I am sick of seeing their commercials who are basically guilt-tripping pet owners into thinking they don't love their animals because you don't feed them blue buffalo. First of all who does that? I never once have ever guilt-tripped someone into feeling bad about what they feed their animals. I actually had Animal Welfare called on me because my dogs looked too skinny and I feed the best food I can. Not because I can afford it comfortably but because I know that I need to. I may not be able to get something I want and don't really need but my dogs are happy and healthy. The Animal Welfare lady was very nice and apologized that she had to do a welfare check on my girls. Bandit is a really lean dog she always has been and if I feed her lean protein she even looks leaner. She loves to run laps around the house and she is as fast as a greyhound.
Back to dog food, so I get customers who ask me questions about what to do, feed or even treat because I am very open about what I do with mine. Oakly has been in and out of vet offices since before I even got her so I look for ways to make sure she is healthy. Because of this some other pet owners then ask questions because they might not know what is wrong with their pet. I owe a lot of my knowledge from the pet store I visit here in my area, google searching good websites, talking to pet food vendors, and working towards certification in pet nutrition along with a few others.
I feed grain-free because why should my dog who descends from a "wolf" be eating grain? They would only eat grain if they ate an animal that ate grain. Wolves don't go out and eat things rabbits or deer eat. The wolf eats the animal that ate the grain that has been partially digested by that said animal before the wolf ate said animal. Get where I am going here?
I looked up today the grain-free blue buffalo food, I chose lamb because I do not feed chicken. Chicken is a known allergy in animals and it's usually undetected because vets don't talk about food since their practice is owned by whoever supplies the food (Colgate-Palmolive, Nestle, Mars, General Mills). Mars and Nestle are the two big heavy hitters in this battle.
Now that we have gone off track again because there are so many side issues to the big picture issue. So this is the food I am looking at a grain-free lamb food https://bluebuffalo.com/dry-dog-food/freedom/lamb-recipe/
It states that Real Lamb first ingredient, No Chicken (or poultry) by-product meals, No corn, wheat, or soy, No artificial flavors or preservatives. It also says it is grain-free. Let us go over grains real quick: Wheat, corn, barley, oats, rye, rice, and soy.
I am buying lamb I think I am getting lamb and remember we are staying away from chicken. The second ingredient is turkey, not that big of a deal, then pea protein. There is a difference between peas and pea protein. Pea protein can cheaply boost the protein percent in the food and they are not getting the protein they need from the meat because there is more pea than meat. You don't want the pea protein in the top 7 ingredients. Few ingredients down we get to Chicken Fat, not sure why my dog needs chicken fat? Then it's just a bunch of vegetables and random vitamins and other things I'm not sure of. As I like to call it a lot of fillers (carbs) and a whole lot of nothing for the dog. This dog food if this is what you can afford is 64.99 at Petco on sale for 58.98.
Like I said I support a local pet shop to buy all my dog food but you can buy from chewy as well. They sell nature's logic as well. The Grain-free for Beef is 71.24 if you sign up for auto-ship you get it at 67.68 so as blue buffalo says it's just a few cents more to feed their brand well it's a few cents more to feed Nature's logic.
Why I picked Nature's Logic: No vitamin pack (synthetic vitamins/minerals), no legumes, no peas, no potatoes, and 95% of the protein is from the meat. Yes, this is a meal meat dog food but that can be good and not bad. The ones you have to watch out for are ones that contain the hooves, heads, feathers, feet, organs, and other random things that are labeled as an animal meal, meat meal, by-product meal, and other variations.
The moral of the story is don't be guilt-tripped into buying something that might not be right, commercials, commercial chain pet stores, and even your vet will try and push things on you. Go into a local pet store and ask the owner or employees if they have grain-free, or vitamin pack free dog food. I have fed almost every single dry dog food you can imagine to the girls. Oakly is completely off dry food because it was destroying her kidneys.
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