Quote:
Originally Posted by layla
Have you checked Eukaneuba Lamb and Rice....mine loves it, and her pooes are regular...
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That is made by the same company as Iams and it also full of fillers. When I was doing my research when changing to a "good" dog food I came to the conclusion that if you've never seen an ad for it outside of a pet store - it has a better chance of it being a quality food. Seems quality foods sell themselves and many of those companies do not advertise much or at all.
Look at the ingredients on the side of the bag, corn or any type of corn or brewers rice (seem to be the worst and most often used fillers) should not be in the top 5 ingredients... be sure to notice if corn and cornmeal are not #6&7... that's a cleaver ploy to try and hide how much corn is really in there. A really good dog food will not have either of those ingredients in the food at all. The problem with corn is that dogs can't digest it and therefore get no benefit from it.... he!! humans can't even digest the stuff (you know what I mean
) The problem with brewers rice is that it is already used, in the brewing process, so all or most of the good stuff is drained out of it all ready.
You want to look for things you would eat... actual meat - not "meat meal" and real veggies and grains like potatoes, carots and brown rice. I noticed that the lower end products from the good dog food brands, like solid gold, performatrin, etc all had fillers like corn or corn meal, but the Holistic, Ultra - upper end products from those companies were full of great ingredients.
My thoughts on this was if I'm going to spend twice as much for dog food (I was using a desent but not great food) I was going to spend that extra $5 a bag and get the best. I decided on Performatrin Ultra, which was a great choice for my dog. I thought she looked and acted healthy before but after 2 months on the new food her coat is much better, her weight is great and she has much more energy - she's an 8 yr old dog and I thought her lowering energy level was just her age - but she is back to being as playful and full of energy as when she was 3-4 yrs younger. I'm extreamly happy with that food and I'm a total advicate for feeding high quality foods to our pets - I really didn't know it would make that much difference.
My guess is if you are feeding Eukaneuba you would actually save money to feed a natural all human grade food... as Eukaneuba is very pricey and not much better than many economy feeds.