Sparky's food - your opinions!!

[kandy]

IMO pooping that much says that the dog isn't absorbing the nutrients in the food well enough, so more is just traveling through the system. But I don't free feed (I have one dog that would literally eat til he burst if I did that) so maybe that's the difference there. It makes sense if he taking in food a little at a time during the day, that he's going to poop a little at a time throughout the day. With a good food that your dog does well on, you should really be seeing less poop, not more. It took me several different brands of food before I finally saw the "better food = less poop" benefit. Perhaps a regular feeding schedule rather than free feeding might control this.

The gas could be because something in the food is not agreeing with him. I know if my collie/hound mutt has certain grains, it makes him have gas. I realize the Now! is grain free, so maybe he is intolerant of one of the fruits that is in it.

Another possibility is that he is actually getting too much of the food. My 120 lb newfie girl gets a bit less than 4 cups of food a day and my 40 lb collie/hound mutt gets 1 1/3 cups per day (split into 2 feedings). I've found that the 'recommended feeding' levels on the bags are sometimes very high, after all - the better the food, the more they absorb. It's not like with the cheap food filled with fillers - on those a dog would have to eat alot just to get the bare minimum of nutrients from it. But not every food is right for every dog, so you may have to try different brands til you find one that you think he does the best on.

[BeagleMum]

I have tried many different food with my two but because Spencer has an allergy to wheat and chicken based kibble (but is fine with actual chicken or dehydrated chicken strips) I have chose to go with fish formla foods. Right now they are on half Orijen 6 Fish and Wellness Core Fish (I an going to switch to Wellness when we run out of the Orijen due to gas issues).

My two both poop twice a day and they are pretty small poops compared to what they used to go when on a poorer quality food.