my mom changed the dogs food again!! ugh :(

[Glacier]

Originally posted by Twisterdog

I switch my dogs food often. Not necesarily every bag, but often enough. I do it intentionally. I personally believe it is healthy for them. I do not want them to eat a bite of something new and get diarrhea. I want them to have strong stomachs, and be adaptable.

I know ... it's against what you hear is best ... but I don't care. I have always done it, and I have always had good results. I don't buy cheap food, but I don't necessarily but the most expensive, either.

I do the same thing. Not intentionally sometimes. The shelter dogs that we take in are used to eating a mix of foods--that's what our shelter feeds. All the donated foods get dumped into big buckets and scooped out as needed. The shelter also gives us some food for the fosters. We mix in alot of other things besides kibble--moose, chicken, fish. I don't always buy really expensive food, but they get decent stuff. And they have iron stomachs. If I run out and have to grab a bag of whatever, they'll survive without any messes!

[Tonya]

Originally posted by Twisterdog
Three dollars for 45 pounds!!! Holy! That is the cheapest dog food I have ever heard of in my life!

I know, we were in total disbelief. We were staring at it for the longest time. My brother goes "It's probably made of gravel and pig testicles." lmao.

When I came home and told Mike he was all "You misread that, there's no way!" But both my brother and I double triple checked.

[binka_nugget]

Originally posted by Twisterdog
I switch my dogs food often. Not necesarily every bag, but often enough. I do it intentionally. I personally believe it is healthy for them. I do not want them to eat a bite of something new and get diarrhea. I want them to have strong stomachs, and be adaptable.

Same here. I do it mainly because Kai's picky but when I get sample packs or free food, I try adding variety. I've never had to do the gradual kibble change for Kai. We just change cold turkey and nothing has happened so far.

[lovemyshiba]

Mine get the old switcheroo once in a while too--except for Kito--a lot of foods make his wittle sensitive belly upset, so I try to keep his the same.
Mainly it's when I forget and have to run out and get something, or when my husband buys the food

[anna_66]

Originally posted by tikeyas_mom
she says tikeya is eats to much and she only eats like 1 cup a day *half in the morning and half at night* so she put them all of a diet iams

Goodness, she eats much less than Roxey does Since it's gotten cold outside I bet she eats about 3 cups (I can't be exactly sure as I put her food in a ball-that's the only way she will eat it) or more a day. She brings me her ball when she's hungry.

I know you hate Iams, but that's what I feed mine and they seem to do very well on it.
Did she even put Baby on the Iams diet

[tikeyas_mom]

yes all three of the dogs are on the iams mini chunks diet .
no offfence. I just rather feed nutro or somthing eles but my mom says baby goes throiugh to much food and that nutro is way to expensive to be buying every once a week.

they go through a large bag of dog food in about 2 weeks time.

[Brie]

So here's the deal, ALL pet foods (no matter how much one person talks them up as being the worlds best) have nutritional gaps. And each food has it's own gap, so it's not a bad idea to switch them every once in a while to fill in where the previous lacked.

I agree bag to bag to bag, is not the way to go about doing that.

I switch mine 3 or 4 times a year between several high foods.

So I have to ask, does she think Iams is a quality food? Is she looking for healthy foods? convience? price? Dig, why does she switch... is it just because 'variety is the spice of life'? Does she realise that quote really only applies to humans?

if health is a the issue, rather than morals, try introducing this site as an educational tool:
http://home.comcast.net/~mstraus/dogfeeding.html

[Brie]

wait... Iams is MORE expensive than Nutro (or at least at my store and all the stores I've ever worked at)

And honestly, a higher quality food means you'll feed less. Stool will be smaller, smell less and coat condition will improve so they'll shed less too!

broken down by how many cups are in a bag and how many cups a day a dog needs (per bag RDA) pedigree is more expensive than MANY of the super premium foods.

(I used pedigree as an example, and foods like nutro and iams and science diet are still more expensive too)

I'll try to find the chart someone made. I found it online a few weeks ago, checked the numbers and it was correct... stupid me I didn't book mark it, I'll try to find it again.

[tikeyas_mom]

Iams is wayy cheaper here then Nutro. Where do you live?
My mom chaned because it is cheapest.

[Desert Arabian]

Wow, I can't believe that Iams is cheaper than Nutro where you live! Everywhere I have been it is the opposite.

How much protein is in the Iams they are eating now!?!?

[binka_nugget]

Over here, I think Nutro is a tad bit cheaper if you go to the right stores. Maybe when you come down for the pet talk meeting, you can talk your mom into stocking up on a different brand of food. There are loads of the more premium kibbles here and they're not that expensive compared to Iams.