Is change in pet food a good thing? - Page 2

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by joanro on 13 August 2018 - 17:08

The dog food I feed is not granulated, but is extruded, for what it means to anyone.
It only costs $1.25 per pound.. I can't even feed a weanling calf up to butcher size for a $1.25 per pound. Impossible to buy any meat that is of nutritional value and not disease ridden that has full nutritional ingredients. (speed grown chicken with almost zero nutritional quality to the meat, cannot support even an alligator without supplimental nutrition).
My dogs are raised from weanling to old age on commercial dog food and are in excellent health....zero supliments required.
All this talk about ALL commercial dog food is garbage is about as factual as saying all gsd are junkers based on one or two dogs, is bs.
My husky cross sled dogs all lived to 15 and 16 years old...fed commercial kibbled dog food.
My smooth fox terriers lived to 15, 16 and my Irish terrier lived to 17...all fed kibble ! And all were healthy their entire lives.
If people believe they can feed raw chicken ( and not cause health problems for family members handling raw chicken) then no one is stopping you....go for it!
But stop bashing those of us who have excellent results with feeding kibbled dog food for many decades with excellent results manifested through dozens and dozens of very healthy, long lived multiple breeds of dogs.

by joanro on 13 August 2018 - 17:08

Would also comment that no one in their right mind buys dog food or anything else at Pet Smart!
Nor would any one with any brains buy/ feed Blue Buffalo!
And if you care about your dog's health you won't buy any thing to feed them from walmart! China supplies raw chicken to Walmart and Sam's. Which means zero oversight and therefore playing Russian roulette with feeding the garbage out of Walmart.

susie

by susie on 13 August 2018 - 19:08

Personally I made very good experiences when feeding raw ( not the modern way of over priced "Barf" stuff, but real raw food - mostly rumen and omasum, naturally, not cleaned, some beef bones, deer from hunters, cheap frozen fish...).
Chicken only seldom and cooked ( too much antibiotics in them in case you have to buy them in the supermarket, and as a human you need to be careful because of salmonellas, pork only cooked, when cooking the food some carrots, or any green "left overs" out of the garbage box of the supermarket cooked with the meat, maybe some potatoes or rice, once in a while a raw egg yolk, or some natural yoghurt.
Almost everything a dog needs is in unwashed rumen, the rest in bones - for me the best dog food ...But that's just me.
Two of my dogs bloated, the first one when commercial dog food / kibbles became famous, and the last one when I was working the whole day and became lazy.


As far as I know EPI does not seem to be connected to bloat.

Sadly GSDS are one of the most affected breeds - it's genetic.
The good part about EPI- it's easy and cheaply treatable...
The bad part about EPI- because it's that easy to treat a lot of breeders don't weed out affected dogs...

Enzymes normally are built in the pancreas, pancreas insufficiency results in EPI, contrary to Prager I don't think you "must" feed live enzymes, in case the dog does have a healthy pancreas, but I am no vet.

So as far as I know EPI has nothing to do with kibbles / no kibbles, it's " just " a genetic desease.

Today there are pretty good kibble blends on the market ( grain free ), and I know a lot of dogs that became very old fed kibbles only, but in my opinion dogs naturally are meat eaters.


Sunsilver

by Sunsilver on 14 August 2018 - 03:08

Joan, what's wrong with buying good quality dog food at PetSmart? They stock all the major brands!

I started going to them after the local Global Pet Foods didn't have my brand in stock about every second time I went there. And that was a problem because one of my dogs can't have chicken - she gets itchy when she's fed a food that contains chicken meal or chicken fat, so it's hard to find a substitute food for her.

I used to go to a Pet Valu store where the owners were breeders of Golden retrievers. They were extremely nice, knowledgeable people, and usually had one of their pups in the store being socialized. The first time I met them I was stuck. I had NO cash on me and all the ATMs were out of service. I was in the middle of moving, we were having a bad snow storm, and the dog food was at our old place, which was about an hour away under good road conditions! A sign at the cash register said "No personal cheques", so I was counting out nickels, dimes and pennies to pay for two trial-sized, single serving bags of dog food, when Joan asked me what the problem was. When I explained, she said, "OF COURSE we'll take a cheque!" That was the beginning of a wonderful relationship with her and her family.

I used to feed my dog their house brand, Performatrin. Once I found it had been pulled from the shelves. The reason? Their quality control department found the protein content of this particular batch didn't quite meet the stated levels. There was nothing harmful in the food - it just wasn't quite up to their usual standards.

Most manufacturers just would have continued to sell it and no one would have been the wiser.

I like the convenience of kibble, but after the melamine disaster, I am VERY careful about what I buy and feed my dogs. For awhile, I was feeding Lifetime Large Breed, because their plant was right here in Ontario, and they sourced all their ingredients locally, so no crap coming in from China.

Then, when Ranger died, I decided it was easier to just feed my two girls Natural Balance Lamb and Rice, because Star couldn't have chicken, and it didn't really make sense to stock two different bags of food for two dogs!

I could save a bit of money by still feeding Lifetime..., but century homes have very limited storage space!

Prager

by Prager on 15 August 2018 - 22:08

Joan, are you truly maintaining that one "can not buy any meat that is of nutritional value"?
Also, Susi, I would compare your statement that enzymes come from pancreas enzymes to saying that money comer from a valet. The bottom line is that enzymes are catalyzers which enable reactions but do not get spend in them. But nothing goes forever and enzymes will wear out and thus they must be replenished mostly from raw food. If you do not feed raw food at all then you will not replenish the enzymes and when the enzymes wear out - the dog dies. This is shortening of the dog's life.
Also
Stomach has 4 compartments and in the upper compartments the food self-digests if it is raw because raw food has live enzymes who self-digest the food, self-digests up to 78% of the eaten food in the upper part of the stomach, if my memory serves me right. If the food does not have self-digesting enzymes because they were killed by processing, heating, irradiating drying and so on then the food needs to be digested with dog's own enzymes in the 2nd part of the stomach. For that are used enzymes which have other tasks in the body. Thus they need to be pirated from different functions which they perform all over the animal's organism and the lymphatic system must reconstitute them into proteolytic enzymes for digestion. That is why such an organism and it's organs then suffer from the diminished amount of necessary enzymes. The enzymes then must work 2 shifts and wear off even faster. So by feeding dead granulated enzyme-free commercial dog food, we are creating a perfect storm of aging.
1/ not replenishing enzymes with live raw food
and
2/ enzymes being taken away from other functions.
3/ problem is that lymphatic system which regulates most of this is overtaxed.
This then leads to a suppressed immune system, cancers, and the inability of older dogs ( or people) to digest the food as the organism was able to do during their youth.
Anyway, (proteolytic enzymes) enzymes come from a pancreas as you correctly state but much must be done in the body of the dog before that happens.


Prager

by Prager on 15 August 2018 - 22:08

BTW raw meat like chicken in Walmart doesn't come from China. That is an internet hoax .
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/china-chicken-reshipped/
I buy chicken in Business Costco and I know for a fact that chicken there comes from Louisiana.

by joanro on 16 August 2018 - 00:08

I did not say meat does not have nutritional value. The broiler " sub species" of chicken that reaches gigantic size by 9 weeks so that if they are not slaughtered at that time, and are permitted to live, they die from heart failure and legs are bent and twisted....the body size is so huge in these baby chickens that their heart and legs can't support them. Anything grown that fast can't have much nutritional value. While butchering these baby chickens the meat is like mush because there is no muscle tone, it's practically bloodless and resembles jelly fish.
People can feed what they want, screw their dogs up if they want.

Likewise, people like myself, can feed what gives the best results and continue to have excellent health in their dogs over decades.
Personally, I won't feed garbage from Walmart =China it's certainly not a hoax that chicken comes from China ( Tyson's claimed it was a hoax that their chicken comes from China...I think Tyson's lies because their cooked chicken products are disgusting).

The birds are grown, killed, here, shipped to china where its processed, then shipped back to the States all so that china would import US beef...nearly everything in wallmart comes from china...products made in USA are nonexistent there.


Western Rider

by Western Rider on 16 August 2018 - 04:08

You can buy decent chicken if you search. This is a local sale 

An image

 

 


by joanro on 16 August 2018 - 06:08

That is still the speed grown meat chicken.

by joanro on 16 August 2018 - 06:08

Sunny: Joan, what's wrong with buying good quality dog food at PetSmart? They stock all the major brands!

Prager was quoting the price of blue Buffalo at pet smart, my comment was speaking to the prices of dog food at pet smart....out rageous and about double for what a feed store charges. Pet Smart overcharges.





 


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