# Possibly changing food, need recommendations



## Tim n Kona (Jan 15, 2017)

My girl is on Royal Canin German Shepherd Puppy food, she enjoys it and seems to be doing well on it. But I have been doing a lot of reading on diet and the right food. I know this is a hot topic and everyone has their own strong opinions on it, but I really want to hear from the "experts" here, yes, that means all of you. I don't mind spending the $2/lb but if I'm going to spend that much, I want the best for my girl.

1. What do you feed and why?
2. Price point compared to Royal Canin?


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## Momto2GSDs (Mar 22, 2012)

Fromm's is a family owned company that sources and manufactures their own food.

Most companies hire another company to source their ingredients and make their food. There's mostly no "hands on".

A 33# bag of Large Breed Puppy at chewy.com is $51.00 and most dogs do very well on it. https://www.chewy.com/fromm-gold-holistic-large-breed/dp/32624 


Moms


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## Tim n Kona (Jan 15, 2017)

Momto2GSDs said:


> Fromm's is a family owned company that sources and manufactures their own food.


Thank you, I will definitely put it on the list to check out. Do you personally feel that it's a better formula than what I'm using now?


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## Ken Clean-Air System (Feb 27, 2012)

Certainly not an expert, but to answer your questions - I feed Orijen. The reason... My dog has always done great on it. I also like the ingredients, and the company that produces it. 

The price.... It's deceptive, because per bag, it's an expensive food, but if you compare how much you feed per day to many other foods, the price isn't as bad as you may think.


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## Momto2GSDs (Mar 22, 2012)

Tim n Kona said:


> Thank you, I will definitely put it on the list to check out. Do you personally feel that it's a better formula than what I'm using now?



ABSOLUTELY! 

Royal Canin is on my "Poor Quality Ingredient" list! 

Moms


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## Tim n Kona (Jan 15, 2017)

Ken Clean-Air System said:


> The price.... It's deceptive, because per bag, it's an expensive food, but if you compare how much you feed per day to many other foods, the price isn't as bad as you may think.


Can I ask how much is needed?

I was a little surprised that for my 30lb pup the bag is saying 4 cups per day for the RC


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## Tim n Kona (Jan 15, 2017)

Momto2GSDs said:


> ABSOLUTELY!
> 
> Royal Canin is on my "Poor Quality Ingredient" list!
> 
> Moms


Thank you for the honesty, that's what I'm looking for. The ONLY thing I care about is making sure my girl is fed right. :gsdhead:


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## Ken Clean-Air System (Feb 27, 2012)

For my girl, currently 5 years old and about 70-75lbs, I feed about 1 and 1/2 cups per day. 

Absolutely agree, Royal Canin is not a food I'd recommend. Fromm is very good... Victor is another, Dr. Tim's is yet another... Lots of good foods to choose from.


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## Tim n Kona (Jan 15, 2017)

Ken Clean-Air System said:


> I feed about 1 and 1/2 cups per day.


Wow, that's a drastic cut in what I'm feeding now. But the 4 cups I'm giving her right now is within the range and it's suiting her very well. She is in great shape and full of energy, growing every day.



Ken Clean-Air System said:


> Dr. Tim's is yet another... Lots of good foods to choose from.


Dr. Tim's you say? That name suits me well. And it will give me something else to tease my wife about since we always brag to each other when the puppy shows extra attention to one of us or she learns a new trick. The fun little games of she loves me more, lol


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## ausdland (Oct 21, 2015)

I fed Royal Canin Maxi puppy until my pup was 8 moths old. I tried Fromm LBP at 4 months and my pup had cow pie poops. Give it a try, hopefully it works for your puppy, much better ingredients than RC. There are also lots of good all life stages kibble you could try too: Dr. Tim's, Annamaet, Sportdogfood, etc.


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## Momto2GSDs (Mar 22, 2012)

We were going to try the *SPORTDOG* for our Grand-Dog but after I emailed with the owner Phillip Posa a couple of times on 1/8/17, we decided not to. 

If Ethoxyquin is in some of their formulas......
....what else might be in there???? :surprise: 

"Thank you for your interest. Here are some answers to your questions

Texas Mills manufacturers our formulas. They are located in Texas.
*Our Fish Meal is still preserved with Ethoxyquin.* However our other proteins are preserved with Naturox. "


Moms


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## dz0qp5 (Oct 12, 2004)

I don't judge a book is it's cover. Ingredients lists are used as a marketing tool to appeal to the consumer and not necessarily representative of the quality of the food, or how your dog will do on it. There is so much misinformation about this on the internet it is amazing. The only way to tell the quality of the food is to feed it to your dog and monitor the results. 

I personally favor foods that are manufactured by a company with lots of resources, a long history of making dog food. Owns there manufacturing facilities. Owns a research center, employs hundreds of nutritionists, vets and veterinary nutritionists and does extensive research and testing. RC checks all of those off, and I would have absolutely no problem feeding it, and I have in the past with good results. My favorite food is Hills Large Breed Adult Healthy Mobility. My dogs absolutely love this food. Palatability is important to me, I want my dogs to really enjoy their feeding time. This food produces wonderful results for my dogs in all areas. Nice firm stools, beautiful coats, clear eyes good energy etc. I am stopped on a regular basis and told how beautiful my dogs are. I am a long time GSD owner and very carefully monitor everything about my dogs and how they do on there food. I have also tried many of the supposed 5 star foods with terrible results.


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## Cassidy's Mom (Mar 30, 2003)

Tim n Kona said:


> Wow, that's a drastic cut in what I'm feeding now. But the 4 cups I'm giving her right now is within the range and it's suiting her very well. She is in great shape and full of energy, growing every day.


How old is your puppy? Keep in mind that Ken's dog is 5 years old. Puppies need as much as twice the quantity of an adult dog of the same weight because they are in a rapid growing phase. When Keefer was a puppy there was a point where he was getting more food a day than when he reached adulthood, even though he was much smaller. 

Also, the higher quality foods tend to be more calorically dense, with fewer filler ingredients, so you'll feed less to get the same amount of nutrition. I just looked up RC Puppy food, and it has 333 kcals per cup. Also, some not good ingredients - 5 of the first 6 ingredients are grains, with only chicken by product meal included: 

_Brewers Rice, Chicken By-Product Meal, Brown Rice, Oat Groats, Corn Gluten Meal, Wheat Gluten_

Orijen Large Breed Puppy has 429 kcals per cup. Look at the contrast in ingredients - the first 15 are all meat proteins! 

_Deboned chicken, deboned turkey, yellowtail ﬂounder, whole eggs, whole atlantic mackerel, chicken liver, turkey liver, chicken heart, turkey heart, whole atlantic herring, dehydrated chicken, dehydrated turkey, dehydrated mackerel, dehydrated chicken liver, dehydrated turkey liver_

4 cups of RC would be roughly equivalent to 3 cups of Orijen: 

333 x 4 = 1332 calories per day
1332 divided by 429 = 3.11 cups 

I will say that it's a very expensive food, one of the most expensive you can buy. I used the LBP formula when Halo was young, and she did very well on it. I switched her to the Adult, and Keef was on the 6 Fish formula for years. They loved it, had very good stools, and soft coats. At some point that changed and I'm not sure why - maybe a formula change that just didn't agree with them. So I switched them off Orijen. I tried a few different foods, and now they're on Victor. Many people have had good success with Victor, and it is also less expensive. They have at least 2 all life stages foods that can be fed to puppies. It's much less available in stores than some of the big names, but I buy it online at Chewy.com.


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## Jax08 (Feb 13, 2009)

I like Victor. A friend of mine is a dog food rep and she said she feels Victor is one of the best on the market because of the vitamin pack they use in it.


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## LuvShepherds (May 27, 2012)

I use Fromm and I'm very happy with it. If you use Four Star, you can rotate within the line without upsetting your dog's digestion. It is not that much more expensive than other lines if you shop around. I have seen it in stores from the low $50s to high $60s for the largest size bags.


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## eddie1976E (Nov 7, 2010)

Tim n Kona said:


> Wow, that's a drastic cut in what I'm feeding now. But the 4 cups I'm giving her right now is within the range and it's suiting her very well. She is in great shape and full of energy, growing every day.
> 
> 
> 
> Dr. Tim's you say? That name suits me well. And it will give me something else to tease my wife about since we always brag to each other when the puppy shows extra attention to one of us or she learns a new trick. The fun little games of she loves me more, lol


I started feeding my dog (he was 18 months) Dr. Tim's after lots of research. He was getting between 5-6+ cups of his other food a day and he was very skinny, and on days he was getting lots of activity, I would feed him more. He wasn't getting a solid stool, so I decided to change. Dr. Tim's Momentum was my choice. I dropped his cups to 4, and now we are down to 2.5-3 depending on activity. I have been very impressed with Dr. Tim's, have emailed the Dr. himself and he has been very responsive. My dog is doing great on it, stools are good and he doesn't have to eat 6-7 cups a day.


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## Lexi GSD (Jan 22, 2017)

I see you guys mentioned Victor I'm curious to which one you'd recommend there are two different puppy foods through them.


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## Lexi GSD (Jan 22, 2017)

Which one are you feeding to your puppy there are two puppy foods.


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## Ken Clean-Air System (Feb 27, 2012)

I would skip puppy food altogether, to be honest, and pick a good All Life Stages formula with appropriate levels of Calcium and Phosphorus. You want the Calcium level to be 1.5% or lower ... some like it even lower, but I think 1.5% is a decent number, considering the studies about the effects of this were using large breed dogs like Great Danes, and GSDs are medium size dogs. The ratio between Calcium and Phosphorus should be close to 1:1.

Victor doesn't list Calcium and Phosphorus for their foods on their website. They have quite a few All Life Stages Formulas, so I'd pick a few that you would like to feed, and email Victor and ask for the nutritional info.


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## usxmarine03 (Feb 12, 2017)

We're currently feeding our pup Blue Wilderness. Our vet, who owns GSDs, recommended switching to Royal Canin. Now we're thinking about switching vets. 

Do not feed any kibble that contains by product, and RC list it as the first ingredient. By product could be anything using what it's derived from that creates something else. In the meantime I'm thinking of switching to raw like I used to feed my APBTs. 

For raw, I fed chicken quarters, raw egg, green peas, carrots, and goats milk. I'm sure I'm leaving out something as this was a decade ago and I substituted veggies and meat regularly but what is out there for RAW now that comes ready to eat?


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## NerdicEclipse (Feb 20, 2017)

usxmarine03 said:


> We're currently feeding our pup Blue Wilderness. Our vet, who owns GSDs, recommended switching to Royal Canin. Now we're thinking about switching vets.


Good move. You can tell a lot about a vet (or a dog trainer, breeder, etc.) by what they recommend you put in your animal's stomach. For me it's always been simple. Give my animals (Dogs, cats, livestock) the quality I'd want for myself or my family. And food with unhealthy fillers and/or an unhealthy nutritional balance ain't that. To me that's like telling a high risk heart patient to go home and eat fried chicken every day because "Meh, it doesn't really matter". You'd look for a different cardiologist for sure.

You can also tell a lot about a food (even if you don't know much about nutrition and feed and are early in your research) by recommended portions. Foods of poor quality with no nutritional value state absurd serving sizes. Two or three times what your dog needs if it's getting a proper balance. It just takes that much of poor quality food to get them through the day. It's just like with humans. If you're eating a proper, balanced diet you don't need to eat as much to feel satiated as you do when it's junk food. They'll have you going through 80lbs+ per month per dog. Which is probably why they do it to be honest. More money if the food is of poor quality.


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## SamsontheGSD (Dec 23, 2016)

We feed Wellness Core puppy but are beginning to incorporate their adult food (he's 5 months now). The ingredients meet what we were after (no by products, meat based protein, no corn or grain) and dogfoodadvisor.com gave it their highest rating.

There are plenty of great foods out there, but to echo others Royal Canin's ingredients don't seem to be the best. Just my $.02.


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## Erica0629 (Dec 21, 2016)

When I was looking up food for my girl the names that kept coming up were Orijen and Fromm, the important thing to check and keep an eye out for is where the ingredients are sourced from. I see recall notices from time to time for some brands so just be cautious of that as well. 

In the end I decided on a raw diet for my puppy, mainly because her breeder was already feeding her that before she came home so I thought it best to continue. If she wasn't being fed raw already I honestly would have just gone with Fromm, I liked all that I heard about them and the cost was a little lower than Orijen I believe? The names being mentioned here sound like solid candidates to look into.


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## dz0qp5 (Oct 12, 2004)

RC is a good food and you are getting good results.. no need to change it. The whole ingredients list thing is a scam. You can't differentiate between a good food and a bad food by looking at the ingredients list. Many smaller companies want you to believe this and a lot of people do. They do this because they can't compete head on with the larger companies so they try and market their products by using an ingredients list which sounds and looks good to the human purchaser. It has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the food or the results you will get. It is designed to suck money out of your pockets.


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## DLJosh (Mar 9, 2017)

Has anyone on here tried cooking their dogs food??? 

Boiling chicken bones and pigs blood mixing with oat's, rice and things like that?


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