Food change.
1 - 20 of 24 Posts
Joined
·
22,041 Posts
I'm not a good one to talk to about feed. I've fed the same brand for something like 30 years. A friend holds the local concession, so I get it on favourable terms. When I go to collect it we have a cup of tea and a chat about training, Field Trials, and who's doing what. He only lives about 10 minutes from me, but it usually takes a couple of hours by the time we've put the world to right.
Joined
·
2,324 Posts
Have a look on a website called 'all about dog food', just google it and it will come up. I don't rate Royal Canin, it's apparently developed by vets, more like sponsored by a vet college, and its first, main ingredient is wheat. I prefer a food with good meat content, I partly raw feed so know what my dogs like. If I'm feeding a kibble or wet food then I want at least 45% good meat content, and Simpsons premium and their 80/20 foods fit the bill for my girls, and if I'm using a wet food I opt for Forthglade because it's more easy on the pocket than the Simpsons tinned foods.
We switched to Skinners Field and Trial Maintenance Plus after Lando just wasn't right on Royal Canin and Tails (trash).
Turns out it doesn't come out too well on that website, but Lando's belly is very happy with it, his coat is lovely and he's a hell of a lot calmer.
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
Turns out it doesn't come out too well on that website, but Lando's belly is very happy with it, his coat is lovely and he's a hell of a lot calmer.
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
Joined
·
22,041 Posts
Although I dont normally feed Skinners, I won a sack at a working test and being a cheapskate I never throw anything away, and I have to say my dogs appeared to like it. One thing about Skinners, the do put quite a bit of money back into dogs by sponsoring many gundog working events.
Joined
·
2,324 Posts
It's not a bad food for the price, baring in mind it's quite a lot cheaper than Royal Canin which has a very high wheat content. Tails is a bit of a gimmick, there's not one iota of a chance that they make dog food for individual dogs, what they will have is a system to say include x, y and z for that bag and stick the dogs name on it. Personally, I prefer a good high meat content in food, and as good a quality of meat as possible, hence opting for Simpsons Premium 80/20 or, at a push, one of their bags of lamb and potato or duck and potato, and mix it with grain free Forthglade. This is the comparison for the field and trial maintenance, and simpsons 80/20:
Looking at the price and rating, it looks like you get exactly what you pay for
That Simpsons seems like a good option indeed. I'm a believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" but diet is a funny thing that way. You can live on fish and chips until you're old but at some point it might catch up with you.
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
Joined
·
2,324 Posts
Funnily enough, Royal Canin is even more expensive than Simpsons, so sometimes it can be a real rip off with foods. But because it's endorsed by vets (along with Hills Science) a lot of people rate it, including many breeders. My lot are raw fed alongside some meals of kibble and wet food, it just depends how many boxes of raw meaty bones I manage to get hold of on a weekly basis.Looking at the price and rating, it looks like you get exactly what you pay for
That Simpsons seems like a good option indeed. I'm a believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" but diet is a funny thing that way. You can live on fish and chips until you're old but at some point it might catch up with you.
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
Ah I just remembered. One of the main reasons for switching was to reduce the amount of protein. He was on a very high protein diet as a pup (rightfully so) but as he got to 12 months he (apparently) showed signs of needing less.
I chose this food specifically because it comes in at 18% I believe. Whereas he was on something like 26%
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
I chose this food specifically because it comes in at 18% I believe. Whereas he was on something like 26%
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
Joined
·
2,324 Posts
There is such a lot of conflicting advice, and generally speaking, dogs are omnivores as in they will choose to also eat other things 'in the wild', of course we don't have much of a comparison these days, as dogs have been domesticated for so many years they are not the same as their still wild counterparts, although there are still similarities. It is true that a diet of pure protein is not good for them, but I like to see good quality meat in there at the very least, which precludes any meat meal for me. In fact I've just been prepping some chicken stock I cooked yesterday, I used some of the liquor in last night's tea, the rest will go in the freezer, but all the bits of left over meat, fat and gristle will go in the dog food bowls, along with the celery and carrot I put in there for flavour. The bones and onions will go in the bin. A lot of the problem with some of the grain free foods is that they jumped on the back of a fashionable bandwagon and claimed their foods were superior because they didn't contain a lot of wheat or maize (which has been the cause of a lot of allergies in dogs) but they replaced it with other products, most notably pea proteins that has been linked to some cases of myelopathy in dogs. Also remember that plants have protein in them as well, so it's not just a case of how much protein but different types of protein when looking through ingredients. My lot have done well over the years on the mixture of raw and dog foods I give them, at the minute I've got my old FCR who will be 11 next month, a good age for the breed, and my oldest two I lost over lockdown and just recently were both 14 1/2 and 15 1/2 respectively, and fit and healthy for most of their lives, with only Indie having cruciate problems that weren't related to diet. In the bad old days when dog food didn't exist dogs just ate what was left, which probably included the dreaded cooked bones along with a load of other stuff we'd never give our dogs these days. That said, mine get any appropriate left overs rather than put it in the bin, very little goes to waste, if i can't eat it, then there's either the chickens or dogs that can help out.
Joined
·
22,041 Posts
My first dog was the oldest of any of mine, lived almost exclusively on table scraps. He was born in 1955. Food rationing following WW2 finished in 1952, but just because food rationing had finished did not mean things were available. Dog food was almost unavailable, and that which was around was really a luxury most ordinary people could not afford, at least on a regular basis. To give you an idea of the times, we used to buy a bag of bones from the family butcher, one old penny. Mainly they were knuckle bones, and sometimes there would be quite a bit of meat on them. If there was mum used to boil them with peas, onions and carrots. Made a lovely beef stew for us and the dogs got the bones after boiling. I guess that has influenced my thoughts on feeding. No food manufacturer is going to manufacture a food which is bad for dogs, it's not good business practise to kill your customer.
Joined
·
2,324 Posts
I still remember my mum telling me when I was little (in the 70s) she'd often be short of cash and would ask the butcher for a bone for the dog. We didn't have a dog, it was actually for soup, bone broth is really nutritious and something I make for my lot occasionally.
Joined
·
22,041 Posts
We were never short of food, though many today would not think much to our diet. My uncle was a farm labourer and would walk the hedges in the evening with his gun so one day a week we would call on him and it would be rabbit stew for dinner. We kept chickens at the top of the garden for eggs, and when they got too old to lay my father would ring their neck, and being too old a tough to roast it would be chicken stew. A lot of stews in those days, it was a cheap and easy way of using up odd scraps of meat which were too small to be used in other ways. I remember the thrill as a child when sweets came off of rationing, I was 9 years old and used my pocket money to buy a small bar of cadbury chocolate! (It was a week's pocket money!)
Joined
·
2,324 Posts
I find it odd now that so many people who grew up remembering rationing are really picky about their food. My dad won't eat fish and chips if he finds one bone in it, that's it. And if you give him a really nice pork pie from a traditional butchers shop he doesn't like it, he prefers the awful cheap stuff from the super markets. I think I'm more traditional in the way I eat, I make a lot of home made food and rarely eat any takeaways, I like to know the provenance of food, particularly meat and won't eat things like cooked chicken in a prepacked sandwich, because a lot of that stuff comes from Thailand. I do use supermarkets, but generally for the stuff I can't buy at the local shops.
I grew up getting my ass whooped if I didn't eat what was put in front of me, so I eat everything with much gusto hahaha. Sprouts, asparagus, spinach, liver, spicy, you name it.
It was eat and like it or get the crap beat out of you.
Luckily my dogs have a choice haha
Although I did just realise I'm going to have to do the whole many times a day feeding regime again when the pup comes.
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
It was eat and like it or get the crap beat out of you.
Luckily my dogs have a choice haha
Although I did just realise I'm going to have to do the whole many times a day feeding regime again when the pup comes.
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
Joined
·
2,324 Posts
Eh? Now I can understand not liking the supermarket rubbish, but proper pork pies, with hot crust pastry.
That's exactly the one Lando was on when his poo was very inconsistent and soft and he sometimes was even sick. (Royal Canin)We started on Royal Canin Maxi Puppy but are currently changing to Bounce & Bella grain free.has improved in consistency a LOT and the dogs love the new food too.
has improved in consistency a LOT and the dogs love the new food too.
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
1 - 20 of 24 Posts
Join the discussion
