|
PET FOODS! It's a huge industry with over 30 billion dollars in sales in the US annually and rising year by year. We got pets and we gotta feed 'em! As you can imagine, there are many different companies and even more different products out there, from specialized prescription foods that actually treat illnesses, to Old Roy. So, what food should you buy? Who should you ask? Are veterinarians just bought off by the food companies so you can't trust them? Does a pet store sales person have a degree in nutrition? The simple answer is the best food is the one your personal pet does best on. You also need to be able to afford it. There are companies nowadays making individually shipped products that are made of only human grade ingredients that might be a better diet than what you yourself eat. Can everyone afford that kind of diet? Nope! Should you still own a pet if you can't feed them home cooked kangaroo every day? Yep! The answer to what product to choose can be overwhelming. There is an excellent guide to selecting a pet food written by Tufts Veterinary School: https://vetnutrition.tufts.edu/2019/12/pet-food-decisions-how-do-you-pick-your-pets-food/ It's so good that I don't think I could say it any better, so I'll quote the majority of it here... quote:Common Mistakes in Selecting Pet Food The jist of it is - don't get caught up in marketing hype. Do your research. I recommend sticking with major well established pet food brands vs exotic or boutique foods that haven't been around as long, in general. Don't buy the cheapest thing you can get either. But don't just buy the expensive stuff thinking it MUST be good! What about grain free? There have been FDA reports of heart disease connected to grain free diets. It is not generally recommended to feed these diets right now. There is just too much we don't know about why this is happening. Here is more info: https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterina...etween-diet-and What about raw feeding? I don't recommend this. There's just too much risk of contamination with microbes and there isn't really good science to back up its claims. What about home cooking? The truth is home cooking usually isn't worth the time or expense, but if you feel strongly that you want to do it, I recommend using balanceit.com or similar nutritional supplements. BalanceIt gives you recipes to add their supplement powders to. They should be well nutritionally balanced this way. Our nutritionist at school recommended it. You can always also consult with a Veterinary Nutritionist but this is pretty pricey so not that many people do it. It is the best, though, if your animal has multiple health issues that affect their diet (such as kidney disease and skin allergies). I hope this thread is helpful and I would love to hear any brands that people stand behind or that you feel like your pet does so much better on this particular food. Edit: for those who are interested in home cooking, or want to talk to someone with the most expertise possible about their pets diet, there are veterinary nutrition services out there. Most of them will work through your gp and you can get a referral to consult with them via phone and or email. Some examples: https://vetmed.tennessee.edu/vmc/SmallAnimalHospital/Nutrition/Pages/default.aspx https://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/hospital/small-animal/nutrition There's also this search tool on the American College of Veterinary Nutrition website https://acvn.org/directory/ Dixville fucked around with this message at 20:50 on May 5, 2020 |
# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 01:23 |
|
|
# ¿ May 11, 2024 13:08 |
|
Stealing this from the old thread... Transition Slowly - If your pet eats the same thing every day and you suddenly feed him something new, he's probably going to get diarrhea or barf everywhere. You need to make a gradual change. Decrease the amount of old food and increase the amount of new food (mix them together) over a period of at least a week. If your pet starts having softer stool, you're probably going too fast. Don't feed "exotic" protein sourcesunless you have a good reason - A lot of brands offer "fancy" flavors of food like bison, venison, rabbit, duck, etc. Unless your pet has a food allergy or won't eat anything else, pick a normal flavor of food like chicken, turkey, beef, etc. Food allergies can develop at any time in a pet's life for no reason, and the best way to manage them is to feed a protein source that the pet has NEVER eaten before (a "novel protein"). If you feed your pet a bunch of weird protein sources like bison and kangaroo and rabbit, and then he develops food allergies a few years down the line, you're not going to have any good options for a novel protein.
|
# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 01:30 |
|
Boogalo posted:Wet food is better for your cat (mostly due to moisture) but is also expensive so you're not a bad person if you feed high quality dry food that your cat likes. If you feed dry, try to have a fountain since that'll help your idiot drink more. Yeah this is how I feel about it. Mix of wet and dry might be a good compromise too. I need to replace the fountain that broke it really did make a difference for water intake for my cat. Yeah there are obviously some pretty big differences from the old thread. I'm open to any discussion on that and anything I may have left out. I decided not to do a list of "good and bad" brands just because that can change over time, companies buy each other out and whatnot so I felt it would be longer lasting advice to just say how to choose a diet in general vs listing certain brand names. I know the old thread was really big on ingredients and recommended more meat vs corn soy etc, I stand by the advice from Tufts on that, some of these diets with corn and whatnot are from companies that thoroughly test their foods and have shown that they are good through scientific testing. The nutrient profiles are good even though you wouldn't necessarily feed your dog a plate of corn. It's not the same as that. I have no problem with people looking for meat based foods as long as they are still well tested and the ingredients are high in quality. Keep in mind that meat, if it's included in ingredients, will contain a proportionately higher amount of water than more processed ingredients so it will show up sooner on the ingredients list due to weight of the water as well. So labels can be a little misleading in that way.
|
# ¿ Apr 22, 2020 01:18 |
|
Main Paineframe posted:To throw my anecdotal experience into the mix, my dog used to be on a grain-free food, Acana Limited Ingredients.
|
# ¿ Apr 22, 2020 01:25 |
|
Fluffy Bunnies posted:We literally know exactly what's causing this and it isn't just grain-free diets; there are plenty of legume-heavy (vegan, for instance) diets that are coming up in this, too. The uptake of taurine is being blocked by large amounts of legumes in carnivore pet foods. The percentage of pets it effects is almost 0. The DCM you're referencing but for some reason not getting into here is literally based around the lack of taurine available to the dog/cat/fox. That's a good point and I'd be happy to add nutritionist info to the op. I'll add some of the nutrition services I'm familiar with.
|
# ¿ May 5, 2020 20:42 |