suspects we checked around for corn-free feeds and found that CostCo’s Kirkland brand was the most reasonably priced. It had wheat middlings but no corn. Her ears cleared up on it.
Purina lamb and rice. The smaller (female) pug gets 1/3 cup in the morning, and again in the evening. The larger (male) pug gets a scant cup each time. Both are remarkably trim for pugs - in fact, the vet remarked about it on our last visit.
They’ll also get a few Alpo Snaps treats - never more than 3 a day.
My vet said she could do tests to try and narrow down the allergy culprits. She said the grain free food generally cleared up a lot of the dog allergies, and that I could try it (my dog could try it, you know?) and see what the results were. It was sad to see a young pup suffer from the eye booger, ear infection mess. She would scratch her ears until they bled. Today, as she is in the neighborhood of 15 years old, all she gets is the occasional eye booger that a kleenex takes care of. Well that, and last year she lost her hearing- totally 100% deaf. Thankfully she’s smart as a metaphorical thing that’s smart, and responds well to hand signals.
Grown dogs get a cup each of Kirkland Nature’s Bounty salmon and sweet potato dry food per meal, puppy gets 1.75 cups Kirkland chicken and rice puppy food. They get fed twice a day and I add 1/6 can of wet food (about 2 oz each per meal) and a tablespoon of meat mess–usually a kg or so of ground beef and coarse ground pork fried up then four eggs cooked in a hollow in the middle. I chop up the eggs into the rest of it and put it into a container in the fridge. They also get a capsule of fish oil per meal and I mix it all up with a bit of hot water to encourage them to eat it all at once and not piddle around with it. Old dog eats slowly and if he doesn’t finish then the pupply will scarf the rest of his food, which is why the puppy eats behind a baby gate until everyone’s done. They’re all at perfect weight and are healthy as all get out with very shiny coats–old dog has a little bit of dandruff but occasional baths helps to fix that up. The vet is very complimentary about their condition.
I have a ten year old and a six year old miniature poodle.
About once a month I cook up several pounds of chicken thighs, a couple pounds of chicken gizzards, along with two pounds of sliced carrots and a pound of rice. I freeze it in Chinese food containers and dole it out along with whatever leftovers are appropriate for dogs.
Tonight they got the leftovers (and bones) from two pork chops, and no chicken and rice. Tomorrow they get chicken and rice.
Canidae all-ages (mixed meats kibble) plus top dressings of whatever protein or vegetable I happen to have on hand – cottage cheese, canned or frozen pet meat, eggs, sweet potatoes, kale … I subscribe to the dogfood recall website which emails you whenever something comes up. Canidae never has once.
My oldest Aussie is 17 and in fine health considering she’s literally off the age chart.
I hope anyone feeding grain free is following the news of the recent spate of deaths caused by it.
Always remember, dogs are not wolves, they evolved to thrive on a diet of human waste, offal, and garbage. They’re a lot more adaptable than you might imagine.
I need to check out the Kirkland foods. Currently mine all get Eukanuba foods. The FDA issued warnings about several major brands of dog foods that were causing serious heart problems with dogs.
Raw meat (usually chicken, sometimes lamb, turkey or pork sometimes with offal mixed in), bones, veggies and a bit of cottage cheese or yogurt (to disguise the Cosequin powder).
