Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Dog Food Question for the Vets

FWIW almost all our dogs have lived much longer than average... last lab on pro plan was 19....

I'm sure you're right, one of mine only lived 17 1/2 years on a Purina ONE diet, and like you said it was cancer that did her in.
Wish I'd known sooner

I feed the Natures Domain salmon/sweet potato feed from Costco.
It is made by Blue Diamond, who actually produces a ton of food for many different brands. LOTS of labels are made by Blue Diamond.

It's a quality food I am happy with.

Beware that BD's plant out east has had some issues with sanitation and recalls over the years. The BD feed up here does not come from the SE though. Pretty easy to look up.

It's not to difficult to educate yourself on what to look for on labels.

If you join Amazon you generally get free shipping. Could be worth it if quality food is hard to come by in your AO.

Purina Pro Plan is a good dog food. Purina One is very similar and I have heard it is the same-idk. Hills, Iams, and Royal Canin are other good foods imo. Dogs are omnivores and eat grains and fruit in addition to their preferred meat. There are several trendy diets marketed for the yuppies and hipsters like Blue Buffalo and Orijen among others. Anybody getting labs to 17 is doing something right. An all natural fresh frozen raw diet is not without its risks too. Plus we have civilized the dogs and moved them into the house where vomiting and diarrhea are much bigger problems in the den than they are in the yard.

If you put flour in a good metal or hard plastic canister and it gets weevils, then the eggs are in the flour or the container when you put it up, Rost.

Could you store extra in a freezer (to stop the beetles)?


The wife keeps several bags of specific flour and cornmeal in our freezer.

this is what we feed ours:

http://www.tasteofthewildpetfood.com/

they love it and tend to eat less prolly cause its less fillers than most dog foods and actually made out of decent stuff.....we mix it up between the varieties....been easy to keep my dogs at appropriate weights even feeding my hyper GSP and lazy dachshund the same stuff....

i will also endorse Taste of the wild my dogs love it !

I don't know if you have Moorman Feed reps in your part of the country but they make great feed without the fillers.

http://www.moormans.com/Dog%20&%20Cat/Dog%20&%20Cat%20Index.htm

You could always go kill something, that's what the dogs would do, but as an alternative you could fire up your Google... but to start:

Cook rice. Cook oatmeal. Cook beans. Cook chicken. Cook veggies. Cut apples. Feed dogs.

Lean meats. Bake, roast or broil but don't fry.

Some do's and don'ts

There is a lot of good info and different ideas out there, you'll run across them if you look around.

Whatever real food you feed them, if it doesn't have the plastic manufacturing toxic waste that the chinese keep trying to sneak into the pet food and dispose of over here, you should be well ahead of the curve.

Not real specific to your question, but here's some links about the pet food industry, and these pages have links. It's helpful to know what not to do because the alternatives are what's left.

http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-industry-exposed/shocking-truth-about-dog-food/

http://www.petsadviser.com/food/chinese-pet-food-ingredients/

http://www.rawfedcats.org/toxic.htm

http://www.ilcockerrescue.org/commercial.htm

http://www.poisonedpets.com/new-foo...waste-sold-to-animal-feed-manufacturers/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_adulteration_in_China

Isn't Utahlefty a Vet? Somebody ask him.

Might try Dr Tim's. The manufacturer is a vet producing a very high quality food suitable for working dogs. Chewy.com offers very good pricing and a 30 lb bag gets free delivery in @ two days.

Gawd Noooooo

he's a first rate photographer

falconeer

and all around good guy


I have it on good authority he hates puppies and kittens!

Yes, Tim Hunt's stuff is pretty good.
He used to be our Vet when I lived in Marquette, my Chocolate Lab "Rosie" loved him; great guy and great vet.

I've been feeding the current Chocolate "Sasha" Earthborn Grain Free, the past couple of years and she is doing well with it.

The last time a vet recommended something, we gave our heeler a Nylabone for her teeth. Two days later, she broke a molar. $300 vet bill.
Feeding Blue Bufflao, she was 16 when she died. Normal age is 13-14. All of our pets usually live longer than the std life expectancy.

I'm not a hipster or a yuppie. We researched a lot of dog foods and don't want o cook our own. Blue Buffalo is good food probably several others on the market too.

Look what is on the shelves at Walmart ,etc and then compare what is on the shelves at places like Petsmart, Petco, vet offices and you sure as heck won't see any Purina or Old Roy. Compare the ingredients. Dogs sure as heck were not meant to eat corn and grains. The only reason they might be omnivores is that we made them that way. It is not their choice. If they were, my dogs would be down in the barn scoffing up livestock feed. They never touch it

There are some studies out now that cancer among dogs has a higher incidence in the ones that were spayed or neutered, not what they were fed. The bad stuff from China killed the dogs, it did not induce cancer

Everyone has their opinions on dog food. I have raised a LOT of dogs. My opinion is that you cannot buy good dog food at Wal-mart; at least not the ones in the Phoenix area.

I tried a lot of stuff and the last dog food that I used (I am dog-free right now) was Fromm 4-star. They have various flavors such as duck, chicken, pork, whitefish, salmon and quite a few others. My favorite was duck. My dog liked all of them but salmon was too stinky!

If you have to buy a couple of months worth, you can put one back in a good trash can, in a drum liner and drop a chunk of dry ice in. The CO2 is heavy, forces the O2 out and the weevils can't live. I have gas cylinders so I can purge with Nitrogen or CO2.

We also had pretty good luck with the better Costco dogfood but I forget who it was made by. My hunting dogs were lethargic when eating Hills or Purina compared to the better stuff.

Mushers often throw salmon - fresh, frozen, or dried, into the cooker, add some low grade (broken, cracked) white rice, sometimes a bit of good dry dog food or vitamin/mineral supplement and boil it up (with water). Cold weather sees added fish oil or other fat (chicken fat). Training often involves bits and scraps of fatty lamb (sheep), beaver, etc. It's pretty amazing what you might buy from the butcher or animal feed source: five gallon buckets of fish oil, frozen meat scraps, etc.

Our dogs eat whatever they get, sometimes just frozen whole fish sections. I wouldn't bring fresh-fed dogs inside however.

I'm always on the lookout for freezer burnt Salmon for my team, also use Eagle Pack kibble and when really cold I've got a bucket of chicken fat that I scoop a couple of glops out of and mix it with their meals. The sled dog turned house dog is on the Natures Domain from Costco ..salmon n sweet potato mix cause he has major health issues and it's the next best thing for feeding him besides cooking up a salmon meal for him every day.

Well, crud. I know there are some Vets here and I can't recall their handles.

I'm not a vet, just raised dogs all my life. In general, I like a meat first food, not corn. The first ingredient listed on the feed bag is the largest ingredient percentage wise of the feed. Dogs have a low digestibility rate with corn. At your dogs age, but somewhat depending on his activity level, you do not need/want a high fat percentage feed. Also keep the protein level low to medium. Too much protein over extended periods of time can cause kidney problems for your dog. There are many high priced feeds that are living on advertising and name. Visit the websites and compare ingredients and actual digestibility numbers. Some feeds will have terms like chicken by products listed as a main ingredient. These include, but are not limited to, innards, feet and feathers. A few hours searching the websites will provide lots of clues as to which feeds are healthy and which are not.