Not to beat you up brother, but just playing devils advocate here. I feed One when I run the dogs alot, I think the last time I checked I am paying around .75 to .85 cents a pound. When summer rolls around I switch to regular dog chow. I like Doritos and fritos, so I think my dogs should too.
Love to play devil's advocate, makes for a lively discussion. BTW, am a sister, not a brother, rofl
I don't think the better Purina brands are bad at all. I used to feed Purina ONE, in fact the last time I fed it was in January. It's very close, ingredient wise, to Pro Plan and most of my dogs do ok on it. Funny thing, since they removed beef tallow as the source of fat my hounds have never done as well. There is some good research & development behind the product and the price is reasonable. I pay around $30 for the 34lb bag w/o the rebate checks.
Dog Chow I am more on the fence on. Again, have used it, and some of my dogs do very well on it, as well as Puppy Chow. If I had to stick with an economy feed, it would be one of Purina's . That being said, the results I get from Purina pale in comparison to other more nutrient dense feeds I've tried. For instance, we just switched them off ONE to Nutro, which is only 21% protein compared to the 26% from ONE. I can tell you that the feed is MUCH better utilized with Nutro because on the same amount or less, the hounds are not gaining weight but packing on muscle. They have much more substance to them and one huge bonus is they are not recycling their own crap. One negative with Purina for my dogs was ALWAYS, no matter what formula, they ate their crap compulsively, also ate dirt.
On several occasions mine have vomited when on Purina, several hours after they ate, and the food was expanded but in no way broken down or digested. A hard to digest feed is not quality, IMO. So I use it in a bind but that's it. The feed does not give my dogs the same results as when they are on something higher quality such as HealthWise, Evolve, Nutro, etc.
I like Doritos as much as the next guy, but I certainly wouldn't eat them every day, KWIM?
A. I am not going to a local butcher shop and buying his trimings. I am going to a major packing house, where they buy live cattle at .50 to .60 cents a pound( last I checked). If they are selling steak to major chains for 4 or 5 bucks a pound, doesn't it make sense that they will sell trim for cheaper than what they bought the cattle a pound thats 25 dofor? Say 30 or 40 cents a pound. So, how much would it cost you to buy fifty pounds of non rendered beef? Even at fifty cents llars. Add your vitamins to that, and it's still not a dollar a pound. so you could add in profit, and still come out a dollar or less a pound. JMO
Kibble requires starch to bind the feed and hold it together in dry form. So to that list, you need to account for some type of grain, which are much more economical to purchase than meat. This offset's the manufacturer's cost while allowing them to produce a convenient dry feed. However, this still leaves us with the vitamin premixes, which are NOT cheap. A good premix can almost as costly as adding in the meat ... cheap foods will contain certain vitamins/minerals at the very bottom of the list, despite the dog having a high requirement for them. Folic acid is one such nutrient. For instance, in all Diamond's products (TOTW included) you'll find a similar vitamin premix with folic acid at the very bottom. Nevermind the dog, especially brood bitches have a high requirement for this B vitamin. It contributes to heart, reproductive health. The best breeder foods are usually ones that contain moderate amounts of calcium:phosporous and high levels of folic acid.
There are numerous ingredients that go into making up a dry kibble, not just the meats. Another thing to consider. The .50-.60lb cost you are referring to for the cattle would not be 100% accurate when figuring the manufacturer's cost in producing a feed because you need to calculate what the meat's water weight is. Since kibble is dry, the water is cooked out of the meat, shrinking it. So more meat would be required to "up" the protein count in the feed. This goes back to the meat vs meat meal debate, in that a meat meal is purchased "as is", and therefore more meat goes into the final product.
Preservatives are also used in a feed, so factor that cost in as well. It's more expensive to used mixed tochoherols (Vitamin E) so the cheap brands (i.e Black Gold) will just throw in BHA/BHT. Nevermind those pesky studies that linked BHA/BHT as carcinogens that also affect kidney/liver function.
One more point. ASH. The cheap foods are full of ash, a by product of low quality meat protein. Higher quality foods will have less ash because of better quality sources whiel low quality feeds such as Hi Pro are loaded with ash. While the protein levels do not even approach that of Taste of the Wild, Purina's cheap Hi Pro will strain the kidneys badly.
That's very true! But human grade is nothing more than a marketing gimmick, and is not why I prefer to use better, and usually somewhat more costly feeds. For instance, Purina Dog Chow lists "meat and bone meal" and "poultry by products" as their only meat sourcesB. Just because the feed lisits Salmon, and sweet potatoes, and all that other stuff, doesn't mean that it was fit for human consumption. You could be feeding your dog fish tails for all you know, with some half rotted potatoes to boot. I think these type of feeds have come out because some people feel their dogs should eat as well as themselves, and they have the money to buy into it.
I actually prefer by products in a feed IF there are good quality muscle meats already in there, but in this case, meat meal is just a generic description of any type of mystery meat. The majority of the protein in Dog Chow is derived from the corn/corn glutens, so the dog is actually able to utilize much less of the 21% protein lsited on the bag. With TOTW, there are four seperate animal based protein sources and the sweet potatoes listed are very nutrient dense, but contribute little to the protein percentage on the bag. So we know that the dog will at least be able to utilize most of the nutrients in the feed.I'm not saying that I don't want the best for my dogs.... But, how do I measure what the best for them is? For me, if my dogs have a lot of energy and can keep weight on when I run them hard, then its perfect. I just had mine at the vet, and he commented on their coats, and how nice they were. He disagrees with my choice of feed. He felt Purina was "crude".
There are plenty of dogs doing well on Purina, and if that's what they do best on, don't change a thing. It is about what the indivigual dog does well on more than anything, however, the reason I have no qualms spending more on feed is because of quality issues and amount of bioavailable protein that is not in the cheaper ones. Mine have done well on Dog Chow (save for one who can't touch anything Purina makes, lol) and to look at them, you'd think everything was fine w/ their condition. Yet to slightly upgrade to a feed like Nutro, we see coats coming in thicker, fat being replaced by muscle, and the dogs just having more substance to them. The difference was night and day after the switch.
Evolve was the best kibble I've ever used. The price is mid range, about $35 for 30lbs. The health benefits were priceless, what it did with coats, I have never had their coats look so awesome! The # of pups per litter started to increase, bone structure of those pups and the adults was obviously more filled out. They were utilizing every last bit of nutrition on that feed, and were very obviously in far better health than they were on the cheaper foods, so that, IMO, is the best justification for spending the extra. Nutrition makes all the difference, and almost as important to health as genetics.
