How bad are brewers rice/rice hulls?

brewer's rice in there to bulk up the food and keep the cost of the food down-- which means you'll need to feed fairly large volumes and clean up fairly large volumes of poop,

That is not true....please don't say things like that unless you have some validation behind your claim.  Adding bulk helps keep a dog from getting diarrhea.  Having a "full volume" of waste in the intestines stimulates slower, peristaltic contractions, thus causing fecal matter to move out slower, resulting in SMALLER amounts of poo

jojo-
Yup I have tried cal nat--Jetta detests it[]. I haven't tried Nutro lamb and rice, but I have tried some of the other flavors and she doesn't like the kibble and throws them up.

I guess as long as the brewers rice and rice hulls aren't harmful then I am okay feeding this food. According to the package, she does need to eat more of it, but she has a small appetite and really will only eat 1 cup of it per day, when she's supposed to eat at least 11/2 cups.

All right, why (and I'm truly curious here) do some of these feeds consistently result in huge stools, usually distinctively doggy stinky, while the various premium feeds I've used consistently result in very low volume, low odor, stools?  I'm constantly stricken with the difference as I have dogs here for training, and the difference is startling to me.  I always try to find out what people feed as I'm always seeking to add to my experience (no, I never preach and only give advice if solicited).

Because of what I do I'm working with the same range of dog weight, energy level, and usually breed.  The difference truly seems to be the use of foods that use a lot of grain, fractions, and fibrous by products in their formulas.  I often have the opportunity to switch these dogs to my feeding regimin and I consistently see a very quick change in stool consistency to what I'm used to.  And as I've mentioned I do a lot of switching so I've used probably a dozen premium foods over my training and rescuing experience.

I could be wrong - it's a wide experience but it's only anecdotal after all.[]

Thanks!

ORIGINAL: mudpuppy

which means you'll need to feed fairly large volumes and clean up fairly large volumes of poop

Just have to say that I haven't noticed any difference in the volume of poop with this food, and the kcals are a little less than what I was feeding, but the feeding amounts aren't different enough to really matter.

ORIGINAL: papillon806


That is not true....please don't say things like that unless you have some validation behind your claim.  Adding bulk helps keep a dog from getting diarrhea.  Having a "full volume" of waste in the intestines stimulates slower, peristaltic contractions, thus causing fecal matter to move out slower, resulting in SMALLER amounts of poo

I have to agree with this too.  I have actually had clients who's dogs need what some call "fillers" in their food.  I think that is why many dogs have great success of Pro Plan.   The corn keeps them "consistant."

Not that I'm saying Pro Plan is great or anything, but  some dogs need it.

We have never had a dog with anal gland problems.  Heck, I had not even heard of anal glands problems until a few years ago.  From what i have read on different posts on this subject (and I don't know if they are right or not, just read it many times) that usually the smell of dog poop is "anal gland juice".  If a dog does not do hard enough poop, he often  ends up with anal gland problems.   unless mine happened to steal something they shouldn't (Honey is a counter surfer) thier poop looks like little logs....soft enough not to feel uncomfortable, hard enough to totally hold together solid.
 
 
As a rule, you can't even smell my dogs poop.  Every once in a while one will do a smelly one and since it is only from time to time, i assume they emptied their anal glands with  particular poop.  I would say it is very important they get what it takes for nice, solid poop...be it meat, veggies or grains.
 
By the way, I learned long ago that what will consipate one person will give another the bathroom trots.  All depend on the person.
 

I got this link from another canine nutrition site and thought it was interesting.  I personally don't have an issue with brewers rice.  It is just fragments and since it ground and processed into kibble no big deal.  Just wouldn't want to eat it as we prepare rice for human consumption.  It would be mush!   
 
[linkhttp://www.producersrice.com/rice/types.html]http://www.producersrice.com/rice/types.html[/link]

ORIGINAL: sandra_slayton

As a rule, you can't even smell my dogs poop.  Every once in a while one will do a smelly one and since it is only from time to time, i assume they emptied their anal glands with  particular poop.  I would say it is very important they get what it takes for nice, solid poop...be it meat, veggies or grains.

By the way, I learned long ago that what will consipate one person will give another the bathroom trots.  All depend on the person.

I just feed my dog bones.  She also steals canned cat food.. And gutter food.  But bones are what she lives on.  And the Vet just loves her health..   I think bones are to dogs what fibre is to  humans.  And all her poohs are equally disgusting.

I don't really wanna keep feeding this food, but dangit its the only food thats working!!

 
I think you answered your own question here.  It's perfectly fine to feed this food if it is working for Jetta and she likes it.  Having bichons myself, they seem to do better on foods with some grain and rice in them (in my experience anyway).
 
If she's eating it well and pooping ok and not itchy then stick with it for a while. 
 
Brewer's rice is broken rice pieces- they wouldn't look all pretty for sale for us humans, nothing wrong with feeding it to dogs. And white rice is very digestible and is what a vet will tell you to feed when your dog is having digestive issues.
 
Wags,
T

you guys are thinking about HUMAN intestines. Dog intestines work totally differently. Dogs don't need fiber in their diets at all. A human who ate no fiber would be rather unhappy, but not a dog. Scientific studies have been done- dogs fed increasing amounts of fiber in a meal, and the time it took for the meal to come out as poop. Fiber had no effect on the time the food stayed in the intestine.
 
If you look at poop from dogs fed little grain and from dogs fed on the grain-heavy diets there is a shocking difference. Meat fed poop is very hard, sort of crumbly, very little of it, almost odorless. There is very little of it because the dog digested almost all of the food consumed. People get to thinking the large semi-firm deposits left by grain-fed dogs are normal. They aren't. Dog food companies do a lot of research on poop. What to add to the food so the poop comes out with a human-poop-like semi firm consistency (I suspect that without these ingredients, beet pulp being one of the more popular, that many dogs would have constant diarrhea on many of these foods).  Most of the content of these cheaper dog foods simply goes straight through the dog.

ORIGINAL: mudpuppy

Dogs don't need fiber in their diets at all.

I don't know if they *need* it, but they do seem to benefit from it.http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=fiber

Herbivores (especially ruminants) with their elaborate digestive system are able to draw a high amount of energy from short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) produced by bacterial fermentation of fiber. Dogs with their short and simple digestive tract do not have this ability, but still benefit in a different way - the enterocytes and colonocytes lining the gastrointestinal walls are active cells with a very high turnover rate that utilize short chain fatty acids as a significant energy source.

I have another link for mudpuppy to read on fiber/beet pulp.  I think it  is a very important thing in our dogs diet.
[linkhttp://www.greatdanelady.com/articles/beet_pulp_myth.htm]http://www.greatdanelady.com/articles/beet_pulp_myth.htm[/link]

ORIGINAL: dyan

I have another link for mudpuppy to read on fiber/beet pulp.  I think it  is a very important thing in our dogs diet.
[linkhttp://www.greatdanelady.com/articles/beet_pulp_myth.htm]http://www.greatdanelady.com/articles/beet_pulp_myth.htm[/link]

 
Yup, I used to think beet pulp was a bad thing, but now it's actually something I look for in a food! I'll be switching Gingerbread over to Eagle Pack holistic by next week....

Not so sure, but I do notice it - beet pulp - does seem to help some of my much older dogs as they age and their digestion changes a bit. I am just not so sure I buy the "sugar removed" .... there maybe is just an itty bitty bit of sugar left in that pulp?

ORIGINAL: sarah_b

Not so sure, but I do notice it - beet pulp - does seem to help some of my much older dogs as they age and their digestion changes a bit. I am just not so sure I buy the "sugar removed" .... there maybe is just an itty bitty bit of sugar left in that pulp?

 
I agree. On the Eagle Pack website it says there's a very small amount of sugar in the beet pulp.