dry dogfood

[dab_20]

well my dogs do very well on iams. so what could be sooo bad about it??

[Jessika]

well my dogs do very well on iams. so what could be sooo bad about it??

..the ingredients include by-products and lots of fillers, that's really the only "bad" thing about the food. Don't be offended, some people are set in their ways but as I said any food is a "good" food because its keeping them alive, right?

[dab_20]

yep your right. what are by-products and fillers?

[Jessika]

by-products are any parts left over from animals that aren't fit for human consumption. This can include feathers, bones, feet, blood, and sawdust from the floor.

Fillers are ingredients added to a food that have little to NO nutritional value but serve as a cheap ingredient to add and make your pets "feel" like they are full. Fillers usually are not digested and come out as nice little packages on your front lawn. The MOST commonly used filler is any form of corn!

Here are the ingredients for IAMS Lamb Meal & Rice formula. "bad" or "questional" ingredients (from my view point) I have bolded:

Lamb Meal, Brewers Rice, Corn Meal, Ground Whole Grain Sorghum, Ground Whole Grain Barley, Chicken Fat (preserved with mixed Tocopherols, a source of vitamin E, and Citric Acid), Fish Meal (source of fish oil), Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn Grits, Dried Beet Pulp (sugar removed), Natural Chicken Flavor, Potassium Chloride, Dried Egg Product, Brewers Dried Yeast, Salt, Monosodium Phosphate, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin A Acetate, Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate (source of vitamin B1), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Niacin, Riboflavin Supplement (source of vitamin B2), Inositol, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (source of vitamin B6), Vitamin D3 Supplement, Folic Acid), Choline Chloride, Minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Potassium Iodide, Cobalt Carbonate), DL-Methionine, Rosemary Extract

When reading an ingredient list, ingredients are listed from the highest weight to the lowest. So the first ingredient makes up the majority of the food whereas the last ingredient makes up the very smallest percentage. Make sense??

If you want more information on reading lables, google the term or here are a few sites that I have found helpful and have helped teach me!
http://www.asuperiorgsd.com/feeding.html
http://www.asuperiorgsd.com/dog.food.html
http://home.att.net/~wdcusick/011.html

[k9krazee]

We feed Iams and have been since Shadow was little. It was a lot better 8 years ago, we had Shadow on some crappy food and my Aunt recommended we get Iams. I know now that is has just gone downhill and isn't very good quality, but tell my mom that she refuses to switch their food. Her "excuse" is that another one of my Aunts has a 16 year old Lab and it has lived off of Spartan brand dog food its whole life and Iams is a ton better than that stuff. As soon as I can take my Micki and Jack I will feed them raw...(even though those two are mine she won't allow me to feed them raw under her roof or even switch their food)

She said the other day that she wanted to switch their food but to something less expensive than Iams...I really would like to get the Hoodlums on Nutro but its still more expensive than she would like...we'll see.

[dab_20]

ok thanks for the information. like k9krazee, my mom refuses to switch the food. she says that iams is a good brand and that what we have to stick to.

[Jessika]

Well IAMs isn't "the best", but there are definitely brands out there that are much worse. Just think of it that way!

[Suki Wingy]

I've fed Iams to all my dogs, and for the past year or so I have really been trying to swich but my mom swears her dogs growing up lived long healthy lives and thrived on crap like hy-vee brand dog food, and won't swich for more than one transition bag and one whole bag. I had him on Bil-Jac for about a month because he loves it and the liver treats, and he was on the chicken liver formula and did great but had several small seisures over that time and my mom switched him back to Iams because 1. she thought the food had something to do with the frequency of his seizures 2. it was like $20 a bag (Niño refuses to eat the food if it has been out of the bag for more than a week or 2 so we have to buy 7 or 8 lb bags) but this bag was like $20 lbs or something! 3. (and the main reason) We can only buy it at Petsmart. I have offered to pay the difference for any more expensive food, but she doesn't want to go to petsmart that often (even though we go for crickets anyway! ) When I get my drivers license I will probably swich him to something, I really don't know what.
My stepdad is convinced that by products are ok, that they mostly include stuff healthy for dogs but not people.

[Sky57]

I'm not sure about price or if it is available at Petsmart because I am in Australia, but I did a bit of research into dry foods this year and to the best of me knowledge, the very best food I could find was Innova. The ingredients are amazing, so natural, and my dogs love it.