Food rotation? - Page 1

There's a great holisitic shop near my home and I love to chat food with the owner. She got me thinking about food rotation, and many good brands such as Merrick, TOTW, Avaya, Go! Natural, etc., have different formulas suitable for food rotation. I'm going to put all my dogs in TOTW duck for a few months then back to fish. Two of my dogs don't do as well on the Bison so I may skip that for them.


Does anyone rotate food? How often do you rotate and what brands/formulas do you use?

I used to work for a holistic dog food company, and we would advise people to rotate every 1-3 months.  Every protein has a different amino acid profile (chicken, eggs, beef, etc), all different nutrition.  The other purpose is to prevent food allergies from developing.  If you eat the same thing every day there is a chance you can develop an allergy to it.  Fromm is a good example b/c they make several lines of food that supposedly can be interchanged with least digestive upset.  They are one of the few dog food companies that offers a pork-based food.  TOTW is also good.  To prevent digestive upset I would also add an enzyme/probiotic powder to the food.  Personally I feed raw, so the rotation is every few days, or based on whatever meats are on sale, I want to get some venison soon.

I did have an older dog develop a food allergy, so I want to rotate her before she develops another one. I usually just blend the food over a few days with yogurt and I never get upset stomachs. I love Avaya but TOTW is more affordable with 5 dogs.

The most affordable decent-quality dog food is Kirkland brand at Costco, made by Diamond, it's $22 for 40 pounds, and they now have a grain-free formula, too, but I'm not sure on the price, it looks good though.  If I were doing kibble that is what I would buy.  Dog food at $70 a bag is crazy.

Is the Kirkland dog food made from human grade meat?

Human grade is a marketing ploy.  They cannot legally put that on a dog food label unless it was actually for humans to consume.  Lot of rules for what a company can and cannot say about their product.  For ex they can say "With real chicken" and it can have only 3% in it!  I think it's funny when they say "real", as if there was a fake chicken?  Another ploy is the "fresh meat" as first ingredient, that's not hard to do when chicken is some 70% moisture so it weighs more than all the dry ingredients.  Once it's cooked there ends up being more grains than meat.

Diamond pet food company says they use 'food grade' sources, so yes, for whatever it's worth.