Mrs Nicky Hemsley

by Nicky
(Peterborough, UK)

Hi,
I found your website really interesting and informative, but I wondered if I could ask your opinion on a dog food that has been recommended to me for my labrador? The dog food is not a well known brand which doesn't really matter but I wanted to find out a bit more about it before giving it to my dog!

The ingredients are:
Vit A – 15,400 iu/kg, Vit D3 – 2,150 iu/kg, Vit E – 118 mg/kg, Copper – 11 mg/kg.

INGREDIENTS: Poultry Meat Meal (minimum 26%),
Cooked Rice (minimum 26%), Maize, Pure Refined Chicken Fat,
Barley, Beet Pulp, Full Fat Linseed, Fish meal,
Brewers Yeast, Minerals, Vitamins, Yeast, SC1-1077, Chicory Derived INULIN.

Many Thanks

My Comment:

Hi Nicky

Glad to hep you whith this.

The most important ingredients in dog food is the ones listed before the fat source. These are the main ingredients.

Listed first is “poultry meat meal” which contains of poultry meat and skin, with or without the bones but no by products as feathers, heads or feet.

Normally premium quality dog food has fresh meat listed first. So this is telling me that the food is not of premium quality.

Meals should at the very best be listed as a species name meal, for example chicken meal.

Poultry is not really a species name so by definition these meal is not premium quality.

That said remember that it is not based on by products so it is not that bad either.

Rice is next. Not much to comment on that but together with the next ingredient “maize” we see this dog food is not gain free, but a grain based dog food.

This might not be bad, but at least not typical dog species food (in my opinion).

The final important ingredient is the fat source.

In this food it is “chicken fat” and is most likely a OK product.

Nothing mentioned about the preservatives, so might be some artificial preservatives in this product.

The rest of the contend is only in small amounts.

My thought and feel for this product is somewhere in the middle, so it could be OK to use.

As long its not mistaken as a premium dog food and priced as such I would say it would be OK.

All the best

Per Schonbeck