what is lamb "meal" and rice bran?

Yes, I use only foods with meat and meat meal.  I will accept a meat "by-product" only if it's at least 5 ingredients down the list and is not the only meat source.

I don't use any corn, wheat or soy but my dog's food does have rice.  It just says "brown rice" though, not bran. 

Meal is meat (muscle eat, no bones or other "parts";), with a good bit of the moisture removed.  It means the volume/weight will remain largely unchanged when it's turned into kibble, whereas plain old meat will be dehydrated and in reality become much less of the formula.   When it's the first ingredient, followed by just meat, or just meat followed by a meal, that's a good product with a lot of actual meat.  One also looks for named meat rather than mystery meat.

Rice bran is a fiber source - it's the part they take off rice to make it "white" rather than brown.  The only time I get annoyed at the sight of it, is if I see rice, rice bran, rice flour, rice something listed - that's a way of putting more rice in a formula without these ingredients ending up above the meat in the ingredients.  Fun games kibble manufacturers play.  

Insoluble fiber often helps dogs who are a bit closer to their wild roots - wild canids consume insolubles such as fur, feathers, and crop/rumen contents.  Some dogs do well on it, some don't need it at all which would make it a waste of money for them.  It's something you have to experiment with.  Usually if your dog is having giant grainy looking stools your dog is getting too much grainy stuff, particularly insoluble fiber.

There's a great introduction to analyzing commercial food for yourself at Dog Food Project

The food I'm considering is lamb meal & brown rice formula dry by Natural Balance.  My dog has been on hill's prescription z/d formula canned food for food allergies and I'm wondering if he has out grown his allergies and would like to try some "real" food.  So I was going to try this since it's limited ingredients and if he scratches then I know it's the lamb.  I just don't like the rice bran.

 Here is the ingrendient list from the lamb meal & brown rice dry formula from Natural Balance: 

Lamb Meal, Brown Rice, Ground White Rice, Rice Bran, Canola Oil, Lamb, Tomato Pomace, Natural Flavor, Potassium Chloride, Choline  Chloride, Natural Mixed Tocopherols, Taurine, Vitamin E Supplement, Iron Proteinate, Zinc Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Potassium Iodide, Thiamine Mononitrate, Manganese Proteinate, Manganous Oxide, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin A Supplement, Biotin, Calcium Pantothenate, Manganese Sulfate, Sodium Selenite, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin, Vitamin D-3 Supplement, Folic Acid.

 What do you think?

That's the business with dividing up the grains into fragments, that I don't like.  they got into trouble with that during the melamine business last year - I suspect because at the time they were using "protein" fragments along with the bran and flour.  Natural Balance never did give a satisfactory enough answer to me to explain, at the very least, how they intended to avoid the problem n the future.  Actually I'm not sure they even ever realy admitted tehy HAD a problem.

California Natural has a nice simple formula if that is what your dog needs - have you tried that?  I apologize if I missed that, I'm a bit out of it today.  lol 

Hi Shelley,

 I'll stick my neck out and say that I think it's not a bad food, and I can't see any compelling argument against its use, esp. with sensitive or allergic dogs.

Becca made some good points and you want to bear those in mind - but in all truth, this 'fractioning' of grain ingredients you'll find with so many dry foods. Especially the ones with limited ingredients ... there's only so much you can do with meat and rice!

There's one proviso I would make about the NB food, considering it's for an allergy dog: you would need to check with the company whether the "Natural Flavor" in the ingredients is in fact derived from lamb - and not some other protein like chicken.

Natura guarantees that : "In the Natura products that include "natural flavor" in the formula, the exact composition is proprietary. However, it is always made from the same animal species on which the formula is based."

I would guess that the NB Lamb+Rice has a higher fiber content than the equivalent CN food. Rice bran is high in fiber, and so is tomato pomace. The CN Lamb+Rice only has 1.3% fiber according to their Nutrient Analysis. Having a full analysis, however, is IMO always a plus - at least you know what you're dealing with!   NB provides precious few data on their foods ... although they have replied to my queries when I emailed them for more info.

The one thing I don't like about the CN food is that it is really low in both Omega fatty acids. Here are the figures:

Omega 3        0.06  %
Omega 6        0.72  %
Linolenic Acid 0.04  %
EPA 20:5n3    0.0  %
DHA 22:6n3    0.0  %
EPA + DHA    0.01  %

Feeding this food long-term, I would be inclined to supplement with fish oil, and possibly also some extra Linoleic Acid.

If you want to use a Lamb+Rice food to evaluate your dog's allergy situation, then overall the CN is probably the best fit because of the absolute limitation of ingredients. Once you know your dog is OK with lamb and rice, you might then like to test whether he does better on something like the NB, or another product.

 Hope that's helpful.

See, to me, the food should be called Rice and Lamb, since it's clearly got a heck of a lot more rice than lamb.

Further, a dog who can tolerate whole ground brown rice, might not do so well on all the grain fragments.  Those fragments can be a nasty allergen and often sensitive stomachs are the result of allergens.

 Glenda, you are absolutely right.  Ben always had real problems anytime a food he could tolerate was processed.  I figured it had to do with handling contaminants.  Really, for allergies as serious as Ben's, homecooked/raw was the only sensible way to go and I resisted it too many times, always hoping for that magic bullet that provided what I felt I couldn't as a mere mortal.  :)

Feeding this food long-term, I would be inclined to supplement with fish oil, and possibly also some extra Linoleic Acid.

When it first came out, I combined it with a product I got from my vet at first, and then later purchased online, which does exactly this.  It was the first time I realized food alone might not be enough!  I didn't know why until much later, that EFAs, n-3s in particular, are so unstable that even proper levels in the food are going to disappear below useful levels with time and exposure to normal air and temps. 

Thanks everyone for all your input.  I appreciate it. 

 I'm not too crazy about all the rice in the NB.  What I think I might do is try him on one of the 95% meats by Wellness.  I'll give this as a snack while still on his prescription food.  This way, if he starts scratching or gets ear infections, I'll know it's the meat and nothing else.  If he tolerates this one meat, then I'll go on to find a dog food with that in it. 

 It's really difficult because he was/is allergic to so much:

poultry mix, lamb, wheat, peas, flaxseed, barley.

I don't want to try him on a food that has two ingredients that he is allergic to, because I won't know which one he is allergic too.  I just like the NB lamb because there is no flaxseed or barley in it.  But it is so heavy on the rice.  It seems like everything has either flaxseed or barley in it. 

 Thanks again,

Michelle

I don't like most of the allergy foods on the market- too low in protein. What exactly was your dog allergic to? oh, I see you answered. Flaxseed is indeed tough to avoid-  I have a dog allergic to it and went to home-made diet because it is so hard to avoid. If he's allergic to lamb shouldn't you try one of the other formulas? NB has venison, duck, and fish allergy formulas. If you feed these I would suggest adding extra of the specific type of meat, either from a can or the grocery store, and also one should always supplement diets with omega-3 fatty acids because it's unstable.

 Agreed. I feed the sweet potato and fish to my puppy and add either the canned version of the same, or sardines, mackeral, or canned salmon. She's doing incredibly well. I chose this route because she's a puppy, and imbalances are much harder on babies. When she's older, I'll do an elimination diet, with her, and see what the allergies are.