Problems with Nutro, illustrated

Pomeranian <3

Nutro is HORRIBLE stay awaaaaaaaaaaay. Read your ingredients & do your research!!!

When I meat people my #1 recommendation is Natural Balance

Natural Balance may be a wonderful concept, and have good intentions but they don't own their own manufacturing plant and because of this have had serious quality control issues in the past years. Some just strange looking kibble changes to recalls due to having Diamond make their foods. Not to mention changes done to their formulas not stated on their web site.

Some of their allergy diets are quite good but I would not use them for what I mentioned. You just never know from bag to bag what you will get.

I only hope this is not another iceberg tip in the recall saga. Too many dogs and cats have died this past year due to corporate greed.

wasnt some of the natural balance canned foods involved in the recalls last year?

we have fed nutro in the past without issues.  

I don't know what to think about the Nutro complaints. Sometimes dogs just get sick and die and distraught people wind up looking for someone/something to blame, not to mention foot the bill.

You know, years ago, I walked into a horse/tackle shop looking for something to drink on a HOT Las Vegas desert afternoon, while I was guzzling down a bottle of water, I decided to walk around the shop a bit and take comfort in the air conditioning of the building.

Towards the back of the shop, I began to stumble upon a dog food brand I had never seen before, this was back in the day of my *beginnings* to learn of better foods then the Nature's Recipe I was feeding at the time. The bags of food was Nutro's Natural Choice, I have no idea if this was when they were first starting out, or perhaps just a food I had never seen/heard of prior to that...I'm guessing this was somewhere along the 1997-1998 timeframe, or thereabouts.

I looked at the ingredients and they actually looked a lot better then the Nature's Recipe we had been feeding for quite some time, so I bought a bag....three days later, I was sold on the stuff. My dogs that I had at the time, had immediately taken to it, and digested it exceptionally well, within a few weeks my Malamute's hair was super soft. This was the food that I stuck with for a few years after that, until I had enough guts to try Innova Senior on that same Malamute, see I was worried of switching dog foods....cause so many people had it engraved in our minds, including our vet, that switching of dog foods was an absolute no no if the dog was doing good.

After doing more and more research, I decided Innova/Natura pet products were the way that I wanted to lean, I trusted their company right off the bat, with having so much detailed information ready and willingness to be open to the public. So I switched to Innova Senior, in which her energy/coat was no better, no worse, but I kept her on that food indefinitely.

While I have nothing against Nutro's Natural Choice, I don't readily believe I would ever feed their foods again, nor would I ever feed Nature's Recipe again....though, for the time frame that we fed it, early to mid-90's, it was the best food available.

Science Diet....I remember when that food first came out, everyone kept telling us to get our dogs off from Nature's Recipe because Science Diet was the gawd almighty of dog foods...I'm glad we never fell into that belief.

Natural Balance, I've never fed it. But something about it has just never sat right with me.

This is becoming a very scary world for pet owners, no one can honestly trust ANY pet food manufactorer anymore.....it's getting to the point now, that I don't dare want to try anything other then Naturapet products....not to say that they're the only honest, reputable company, but they ARE the only company I trust!

Wow, this also was partly about me in the early to mid 1990's...lol, except I never used Nature's Recipe. I had a black lab (who had since died of kidney failure in July 2003, at barely 10 1/2 years old).  I also stumbled at Nutro Natural and used it for years because it was the best thing (at least to me) out there and it gave my black lab such shiny black-blue coat.  I also thought, given the rage, Science Diet was THE BEST.  I didn't like Nature's Recipe because I remember it being quite smelly.

Now that I am older and, hopefully wiser (and continue to try to learn more and better nutrition for my 15 month old yellow lab), I can also safely say that I would not feed Nutro again (and would not even think trying Science Diet, Nature's Recipe, and the likes).  By the way, do many people here know that Nature's Recipe is made by Del Monte (the maker of Kibbles 'n' bits)?  I didn't know until a month or so ago. No offense, but, gosh, another multi-billion dollar conglomerate that, I am sure, gets many raw ingredients for their pet foods, from the by products of various other companies they own.

There have been plenty of companies involved in recalls. Natural Balance had their dog and cat dry venison formulas recalled, along with their lamb, beef, and venison canned dog food. I'm not sure what exactly Nutro hadd recalled... none of the dry that I'm aware of (I work in a pet supply store and we didn't pull any dry off the shelves).

 That said, we sell a LOT of nutro at the store. To my knowledge, no one has come back with any health complaints directly associated with nutro. I'm not saying that it's not happening, I'm just saying that it's not happening everywhere if it's happening. People say a lot of things on the internet  because they can. I tend to believe that if there were still widespread dog deaths from contaminated food, the media would be all over it in a heart beat.

 I personally don't touch a lot of dog foods. I get bad vibes from Timber Wolf and Maddi didn't do so hot on it anyway. I never appreciated that they called themselves "Organics" when I don't believe they had one organic ingredient in any of their formulas (I'm glad they are dropping the term though). I don't trust Wellness or any Diamond made product either. This is just a gut feeling, nothing based in fact or experience (besides the TW). I feel wishy washy on Solid Gold.

I don't feed Nutro because I feel that they are a mid-grade product with a big price tag. I had Maddi on it briefly when she was a pup (before I found this board). I don't feed Natural Balance for a similiar reason. Not one of their allergy formulas has meat as the first ingredient but I'd still be paying $45+ for a 30lb bag. Since I don't have an allergy dog, I have other options. I still recommend their products, however, to the average joe with an allergy dog because I don't like the alternatives (Wellness Simple Solutions, Nature's Recipe, Natural Life, or Nutro's new line). Nature's Variety is another option, but they have so many grains in their alternative protein sources that I hesitate to recommend them to the allergy dog that has an unknown food allergy.

 On the other hand, I love Natura Products, I feel Nature's Variety is reputable (I used to feed their raw and only stopped because Maddi's on a raw food boycott), I like Orijen a lot, but Maddi had some kind of reaction to their basic adult formula and the fish is out of my price range.

Anyway, I just realized that I went off on a rant. My point was that it all comes down to trusting a company. I don't trust many companies out there but I won't bash them. It's not my place. I don't bash them here and I don't bash them where  I work.

 Some people will always feed Nutro. Either they feel it's the greatest product out there, or they can't feed anything other than Max. If they're open to it, I try to get them off Max and onto Healthwise at the store. Many are not. I still feel that Max is better than 99.9% of the food they will find in the grocery store. It doesn't have by-products nor artificial preservatives. If people are willing to feed it instead of Pedigree, I'll take what I can get.

I personally don't care for Nutro.  I think their products are overpriced for what they are, but that's only my opinion.  And, when I won a years supply of Nutro from the feed store, it all went to the shelter.  This simply is not a product that I'm going to feed.  One of my fosters was eating Nutro, and doing quite well on it.  However, during the recall, in the very beginning of it, she started having some leaking problems and had it not been for a really alert momma, she *might* have died.  She was in early kidney failure from the contaminants.

But, I also won't use EPH or TWO because of the results we got from those, but many, many people swear by those foods.  Many swear by Nutro.  On slow days with the rescue group I tend to do a lot of bag reading.  Some of the formula's look pretty decent, especially their "top of the line".  Doesn't mean I'm going to feed it, but it does mean that the ingredients don't deserve the earlier rants.

I would expect that kind of rant for Pedigree or Beneful, but I personally consider Nutro to be a decent, middle of the road food.  Perhaps not worth the price tag, but by golly, if the only choices were pedigree, beneful or nutro, I'd be buying the nutro.

I think we all need to take a deep breath and look at the bias displayed by one poster towards and against certain foods and take that with a grain of salt.

I rotate three foods right now.....Blue, Innova and Canidae.  Canidae isn't, in my mind, in the same category as the first two, but, my dogs do well on it and they like it.  So be it.  I can't complain about the price difference either.  It's kind of nice to have an extra $10-15 in my pocket each week for a couple months.

I guess that I too share the concern that this is the tip of another ugly iceberg.  I pray that it's not.

pumaward

 I personally don't touch a lot of dog foods. I get bad vibes from Timber Wolf and Maddi didn't do so hot on it anyway. I never appreciated that they called themselves "Organics" when I don't believe they had one organic ingredient in any of their formulas (I'm glad they are dropping the term though). I don't trust Wellness or any Diamond made product either. This is just a gut feeling, nothing based in fact or experience (besides the TW). I feel wishy washy on Solid Gold.

Solid Gold, last time I checked, is made for Solid Gold by Diamond at Diamond's California plant.  I don't know where Diamond makes Natural Balance food.  I also don't trust Diamond (including chicken Soup, Professional, Premium Edge, Taste of The Wild, Nutra Nuggets...etc.).  I finally figured out how I can identify Diamond made products (I am sure other folks here have known them long before I do)....(1) All of their bags have the same customer service phone number and company location in Meta, MO.  (2) All of their websites tend to have a section called Vet Notes, (3) when you email them, the reponse will be from diamondpetfood.com or something like that. 

until recently Nutro was by far the best food sold in the petsmarts around here (they've now started selling Blue Buffalo and Avoderm). I always felt comfortable suggesting people look at the Nutro aisle instead of browsing the Purina and Science Death aisles. Interestingly they've put the Blue Buffalo, Royal Canin, and Avoderm in the aisle with Nutro, and kept the other foods grouped together in the back corner.

until they find something in the bags of nutro mentioned on the consumer complaints board I think we need to keep an open mind as to the cause of the dogs deaths.

glenmar

I think their products are overpriced for what they are

This I disagree on, 40lbs for $28 is hardly overpriced. Many "even worse" foods like Iams/Euk cost much more than that. Or are we saying this food is as bad as those now?

I fed Kord Nutro from day one, it was what his breeder was using. Due to some skin allergies I had to take him off it. At this time of the "great dog food recall" he was on this, but the dry was not part of the recall, just the canned.

I have tried, Natural Balance, Canidea and Nutro, he still itched, but did the best on Nutro. In the end I now feed him Purina Pro Plan. He is doing fantastic on it.

Oh and I read the consumer affair page for Canidea...and I can tell you that the poster is way off on the very first one, dogs (and GSD's have a high rate of this) get bloat by the way they eat, not by what they eat. I agree with the poster who said anyone can post stuff, does not make it true.

you can't get nutro for that price here, it costs at least $40 per 40 lbs. Nutro ultra costs more per pound than Innova.

Wow, I knew things had different costs in different areas, but that's a big jump.  It's only about $30 dollars here and it's a 44lb bag and Petsmart usually runs a thing with the PetPerks card that saves you another dollar or so.

racuda

Did anyone notice that the website originaly cited also has a page about Canidae? http://www.consumeraffairs.com/pets/canidae.html

That's pretty funny.