Rotating Foods

by Samantha
(Los Angeles, CA)

I currently feed my dog Orijen Adult formula, the one with chicken. I love Orijen but have been hearing more and more about the benefits of rotating dog food varieties and proteins. Do you have any opinions on rotating dog foods and is it enough to rotate with in the Orijen brand, say from the chicken, to red meat, to fish formula, or maybe even including the grain-free Acana varieties or do the benefits come from rotating brands? And if you do rotate, how often should you be rotating the food?

Thank you.

My Comment:

Hi Samantha

Rotation between different foods may be beneficial. When I write "may" it may need some explanation.

I am doing this as indicate that no clinical trials has been performed to see if the claimed benefits.

One of the reasons of changing food now and then (for example every third to fourth bag) is food allergy. The longer you eat the same ingredient, the bigger the risk of an food allergy to develop.

The causes of allergy is probably many. Genetics is probably one important factor. And it is therefore difficult to be sure that changing food are enough to avoid or to minimize the allergy risk.

It is not dangerous to do, that's for sure but it is difficult to be sure the exact benefit from this feeding.

I would be very interested in clinical trials sorting out the exact benefits of this feeding. But they are very very difficult to perform. Such studies take long time and needs large numbers of dogs in order to make them statistical safe.

To advocate it or not really, comes down to a "gut feeling" It does not do any harm at all to perform it, so why not do it.

But. then you have to think on the owners having dogs that only eats one food - and nothing else. It would not be beneficial to make these owners think that they are increasing the risk of develop food allergy and make them feel bad......maybe without any reason.

This could be the dog being on a special diet for a certain disease (liver or kidney disease for example) or just a dog being very picky.

There is always a balance.

In the moment, I am not in the position where I can recommend owners to perform rotation feeding, unless they themselves bring it up for a discussion.

On the other hand I really understand the the theory behind, and it sounds logical.

Regarding your question of which food to change between - look at the main ingredients and find foods where the main ingredients are different. Different types of meat for example.

So, yes it is OK to change between Orijen Adult and the Regional Red as it is different meats in them.

Acana is OK as well but then choose the ACANA LAMB & APPLE to get the meat variety.

It should be easy to do further "studies" as the main ingredients always are listed before the fat source and in descending amount.

And you can find your favorites to choose between. That's OK.

Thank you for your question and best regards.

Per Schonbeck