When to switch from puppy to dog formula food
The adult dry dog food I'm looking into getting are Castor and Pollux Organix, Orijen Six Fish, or Blue Buffalo Wilderness.
Thanks, Heather
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jane on
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The Castor and Pollux Organix you listed looks like it's 26% protein which would probably be fine. Blue Buffalo also has a regular adult food which is around that protein level too I believe. I know the choices seem endless! I tried a higher protein Wellness formula a while back and Henry just didn't do well on it, soft poops and absolutely AWFUL gas, lol, so I switched to Fromm's Four Star Nutritionals all life stages food for both dogs and I've been very happy with it.
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Permalink Reply by The Geek's Wife & her Corgi Ein on
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Yeah, Castor & Pollux website said a minimum of 26% protein while the Dog Food Advisor website estimates the protein content is approx. 29%.
Blue Buffalo Basics is between 22% - 24% which is closer to what we need right now. I may not even transition them to the wilderness if they seem to do just fine on this. I don't get why all the grain-free foods get the only 5 stars while other dog foods with just as good ingredients get only 3 or 4? Is it because grain isn't a "natural" part of a dog's diet?
It's exhausting trying to do the best for your fur babies. Ugh!
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Permalink Reply by Beth on
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Just so you know, from the Dog Food Advisor's own website, he's not an animal nutritionist or a vet or anything else that makes him an expert. How he determines if something is 3 or 4 or 5 stars is something I'm not sure of. I have yet to see any studies that show that potatoes are a better starch for dogs than high-quality grains. Not saying those studies don't exist, but I haven't seen them.
Hi, my name is Mike Sagman. And as the editor and creator of the Dog Food Advisor, I think it’s important for you to know a little about my background.
I’m a graduate of the Medical College of Virginia with a doctoral degree in dental surgery.
And my college training includes a major inchemistry and a minor in biology.
The dude's a dentist. :)
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Good to know, thanks for the info.
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Ok, I've decided on Blue Buffalo Basics - Turkey and Potato Recipe. It only has 24% protein, and then in a year we'll probably transition both over to the Blue Buffalo Wilderness.
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Permalink Reply by Kari & Quin on
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I don't even know if I would go to the Blue Wilderness, I have Quin on the reg Blue, and then this last time I gave her the grain free salmon from Costco just to change it up. But I think the Blue Wilderness is to high in protein for Quin, she was a bit loose when ever I gave it to her.
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Thanks for information. The only reason I was looking into all the grain-free, high protein dog foods was because they were the ones with the highest rating, and I want to give my dogs high quality food. When I finally started looking at the foods with 3 & 4 stars though, I saw that some of them had just as good ingredients just not grain free and not as high in protein. I guess all the hype about grain free is cause it's technically not a part of a dogs natural diet, but it seems to me that domestic dogs are changing as is their food requirements. Thanks for the feedback. The more I'm reading, the more I think I'm going to stick with the Blue Buffalo Basics.
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High-protein food is very new for non-performance dogs. Back when people used to feed dogs scraps, they got scrapings and leftovers and whatever the family didn't eat. Before that, the ancestral dog was most likely a scavenger, living on the outskirts of human civilization and eating what it could find, supplemented possibly with some small game it killed.
While wolves and the like are primarily carnivores, they travel tens of miles a day. They spend most of their adult life either pregnant, nursing, or raising pups. They feast and then they famine. They carry very high parasite loads. And they tend to live very short lives. They need large quantities of very high-quality food (meat and organs).
While cats are obligate carnivores and do well on a higher protein diet, dogs are actually carnivorous-leaning omnivores and CAN digest carbs quite well. Moreover, cats on high-protein diets are meant to eat mostly canned, which is something like 75% to 80% water. Those that eat mostly dry tend to run into kidney trouble. It's believed they don't drink enough water to keep the kidneys flushed.
I would personally be very wary of a high-protein kibble until we see more long-term results of what happens to these dogs over time and especially as they age. Feeding a high-protein canned (which has a lot of water) would be a bit different, but of course it's not nearly so convenient.
If you want to go with Blue, I'd stick with their regular line for a pet. Different story for a dog who is a WORKING herding dog (on stock every day), a hunting dog in very high use, a dog who does active S&R, or any other dog who is running many miles each day or swimming a lot in cold water and has higher energy needs.
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Thanks for all the information Beth.
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Permalink Reply by Geri & Sidney on
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We're in the middle of transitioning Sidney to Taste of the Wild. The first week I mixed 1 1/2 cup old food and 1/2 cup new (in a plastic container, lasts about a week) , then this week we're on 1 cup old, one cup new. Next week we'll do 1 1/2 cups new, 1/2 cup old. Then we'll be 100% on Taste of the Wild (the chicken recipe).
6 months should be fine for an all-life-stages adult food :)
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Yeah that's exactly what I attempted to do the last time we transitioned our dachshund, but he would pick out and eat only the new morsels and leave the old behind in his bowl and refuse to eat til we fed him more of the new stuff, so that didn't work out so well. I'm gonna try that again, but I have a feeling the results will be the same. I have yet to transition Ein to a new food. We bought what the breeder gave and recommended. Which was total crap Purina.
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sometimes I think they pick out the new food and refuse to eat the old in their dish because the new is fresh. If someone put old chips and new chips in the same bowl we would do the same thing:) Do you have one of those dog food keepers with a screw down lid?
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