Taste of the Wild

 I like it a lot so far! My guys are on the roasted bison and venison, which is the High Prairie Formula

Update: Both guys are doing great on this food. This is the longest that Hektor has ever been on any food without having some kind of loose stools, smelly gas or itches.

 Their coats are shiny and Hektor's coat has changed significantly. His has been course to the touch and is now feeling much softer and shiny. He is not itching. He is not licking his bottom and both dogs love the food.

 Poops are smaller and easy to pick up, it is almost as if they are gettting and keeping more from the food than they are expelling. I have always fed good food to them and yet with many of the other good foods I tried the stools were larger and softer.

 Anyway I am sold on this food and will continue feeding it. I am excited to hear that the local place I buy it out is starting to carry it in the 40lb bags!

 Does anyone know if their meat is free-range? I just emailed them to ask but companies seem to never email me back when I ask that question. I'm mad because it is outrageously cheap right now at petfooddirect.com and I just deleted a 22% coupon from them because I just bought dog food. At that price, and with a coupon, I'd buy it now anyway.

arghhh LOL I had an empty bag in the garage and threw it out yesterday. To tell you the truth I do not know, I do not recall reading yeh nor nay when I read the bag. If I had not thrown it out I would have a look for you.

k_dawg

 Does anyone know if their meat is free-range? I just emailed them to ask but companies seem to never email me back when I ask that question. I'm mad because it is outrageously cheap right now at petfooddirect.com and I just deleted a 22% coupon from them because I just bought dog food. At that price, and with a coupon, I'd buy it now anyway.

Well I do know that Diamond uses free-range lamb meat in their premium edge brand, and since this is an even better food I would think the meat quality would be at least the same. I'll give em a call and let you know what I find out. I wonder how easily they could just lie about info like that though. They could tell me anything just to get me to buy it, how would I ever know?

 Grass fed lamb, sourced from New Zealand, is actually cheaper than domestic sourced Colorado feed lot grown lamb and it's much more popular.  You'd think the feed lot folks would get a clue, but there it is.  So, most lamb in dog food is grass fed anyway. 

Grass fed is the term for the ruminants, by the way, not free range, which is a poultry term.  It's more specfic, too, because free range can mean they get x amount of fresh air and sunlight (usually through access to pens located off their hot houses.

Grass fed means the animals were raised getting no less than 80% of their nutrition from forage.  They can't do that standing in a lot or hot house no matter how you try to wiggle out of it!

Pasture raised is significant for swine and poultry, which are usually 100% hothouse raised.  Most pasture raised swine and poultry is still fed concentrated diets, but they have more access to a natural feeding environment - pigs can root around, forage a bit, while poultry can eat bugs.

So anyway, what I was saying is that most of the time you can assume the lamb is humanely raised.  Cattle of course are almost for sure not.  Venison, elk, and bison are not commonly raised in feed lots at all - they are all pasture raised.  Chicken is almost for sure not free range, nor duck, nor rabbit - unless they say it is.  If they say it is, it has to be, because there are federal regs you have to go by to make the claims, "Organic" or "grass fed" or "free range."

My preference would be for "grass fed" ruminants and "pasture raised" swine, rabbit, and poultry.  But sometimes you can't get that in a food - or you'd have to pay way more than you would want.  The best way is to buy the foods that work best for your dog and support your local sustainable farming operation by purchasing your own produce through farmer's markets and Eat Wild.

ETA:  If they say their beef or lamb is "free range", then that's an outright cheat.  "Free range" has to do with the amount of time outside allowed to an animal that is raised in a hot house.  Cattle are raised in lots with 100% access to fresh air and sunlight, and so according to government regs, could be called "free range."  The important thing to a ruminant is how much grass the animal is getting. 

k_dawg

I wonder how easily they could just lie about info like that though. They could tell me anything just to get me to buy it, how would I ever know?

 That's because Pedigree's only protein source is corn. Just kidding lol..... so I guess I should specify how much grass the animals are actually getting. I can't remember what I ask, but I've gotten some specific answers such as the beef is only feedlotted the last few months, New Frontier Bison told me their bison are never feedlotted, they are entirely on pasture. I can't remember any others. I'm still waiting on Taste of the wild's response. Solid Gold got back to me but I forgot what the email said, I have it saved somewhere. My biggest thing is with chicken, I have heard that the term free-range for poultry isn't even regulated. It could just mean they aren't in cages or anything really. So I don't want to feed anything with chicken in it no matter what they say unless they specifically say their chicken gets to hang out outside and eat grass and bugs, etc. I emailed natura about innova evo red meat and they never got back to me either. I have a pretty cheap source of farmed meat but I don't have a good freezer yet and right now I'm going through really hard times, so I'm probably just going to go kibble only for the rest of the winter. I had a little idea, I'm hoping that once I get my own place and everything and am really settled down, I'd like to start raising rabbits. It seems like it would be relatively easy- they can't fly, can't jump a decent sized fence, would be easy to slaughter compared to saw a cow or something, and I could just feed them whole- so no processing would be involved. Except maybe skinning. So it makes me wonder why rabbit wouldn't be free-range. I almost bought nature's instinct but I was worried about the duck, rabbit, and whatever other meats because like you said, they probably aren't free range (grass-fed, or whatever). I hate how I can't read the whole thread when I'm responding by the way. I feel like there was more I was going to respond to but I can only read the post before mine.

 Ha, ha, yes, wild fish does tend to be truly free-range!

On the feedlotting cattle - unfortunately, you've been fed a line on that one, too. 

the beef is only feedlotted the last few months,

Actually, calves stay on the mothers for around nine to twelve months.  "Cow/calf" operations are almost always range or pasture operations. 

After weaning they are transported to auction sites where they are seperated and regrouped by condition and weights.  From there, the heaviest and most thriving calves go straight to the feed lots.  Ideally, they will get them to slaughter weight in about six weeks to two months.  The fact is that an animal just can't live in those conditions very long, so the push is to get them up to weight as fast as possible - it's a race against mother nature, with antibiotics and hormones stacking the deck on our side, but their own systems, which are built to maintain life on grass, not corn, working against the feedlot operators.

A friend of mine operates a "preconditioning" unit, where she gets the "in betweeners" - calves that are not healthy enough to go to the lots, or aren't close enough to slaughter weight.  She has a hybrid system where the calves lounge and enjoy green pastures, and get used to being without Mom - but they are mainly grown on concentrated feed.

Rabbit is rather fragile and is usually slaughtered quite young, like poultry.  Also like poultry, to maximize growth you have to minimize movement. 

"Free range" poultry and rabbit operations are usually simply hothouses where the animals get access to a lot adjoining the building.  This is actually a huge step, if you've ever seen and worked with hothouse animals.  Hothouse poultry literally die if exposed to the outside for any time, normally - either they break bones that are too heavy to hold up their huge bodies (think what would happen if you did the opposite of what they tell you to grow a large breed puppy - grew it as fast as possible) - or they die of pneumonia from lungs unaccustomed to the normal changes in air temps.

Pastured raised is way better if you can confirm it.  Pasture raised poultry and rabbits are raised in "tractors" - large movable shelters that offer shade, predator protection, and their food and water.  When the area is picked over and well fertilized, the tractor is moved to a clean location.  Some people also use electric poultry netting and livestock guardian dogs to pasture raise small animals, but that's only for low-flying animals, and you still need a small tractor for shelter and nesting.

Grass fed ruminant meats are higher in nutrients, particularly Omega-3s and antioxidants.  It's also nice to support a way of life that must represent the future if we are to go on with agriculture on this continent.  I think we really don't want to get any more of our food from China, down the road, right?
 

That is definitely a lot of food for thought... I was going to go with the fish for that reason of being wild-caught (if it even is) but the last time I had a fish based formula (solid gold wolf king) Sydney barely ate it. I don't know if it was the fish or whatever but it had an incredibly smelly fish smell to it. This is what Taste of the Wild said back to me:

I can tell you that our meat is hormone free, and the greens are
pesticide free.
 
Regarding exact housing of the animals:  I don't know.  
 
We get our venison and lamb from New Zealand and Australia.  We get our
bison, beef and chickens from producers in the US (they are farm
raised).
 
Let me know if you have additional questions.

I asked for the contact info for their suppliers so I could get more detailed info. It kills me though because there 

are so many variables no matter what route you choose. I've heard of chicken tractors where the chickens legs get caught underneath and 

smashed, etc. I just wish I had my own place and my own freezer, I'd just go all raw because I'm so frustrated at this point. 

Eek my copy and paste messed that post up. she responded while I was still online:

The exact source is proprietary (even I don’t know!).

Your guesses are as good as mine, but we do not market our food as “cruelty free”. 

We are from the Midwest, where the majority of farms are family owned, and usually done by people who care a lot about the animals.  Since the meats are hormone free sources, I think there is probably more care involved than with what you are calling “factory farms.”

Take care.

iggypop

Now I've got a letter sent via snail mail from Pedigree that specifically states that they do not use any 4-D protein sources in any of their products. That is a letter worth it's weight in gold!

Did they mention 3-D?  There is a difference and just because they claim to not use 4-D doesn't mean they don't use 3-D.  I wouldn't be surprised if they did.