I wanted to avoid this topic because it causes so much controversy, but I am giving myself a headache researching dog foods and trying to eliminate whats good and whats bad for my dog. (sorry, this may get lengthy)
My ex and I were feeding my boxer and his american bulldog Purina One lamb and rice. I know...that is not considered good dog food, but we did check through all the bags at Walmart and that was the best looking one when we considered ingredients and price for what we could afford at the time. He was not willing to spend the price on dog food and I couldnt afford to feed two dogs the premium dog food by myself...otherwise we would have been living under a bridge. Besides, Marley always did well on it. He always has a shiny coat, never lost hair...but he does have small amounts of gunky's in the corner of his eyes, but always had. I am pretty sure he has an allergy towards grass and pollen, not so much food. The only other thing was he had some stinky gas and farts a lot, but most boxers do.
Now that I moved out and am living back with my mom, I can afford to buy some better dog food. I have been researching and googling EVERYTHING, but I think I am just getting more and more confused the more I look into it. For example, I looked up chicken meal vs chicken by-product and from what I have read...chicken meal is far better than chicken by-product will ever come close to (at first I thought it was close to the same thing-my ignorance). I heard that whole (not "meal" products), like chicken, salmon, etc have about 80% water weight, so by the time they are included in the food, they have way less protein than chicken or salmon "meal" have in them. I used to look for chicken or salmon being the 1st ingredient, but now I am wondering if the dog food that has something "meal" as the first ingredient isnt so bad?? I have read too that meal is the number one ingredient I SHOULD be looking for due to it being the meat processed down.
I also read that by-product should not be in dog food because its the beaks, feet, intestines, etc of many different types of animals including livestock and believe it or not, roadkill or euthanized dogs and cats...but then read controversy about it on other sites because animals in the wild go directly for the intestines and the beaks and feet have good amounts of protein in them. Also that by-product may even have greater concentration of glucosomine and chondrontin than skeleton meat
I heard having lots of rice in a meal isnt that great for a dog because its not beneficial to their diets, but then why are a lot of food consisting as rice usually the second or third ingredient in the list?
Here is what I have researched throughout the last few days and I am trying to keep price involved. I figured I used to spend $30 with two dogs for a 34lb bag and now since I am only feeding one dog, I dont mind spending double the price on dog food because it will last me just as long feeding one dog as it did buying two bags of purina one for two dogs in the same timeframe.
So, out of all the ones I have looked at, I have the most interest/questions out of the following:
Innova-Adult dog food-sounds pretty good, but the biggest bag I could buy would be 15lbs for $32.99. So, I figure for all the rest of the dog food I have looked at (normally 30lbs or a couple lbs bigger) if I bought this brand x2 it would be one of the higher priced dog food coming in roughly at $65. The ingredients in this dog food have Turkey, Chicken, Chicken meal, Barley, brown rice, potatoes, rice and chicken fat being the 1st 8 ingredients. There are two different types of rice and one potato which is more starch than what I thought was needed since dogs dont generally need these in their diet.
Nature's Recipe Grain Free Easy to Digest-is a $44.99, 24 lb bag of food. The first few ingredients of the salmon flavor (which I would get over the chicken) contains sweet potatoes AND potato before the salmon meal. Salmon is the first ingredient, but then again I am wondering if the "meal" is better than the actual Salmon is since it has more protein in it. I also wonder why they put two potatoes before the actual salmon meal?
I have heard a lot of people like the Royal Canin, but I couldn’t find a bag that wasn’t breed specific or just plain "adult dog food". Boxer's are not large breed dogs, although some people stick them in that category. They are not large like Great Dane, St Bernard, Mastiff, etc....the males tend to only get to around 75 lbs. Therefore, I would not feed my dog a large breed formula of food. The other thing RC has besides large breed is "medium" that only goes up to 55lbs. Marley is 75lbs. Anyway, I looked at the breed specific food by RC for boxers and the first ingredient had "meal" in it (again, was the meal okay to have over the whole?) and then followed by two more ingredients of rice....Another thing about this brand of food was the price. It was one of the highest priced dog foods I looked at. Is it worth it?
I looked at both Nutro Ultra and Nutro Natural Choice brand foods and they had *FOUR* different rice's within the first *FIVE* ingredients depending on which type you were looking at. They have a pretty decent price on their food (for what I have been looking at), but with all the rice in the first ingredients...why would I pay that much?
Now, one of the ones I really liked the ingredients for was Taste of the Wild-leaning more towards the High Prairie formula. This one wasn’t a bad price either being $47.99 for a 30lb bag. I have heard a lot of people (a lot of my boxer friends too) that use TOTW and never had any complaints. This food had the most amount of "real" foods than what I had found in any other bag of food (Bison, lamb meal, chicken meal, sweet potatoes, peas, potatoes, canola oil, roasted bison, roasted venison, natural flavor, tomato pomace, ocean fish meal, tomatoes, blueberries, raspberries, yucca) not including rice although it does have two types of potato.
I will more than likely buy a small bag of the TOTW High Prairie and see how Marley does on it, but just wanted to hear your opinions on the dog food and more importantly about the by products and meals.
One other thing...I currently boil chicken breasts and mix it with carrots and peas (sprinkled with garlic powder) once a week to "top" in Marleys food with some water...would that be a wasteful thing to do once I start him on this new diet? I always cooked for him before because he was a picky eater.
ETA: The font changed because I started writing in the forum and had to change computers so I finished typing on my email and to add line breaks