Blue buffalo and Natural balance

are these decent foods?

 

Absolutely!

 

I've used natural balance for my Doberman and am deciding whether to use it for my new pitbull puppy or use blue bufallo.chow how sovyou feel about feeding puppies adult formula?

 

I personally feed puppy food to a pup up until about 6 months unless it's an ALS (All Life Stages) formula.

 

Appreciate the response, I'll be doing the same. I think I'm gonna try blue buffalo

 

If those two are what you're choosing from I'd say Blue is better. Natural Balance requires you to feed more than most similar foods because they use more potatoes or rice etc as opposed to more meat. If you look at the ingredients for example they have "potato and duck" in that order. Not the other way around.

But a really great one which I've been using lately is Nutro Ultra. Its a holistic food with a lot of great antioxidant rich fruits and vegetables. It has chicken, lamb and salmon both meat (with water and fat) and meal (without water and fat) making it a food that you don't have to feed a lot of per lb of dog.

 

whats most peoples opinion on nutro? i tried it with my doberman a year ago and he didnt like it at all, but i was told its good food. maybe i should give it a try again.

 

its expensive

 

I tried out Natural Balance's allergy formula for my Boxer mix that is allergic to life, and it made her worse. I have heard good things about Blue Buffalo.

I am economical and feed Kirkland lol

 

The Blue would probably be better. Go to www.dogfoodanalysis.com and it will break most of the foods down for you as far a quality. Nutro Ultra has corn gluten, and beet pulp. And the fish isn't guarranteed as being ethoxyquin (preservative believed to be carcinogenic) free.
Beet pulp is a filler that is known to be associated with ear infections and allergies.
It does have some good stuff in there too. I have been trying to research dog food lately and if it isn't beet pulp, it has synthetic vitamin k added which is linked to liver failure I believe.
Also, just because the indgredients are good doesn't mean it will mesh with your dogs digestive system either. It is a hard decision.

 

Actually and truly, if you were only feeding a few dogs and had the time and resources, raw would be the way to go because you know what you dog is getting because you made it yourself. Or there are frozen raw products you can buy already prepared that would be affordable if only feeding a couple of dogs and you would be sure all your nutrients were in there.

 

I have heard the Kirkland is a decent food. No one carries it around me or I would give it a try.

 

reason being i havent started feeding raw yet, is because i want to know as much as possible about it before i start feeding and not knowing what i am doing. I think im gonna start feeding Blue Buffalo and once i have all my resources down i will start with raw.

 

its reallly not that hard.... my dogs absolutely love it.

ill do one day

1/2 ounce salmon..... turkey leg.

1/4 cup oatmeal mixed with hot water

tbsp of spinach mixed in with oatmeal
1 egg mixed with oatmeal

i mix the salmon , oatmeal, spinach and egg all together and the turkey leg seperate. takes 3 min to prepare


another day

chicken quarter
chicken liver or beef liver
1/2 sweet patatoe
chicken gizzards
tbsp of spinach


sometimes like 2 times a week i will add half a banana with the oatmeal and sometimes a tbsp of yougurt. she loves and her coat and teeth are looking fantastic. plenty energy also. o yea .... 2 days a week i will just give her strictly fish .... canned salmon or mackeral or some tilapia fillets. if you have a wal mart by you all this can be found ther for a good price . i bought a ten pound bag of chicken leg quarters and backs for 4.99

 

sounds simple, ill assume you feed your dogs twice daily? does this turn out to be cheaper than buying commercial food.

 

There are like 40 varieties of Nutro. There is MAX, Natural Choice and Ultra.

Ultra being a holistic food is very high end. If you read the ingredients it tells you all you need to know about it. .

But, it works very well from the 20 or 30 ppl I personally know who feed it and I've used it myself as well when my dogs were recovering from surgery and once, an abcess, since antioxidants help your immune system I have used this for that reason.

I think a lot of people are used to foods where there are only a few choices, and they will try one and if it doesnt work- give up. But, if you don't have the information to choose the right one- its very hard with a brand like Nutro which has so much variety.