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Old February 13th, 2005, 01:48 PM
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100%doglover 100%doglover is offline
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Good holistic foods?

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on the board! I'm hoping someone has helpful info on holistic dog food. How would you rate Wysong, Solid Gold, Merrick and Performatrin Ultra? Any other brand I should look into? What food brand is considered human grade? A lot of brands promote themselves as "holistic" but that can sometimes be misleading......

Thanks!
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Old February 13th, 2005, 01:57 PM
wilstef wilstef is offline
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try checking out www.dogaware.com and follow the links about dog nutrition - lots of good info there.
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Old February 13th, 2005, 02:03 PM
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mona_b mona_b is offline
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I switched my cats from Performatrin to Performatrin Ultra.And have noticed a big difference.My DMH has zero hairball problems where as before he did.

As for the dry dog food,I use Eagle Pack Holistic.And I even noticed the difference.

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Old February 13th, 2005, 02:30 PM
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goldenblaze goldenblaze is offline
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We use Nutro Natural Choice with no by-product, Blaze does well on it and seems to really like it. Started at 8wks with LBP
then went to Adult LB chicken/rice/oatmeal the dogs love.

Easy to find at Petvalue or any pet food store not dept store.
Fromm is a human grade but I'm told does not have alot of taste for dog.

Nutro is not a bad price... 47.99 for 18kg.

Wellness great food, people really like it but BLaze was not crazy on it.
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Old February 13th, 2005, 07:27 PM
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coppperbelle coppperbelle is offline
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Holistic food

I recently started feeding Solid Gold. More specifically the Wolf King blend. It has been only a few weeks but the dogs love it. It is hard to find and a little more expensive but the shedding was terrible with my younger boy and I am hoping this helps. I like the ingredients on all the Solid Gold foods.

I tried Nutro but both dogs vomited everyday with this food.

Linda
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Old February 13th, 2005, 08:11 PM
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100%doglover 100%doglover is offline
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thanks ladies

Thanks so much for all the info so far, please keep it coming!

Just to give a little more background info, my senior shepherd is on a raw food diet and will continue to eat that for the remainder of her life. However since I spend nearly $260 (!) a month on her food now (healthy paws, pet4life among others) I don't think I'll be able to afford keeping future dogs on the food, especially since we plan to add more than one big dog to our family. So I'm just trying to research the other foods out there.

I want to compromise as little as possible on quality of course so I want humane grade, hormone free food (likely dry food) and don't mind paying more so long as I'm not looking at over $100-120 per dog per month.....

Any suggestions would be appreciated!
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Old February 14th, 2005, 08:37 AM
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My dog gets Eagle Pack fish based hollistic food. He has allergies to meat. He eats about a bag a week, which is about $20 per bag...so $80 per month. But he also needs to gain a few pounds, so we might be cutting down on that eventually...

Good food though.
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Old February 14th, 2005, 09:30 AM
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Carina Carina is offline
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Someone already posted my favourite dog nutrition site...pretty much all the info on quality commercial foods are there.

Canidae is very good. Innova has a new grain free meat kibble called Evo. Honest Kitchen, Wysong, and Solid Gold all have kibbles that you can feed alone, or for optimum nutrition (according to them) add raw or cooked meat.
A friend moved recently to another state, and does not have the freezer capacity or $$ to feed raw to her 3 dogs right now. She switched to Solid Gold, adds some meat, and says her dogs are doing great except the poops are bigger and they all have dog breath again.

PS, I feed raw too. But I don't buy the prepared products, mostly just meat by the case, green tripe, like that. When I fed three large dogs (combined weight 270lbs) I could do it for under $100.00 a month total if I was careful. The commercial/raw is great, but hoo boy it is expensive!!!
You could buy a $120 Northern Tool grinder and grind all your own meat & bones, if you don't want to feed whole bones. Lots of people do that.
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Old February 14th, 2005, 09:44 AM
sammiec sammiec is offline
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We feed Wellness Lamb and Rice. It's a holistic food with fruits and vegetables - meats -with no byproducts. She loves it. It's about $65 for a 33lb bag. It last about 1 month.

The cat gets Natural Choice Complete Care. He goes crazy for it... it gets dry that lasts all day, and a quater can of wellness wet food. We have tried the indoor cat food to see if there's a difference - not much though....
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Old January 9th, 2006, 05:26 PM
Libertycalls Libertycalls is offline
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We use Dr. Harvey's

Hi,

We use Dr. Harvey's which is a great product, you just add meat of any kind - I use turkeys especially when they go on sale. I have a great dane and it costs me about $100 to feed her a month. I also use a recipe for Satin Balls to help add weight when needed as they tend to run slim.

Quote:
Originally Posted by 100%doglover
Hi everyone,

This is my first post on the board! I'm hoping someone has helpful info on holistic dog food. How would you rate Wysong, Solid Gold, Merrick and Performatrin Ultra? Any other brand I should look into? What food brand is considered human grade? A lot of brands promote themselves as "holistic" but that can sometimes be misleading......

Thanks!
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Old January 9th, 2006, 05:30 PM
SnowDancer SnowDancer is offline
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We feed our Eskimo Fromm's Four Star "Salmon A La Veg" - fish base is very good for Eskies. Comes in Chicken A La Veg, Duck and Sweet Potato and Whitefish and Potato. We also live in Toronto.
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Old January 9th, 2006, 07:05 PM
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"my senior shepherd is on a raw food diet and will continue to eat that for the remainder of her life. However since I spend nearly $260 (!) a month on her food now (healthy paws, pet4life among others)"

i almost fainted when i read that, LOL! when we were feeding our 110 lbs akita only raw, it cost us $90 per month and that included lots of canned fish, eggs, cottage cheese, yogurt, PLUS all the raw meats, RMBs and organ meats... we could never afford the pre-made stuff plus it's not optimal for dogs, nothing to chew on so no teeth cleaning and no jaw exercise.

right now he's on half-raw and half holistic kibble and it's up to about $120 per month now, kibble costs an arm and a leg around here (montreal), $75 for a 30 lbs bag of Go! Natural (that is with taxes). hopefully that will last a while

we did indulge in a small chest freezer (cheap!) and i stock up on sales, try to not pay more than $1/pound of food, lotsa times it's cheaper and sometimes more expensive, but hey - NO VET BILLS so there ya go. We don't grind up anything for him anymore, it's just too much work and he's gotta use the grinders god put in his mouth AND we don't do the pureed veggies thing, he hates it and dogs don't need veggies anyways.

dog is in prime health, no shedding, no doggy breath, pristine white teeth, muscles not fat, never any allergies, itching, hot spots, fleas - NOTHING. as soon as we get a 2nd dog, bye-bye kibble and it's 100% raw for both dogs.

hope this helped...
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