Mollie, In- Loving- Memory
Miss Mollie - Furever in my- Heart | 
 | | Barked: Wed Nov 26, '08 8:42am PST |  | |  | | In my location there are only 3 puppy food available... eukanuba, vitality and beef pro... which among these would you recommend?
I find it hard to believe that there are only 3 kinds of food. Pet stores sell hundreds of different brands of dog foods.
Please check out the website "Dog Food Analysis" - http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/
They have EXTENSIVE feedback on almost all brands of dog foods.
Please check out "Pet Food Rating" - http://www.acreaturecomfort.com/ratingpetfood.htm where you can give your dog's food a grade. I feed my dog "Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul" It has a grade of 117 (A+) and has over 6 different meat ingredients.
The brands you listed are HORRIBLE for your pet!!!
Eukanuba
Pros: none
Cons: Inadequate meat content, byproducts, low quality grains, controversial filler
The main grains in the food are brewers rice and corn. Brewers rice is a low quality grain and byproduct. Corn is a cheap grain that is difficult to digest and commonly associated with food allergies. Even if these had been good quality grains, we would still note that grains are not a natural foodstuff for canines, who should be fed products based on meat, not grain. There is very little meat content in this food.
Would you recommend the product? No
Vitality
Pros: none
Cons: Inadequate meat content, low quality grains, fat of unidentifiable origin
The main ingredients in this food are cereals. Although whole grains, at least, grains are not a natural foodstuff for canines and should not be the primary ingredients in dog food products. Instead, foods for canines should be based on meat. The main grains are wheat, corn and possibly rice. Rice is a decent quality grain, but wheat is believed by many to be the leading cause of food allergies for dogs. Corn i s a difficult to digest grain of limited value in dog food, and also commonly associated with food allergies.
Would you recommend the product? No
Beef Pro
No information found
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You want to feed your puppy high quality dog food that contains MEAT.
The following information is from http://eridox.com/health/nutrition.php
detailed composition information
— Ingredients in dog foods are listed by weight, with the "biggest"/weightiest ingredient at the top and going down from there. So, if the first ingredient is turkey meal, it means turkey is the main ingredient in the food. If flaxseed is the ingredient tenth on the list, then it means there isn't nearly as much flaxseed in the food as there is turkey (or whatever the first product listed is).
— If a meat ingredient is a plain meat (for instance, chicken), then that means that it is the meat including its water content. If a meat ingredient has "meal" after it (for instance, chicken meal), then that means it has been dehydrated. I mention this because if your food has chicken as the first ingredient and then lists low-quality ingredients (see below) for the next few items, chances are if all the water were drained from the chicken (i.e., if it were chicken meal), there is a good deal less chicken in there than you think there is, and your dog ends up eating mostly the low-quality ingredients.
— Meat byproducts: Meat byproducts are the leftover materials from animal food sources that most people would consider unfit for human consumption: brains, bones, feathers/hair, horns/nails, skin, not-fully-digested excrement, etc. These byproducts are also not necessarily kept fresh before they are made use of in pet food. (I personally don't approve of my dogs eating half-rotten chicken poo, so I don't feed them a food that contains such a thing.) In particular, tallow, a hard, fatty material that is difficult to digest, is listed as an ingredient in some dog foods.
Meat byproducts are found in: Alpo™, Diamond®, Eukanuba®, Iams®, Ol' Roy™, Pedigree®, Purina®, and Science Diet™.
— Fillers: Corn, sorghum, and soy are fillers. Their sole purpose is to make dogs feel full, but they don't really supply them with the nutrients they need. (As I once heard it put, 'A dog in the wild is not going to raid a cornfield looking for food.') Corn and similar products dry out coats something horrible, which makes dogs scratch and become dandruffy. Plenty of dogs even have mild adverse reactions to these products (wheat too). Soy in particular is undigestible, and it can cause them to have bloat and gas. There is no good reason to have corn, soy, or sorghum products in a dog food.
Corn and/or soy products are found in: Alpo™, Diamond®, Eukanuba®, Fromm®, Iams®, Kibbles 'n Bits™, Ol' Roy™, Pedigree®, Purina®, Royal Canin™, and Science Diet™.
— Plant byproducts: Fillers known as food fragments are another type of difficult-to-digest byproduct that consist of non-animal leftovers from the manufacture of human foods/drinks. Brewer's rice, corn bran, corn flour, oat flour, and rice flour fall into this category. Because they are byproducts, they are cheaper to use than quality ingredients, but they are significantly lacking in nutrients.
Food fragments are found in: Diamond®, Eukanuba®, Fromm®, Iams®, Purina®, Royal Canin™, and Science Diet™.
— Plant glutens: Corn gluten, rice gluten, and wheat gluten are concentrated sources of protein that are cheaper to produce than, and not as digestable as, animal proteins. Other inferior sources of protein in dog foods include soybean meal, wheat flour, and whole wheat.
Plant glutens are found in: Diamond®, Flint River Ranch®, Fromm®, Kibbles 'n Bits™, Ol' Roy™, Pedigree®, Purina®, Royal Canin™, and Science Diet™.
— Synthetic preservatives: Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), ethoxyquin, propyl gallate, and TBHQ are non-natural preservatives included in some dog foods to make them last longer, but these particular preservatives are thought by many to be carcinogenic (cause cancer). Ethoxyquin in particular is used as a pesticide.
Synthetic preservatives are found in: Alpo™, Kibbles 'n Bits™, Ol' Roy™, and Pedigree®. (Eukanuba® and Science Diet™ contained ethoxyquin until recently.)
— Food coloring: Aritificial food coloring should be avoided. Dogs don't care what color(s) their food is, and it's just one more thing a dog doesn't need in its diet but would have to process and excrete. |  |  | |  |
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The Dog Show: Who's Your Mama?
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