Nature's Recipe?

MydogJoy

I use Natures Recipe. I wouldn't say that its terrible or bad, but I don't think its great. I think that its healthy but not as healthy as it could be. Its a good food but not great. I would like to use Blue Buffalo or something else that is better but I don't have the money to provide that. What do you all say about Nature's Recipe?
My dog is doing great. The kind of Natures Recipe is for Terriers. I have a terrier mix. I've heard that because of the Vitamin K that dogs don't react to it properly. But maybe Different dogs react to it differently?

pawzaddict

If a dog food is breed specific stay away from it. The only time I think specifics are appropriate are for large/giant breeds like mastiffs, danes, etc. Blue buffalo is over priced, they raised their prices like no other recently. I feed Kirklands and Taste of the wild. Kirklands is found at Costco and TOTW I get at our pit bull store or other small pet stores. I stay away from anything Petco or Petsmart sells.

Mikey

I really like Orijen and other Arcana Champion Petfoods | Home if you can swing those.
The better the food (ie. has less fillers like corn) the less you'll feed-so it may work out to be cheaper overall.

But the bottom line-if your dog is doing well on the food, eating well and has good poopies, good energy, good coat-it's probably fine

MydogJoy

What's so bad about specific dog breed food? I would go to Costco but we don't have one around her neither do we have a Petco. The only pet stores we have around here are Petland and Petsmart. I might have tried the taste of the wild but I looked it up and the only places that they sell it, we don't have around here. I live in Mississippi, where I live we have lots of stores, but a lot of the same kind.

I'm thinking about trying Hills food - the kind that is really good for Dogs teeth when my Nature's Recipe food runs out. Not sure yet.

I've never heard of Orijen and Arcana. I'll have to look at that.

pawzaddict

You dont want to wait for a dog to run out of food...you want to slowly switch them. Brands that make "specific breed formulas" do it for marketing purposes. Hills is not a good food either, as far as high quality and I dont believe either is grain free

Criosphynx

because its a gimick

MydogJoy

So what your saying about specific dog breed food is that is doesn't make a difference when it says its for this specific breed?

I I know grain is unhealthy to dogs. It doesn't have corn it. That is one of the reasons why we got it.
We switched food cause the other food we were feeding, corn was the first ingredient and it wasn't even cooked! Its was ground corn.

I might change foods more quickly but I try not to waste money. After all I just switched slowly and haven't even fully finished. Tomorrow will be the day that she has all of the new food.

kmes

Assuming you mean Hills Adult Oral Care, this is the ingredient list.
Personally I would stay away from this food.

What about Wellness??? I belive it is sold at Petsmart. Here is the link to the Wellness website, incase you want to check out the ingredients and different varieties. http://www.wellnesspetfood.com/dog-wellness.aspx

Tess

Exactly. Science does not really have all the answers yet on what makes a perfect dog food, (or human food for that matter!) much less what makes a dog food ideal for a certain breed. They are trying to convince you that they are tailoring the food for your type of dog, when in actuality no one knows if there are specific nutritional requirements for individual breeds. So the fact its sort of a gimmick, makes me suspicious that they probably are just a lot of advertising and by inference, may in fact be using low quality ingredients.... sort of the "snake oil salesman" philosophy.

You could check out the foods on this website and get some better information than their advertising...
Dog Food Reviews - Main Index - Powered by ReviewPost

There is lots of info around here about foods, so surfing the threads under the topic might be helpful.

Tess

Here is one possible translation for this ingredient list...

Chicken By-Product Meal: feathers, beaks, guts, toenails, heads... still the best ingredient in this food as at least it is a named meat product

Whole Grain Corn: food allergen, cheap source of calories, little nutritional value, not a natural food for carnivores and poorly digested.

Brewers Rice: waste product of beer industry, cheap calories, little nutritional value

Powdered Cellulose: SAWDUST!!! (this is what they use to make this an "oral health" food. It makes the food crunchier so supposedly it scrapes the teeth...)

Soybean Mill Run: Not even the whole soybean, which in itself is not a canine food anyway

Animal Fat: any old source of rendered fat, possibly from dead, down, diseased animals, road kill, used fat from restaurant fryolators etc.

Soybean Oil: might be OK...

Chicken Liver Flavor: are you kidding? just the flavor?

Flaxseed: a popular trendy ingredient, too far down the list to add much nutrition, and also many dogs have trouble digesting it.

Potassium Chloride, Iodized Salt, Choline Chloride, Vitamin E Supplement, vitamins (L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin A Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Taurine, minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), preserved with Mixed Tocopherols and Citric Acid, Phosphoric Acid, Beta-Carotene, Rosemary Extract.

Vitamins and minerals added to keep the dog from having blatant deficiency diseases, plus some nice sounding things to placate the owners "rosemary extract" maybe a molecule or two per bowl!

In summary, the best ingredient in this list is the first one, and other than that this is little more than vitamin fortified cheetos for dogs.

As I keep saying, the pet food industry is interested in making money, not in putting together an ideal diet for your dog. Its truly shameful.

There are better kibbles out there, but you'll spend more. You can also just feed your dog human food from the supermarket for about the same price and he'll probably do better! But that is another story entirely. ;-) There are threads out there on raw and homemade diets if you were interested in an adventure.

PS... this may be interesting to you http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_f...t=1382&cat=all