best dry food

[mummy2millie]

currently millie is on beta puppy food and a small bag was provided when we brought her home last saturday, on monday when she went vets for 1st injections the vet recommended hills science plan we do have sample bag but not tried her yet as wanted to wait week till she settled in! but on the forum ive seen james wellbeloved mentioned aswell as royal canin, as millie is my first cav and we want the best for her has anyone got any suggestions is any nutrionally better

[*Pauline*]

Hills Science is pretty poor in my opinion. I also recommend James Wellbeloved and Royal Canin. Don't use up all your beta puppy food, you'll need to mix it with the new food over a week, increasing amounts of the new food in ratio to the old as the week goes on.

[Shelli]

I use Royal Canin. When I brought Ollie home first he was on Hills Science plan but he seems to prefer RC and I find he poops much better with it

[lorebringer]

I use Royal Canin or Hills Science Plan for my dogs. The puppy food in both of these is great too - they love it, I have never had a problem getting it into a dog! - and Royal Canin do a spacific CKC food for when your little one gets older.

[Brian M]

Hi

One of my favorite topics of which i have asked loads of questions of members over time .Settled on .
1) Burns
2)Royal Canin
3)JWB

[sins]

Royal Canin or Arden Grange.
Sins

[Karlin]

One of my favorite topics

That's true!!

There are many many opinions on foods and diets.

IMHO, Hills is a so-so food that is quite expensive for what you get -- the latter point is the main issue I'd have -- why pay so much when you can get better quality for less? I would place it in medium-range for foods -- better than the supermarket brands but certainly not a great quality for the cost. Similar quality foods cost quite a bit less as is clear from comparing ingredients. A lot of vets sell Hills as the company is the main supplier of special medical diets and thus vets will often also sell the regular cat and dog food. That makes sense for the vets, but I think there are better options for dog owners.

One point as well is that most nutritionists and breeders feel there not only is no reason to feed special puppy foods but that these can potentially cause problems. This is especially true with giant breeds but most good breeders I know are very firm about avoiding puppy foods. The reason is that there are lots of extra vitamins and minerals and many feel this accelerates growth in a way that isn't normal. After all in the wild, pups do not get extra nutritional supplements... I think a quality standard diet is the best option.

In the UK you have lots of choices. I do like RC and JWB myself. Arden Grange is also very good as is Burns, but the latter two are hard to find in Ireland. There are lots of other options too in the UK and also mail order from www.zooplus,.co.uk (I order food at times from zooplus.ie -- they have sites in many countries and food is shipped from the German base. They have very high quality European and other foods some as Almo Nature etc).

So you have lots of options!

[mounie]

Hello, my pup is four months old, and he has been on Royal Canin Junior Mini so far, he likes it , am going to gradually switch to Orijen Pup, which is recommeneded by my vet and sounds better to me

Greetings

Chiara from Italy

[leesanlucie]

Hey
My puppy is 20 weeks old and I feed james wellbeloved....she loves it....actually she just loves food in general.Today i bought a small bag of wainwrights salmon and potato(pets at home version of JWB).....just for a wee change.
My 2 yr old adult was soooo picky and the only food she enjoyed was james wellbeloved.....so JWB is a winner in our house

[cecily]

We feed ours Burns. We've never had a problem with it. Their poo is pretty good, unless they've been chewing on something they shouldn't have!!! They also have different flavours which is great, so we alternate between chicken, lamb and fish. They also have a 'small breed' bag with smaller sized kibble which might be good for a puppy without actually being a puppy food.

We're lucky because our local vet is well stocked with Burns. Maybe if you enquire in your local vets or petshop they might start stocking it, or another alternative to Hills?