Natures Menu Frozen Food??

[Karlin]

Also people with dogs that have intolerances or food allergies should keep in mind that according to UC Davis Vet School, the most common causes of food problems are BEEF and CHICKEN and DAIRY PRODUCTS. Many of these diets people use to try to address allergies or tummy problems tend to contain, yes, raw beef, or chicken, or people get advice to add yoghurt 'to help their stomach'. All those things may actually be the *cause* of the problem in the first place. Elimination diets take weeks to test so it isn't adviseable to switch back and forth before giving a diet many, many weeks; and also make sure the dog gets NO TREATS that could have any allergans or upsetting ingredients.

I think a lot of ongoing problems are due to treats because people feed in treats the stuff that may not be in a special food.

[CavyMom]

I agree - 4 weeks is the BARE MINIMUM an elimination diet should be tried. I also agree if a dog is known allergic to something (beef, chicken, lamb, etc), raw or not, avoid it. That's why I mentioned lamb as a possible problem, it's a common ingredient in many foods, and in a dog that's having food allergy issues, lamb isn't usually a good protien source choice, but it doesn't hurt to try it!

[Karlin]

At least 4 weeks, definitely -- UC Davis recommends 8 to 12 weeks so people really do need to get one food and stick with it.

Lots more info in the Library here: http://board.cavaliertalk.com/showthread.php?t=17749

This article from the U of Illinois vet school notes why lamb mixes may not work for allergies:

http://www.cvm.uiuc.edu/petcolumns/s...cle.cfm?id=113

[merlinsmum]

I bought some of this today - the frozen nuggets - I bought the banquet nuggets. I just gave the boys one each chopped up in their Burns kibble for a taster and it seemed to go down well.

Whilst I was getting some dog food - the woman tried to sell me Nutro instead of Burns - having read the indegredients list I will not be buying it. the protien is 27%! The adult lamb and rice mini has salt ADDED - surely that can't be good? It seems to have a lot of egg products in it and Poultry fat! euughh!

[CavyMom]

Ya, I don't like Nutro at all!!!

[kaytee576]

Hi me again, sorry to be a total nightmare, I wanted to quickly tell you something strange I noticed with kaytee, About a week ago I had started to soak her dry wainwrights food, I was worrying as always about her not getting enough fluid, anyways we noticed a change in her, she doesnt seem to be sickly anymore and gulping like she is going to be sick like she always seemed to, I blamed the 10% barley in the food or something else in it but my fiance disagreed as she has been on it many months.
It just seems that now days she cannot cope with dry food, it seems to maybe stick in her throat so she wants to be sick so she can shift it, maybe I am wrong I dont know but I may stick with this, see how she goes having it soaked as there has been an improvement, If things go back to the way they were then I will definitely continue my food search, hope this is the right thing to do, WISH I had noticed this earlier
THANKS xx