Pet Food

[Horus]

When it comes to pet food it does make you wonder about the manufacturers and the stuff they have on sale. Now I have to put my hands up and say that I never skimp when it comes to Annie’s welfare, so she gets the best I can buy her. I tried as a puppy to keep her on a kibble type food which was very expensive, but that did not matter, a 5Kg bag would cost around £12 and last her about a month. She soon grew out of that and refused to eat it any-more, so I changed to getting her the small foils of Caesar beef & heart which she would eat with no problem and supplemented with a few dog biscuits. Regarding the biscuits I have tried all the top manufacturers stuff that claim to be this that and the other, but once again experience taught me that she preferred the cheapo biscuits from our local Home Bargain store at £1 a bag which I might add look and smell exactly like dog biscuits used to smell, as to the taste I cannot comment, but she seems to like them.

About 12 months ago the manufacturers started to drop the sale of her preferred food and it became harder to get until it finally went off the shelves. Yes they had other exotic varieties, this and that meat with jelly or with gravy and even seasonal vegetables thrown in, but I have never yet owned a dog that would knowingly eat peas. The result was that I was wasting money on buying her food that she would leave and I mean leave, even after 3 days it would go uneaten. Eventually I hit on the idea of buying her fresh chicken thighs and cooking them myself and at around £1.40 for 4 it was actually no more expensive than dog food, in fact it worked out cheaper as I paid around 60 pence each for the foils of dog food. Just one chicken thigh cut up and some crushed dog biscuits added for roughage seemed to keep her happy enough, I had tried all variants of rice added to the chicken, but if you added say 2 ounces of brown rice to her food you could guarantee that there would be 2 ounces of rice left in the dish after all the chicken had gone, dogs are good at that sort of thing.

As I didn’t like the idea of her just having chicken I started to buy her Lambs hearts when available and again as she only ate 1 per meal it was still not an expensive option and I could alternate the food on a basis of say 3 hearts then 3 chicken thighs as I would cook them in small batches. Recently my daughter asked me if I wanted to try her with Ox heart from the local abattoir so I said I would give one a go, she absolutely loves it. I have just cut up another fresh one and then individually bagged it up for the freezer, it weighed in at nearly 2.4 Kg so I made up 6 (two dinner) portions giving her roughly 200 gram per meal and all it cost me was £3.50. So on reflection providing you have the time (as I do) to buy in the fresh stuff and cook it yourself then it is in reality no more expensive that buying manufactured dog food and at least you know its all good meat.

[LovelyLadyLux]

Don't have a dog now but when I did I fed IAMS. It is a pellet type food and all my dogs ate it. I fed IAMS because it was a high protein feed which actually meant small dog poops vs feeding Purina which caused my little dog to poop like an Elephant.

I see ads now for "Blue Buffalo" on TV which is supposed to be the primo food now for dogs but it also costs a fortune. It is supposed to be FREE of most everything and doesn't cause skin allergies and good for dogs with sensitivities.

Locally here lots of people feed their dogs raw meat and often ask for donations of freezer burned meat they can give to their dogs. No idea if this raw meat is intermixed or ? but it does seem a real trend to feed raw.

IF I get another dog I'll feed it IAMS again which is a middle of the line dog food. You can get it in different size kibbles and for puppies, adult and old dogs. Can't honestly say I've been faced with a finicky eater (animal or human). I see that as a perk of being a lousy cook. Makes anything I throw down look good My claim to fame is I kept two daughter alive .....

[Horus]

Tried the IAMS, same result

[Mad Dilys]

When I worked in show and quarantine kennels in my youth I had the opportunity to see the results of dog diets on masse - for example in the quarantine/boarding kennels we had upwards of 200 dogs on site. I prefer a raw meat based diet with a good quality biscuit for most dogs.

The show Salukis did very well on raw breast of lamb for 5 days 1 day fish 1 day sheep's paunch (uncooked tripe) with Winalot dog biscuit.

Another fed dried food including Iams - not sure I agree with using it although in theory it should be fine. I think it's because I would hate to eat a similar human preparation, it's so un-natural. My daughter has three dogs each on a different dried diet obtained from the vet. Unfortunately they tend to pinch each others food which makes a nonsense of the whole thing - the answer is simple - Bisto! They love human food and a bit of Bisto gravy poured over makes them eat it all up, where otherwise they leave it.

We used to get cheap mince from the butcher at first in the Quarantine Kennels, cooking it up in small baths. One day I skimmed the fat off and it reduced the total by 30%! So we experimented with all kinds of dog food and finally decided on "Woffle" if was a deep frozen cooked meat based on paunch. I never saw a dog refuse it no matter how pampered they were at home. It was clean to handle the dogs did very well on it and were exceptionally fit and healthy. Google says that it was a "vintage" product available in the '60s and '70s. Crikey! doesn't time fly?

http://www.retrofair.co.uk/64-woffle-fp ... eMzsrpFzIU

[Mad Dilys]

My daughter asked me why dogs prefer "human" food, especially curry to their dried diet............. her son gave her a long hard look and said "They aren't stupid! Which would you prefer?"

[LovelyLadyLux]

When I was a kid I don't think we fed our dog store bought dog food. She ate always our scraps often cooked with pigs heads or cow bones. Am sure my dad or his sister, my aunt also picked up parts and pieces from the slaughter house and again cooked those into food for the dogs. We definitely did NOT feed our cats back then. They all lived in the barn and ate whatever they could catch. They'd line up and watch me milk the goats and I'd always treat them by shooting a stream of milk in their direction and they'd be able to lap it up mid-air. Nary a drop was lost.

I don't recall their being such a thing as store bought dog food when I was kid and can actually remember when a special store was built that sold these dry kibbles that were food for dogs. This store was quite distinct from the feed mill too. Course my world way back when in this area of the world was pretty small

Now it seems, similar to our kids, that dogs have multi allergies. I don't recall any of the pets I had a kids being particularly allergic however now it seems most dogs have skin allergies or some such. I'm convinced it is the chemicals we now put into all our food that is causing this (in pets and kids too)