Opinions On Pet Cafe's "meal For Pets"?

[Jake-K9]

Wondering if anyone feeds their dogs Pet Cafe's Meal for Pets food?

What do you think of it? Is it good value for money or would I be better trying to source similiar ingredients myself?

[Akay]

We've been feeding meal for pets for 5+ years and before that we were mixing up vets all natural complete mix with fresh mince. The meal for pets is the Vets all natural mix and roo meat. You should have a look at the vets all natural site http://www.vetsallnatural.com.au/ and read all of the information and fact sheets that are on the site. The pet cafe site also goes into quite a bit of detail and is worth a read too. It's worth reading all of the information because you get an excellent idea of the theory behind vets all natural, and then it's up to you as to whether you agree with it or not and wish to put your dogs on it. It lists all of the ingredients in the mix and why Dr Syme believes the ingredients are necessary in the dog's diet (basically he based the diet on obervations of wolves. The VAN mix is fermented overnight because Dr Syme says that the wolf eats the gut of the prey animal first and in the gut there will be fermented grains etc). It's not a mix that you can easily put together yourself as he puts in a lot of ingredients that probably aren't easily sourced from the supermarket. This is different to the Dr Billinghurst BARF patties, which include ingredients that you could more easily put together yourself. I personally like VAN better.

I highly recommend the meal for pets from Pet Cafe as our dogs absolutely thrive on it. I also think it is value for money. My cavalier is on the allergy blend at about $6.50 a pack, which lasts his 3 days (he's a big cavalier). So it's averaging just over $2 a day, which I think is brilliant for what you get! If your dog doesn't like the roo meat you could altneratively by the VAN complete mix in a packet that you soak overnight and mix with the mince of your choice the next day. Dr Syme does go into a lot of detail why he recommends roo meat.

A few times I've heard people comment that the dog doesn't digest the food properly because they see the oats and split peas in their poop. The people who say this haven't read enough about the food, as Dr Syme specifically states that a couple of the ingredients are purely put in their for roughage to ensure the stool is well formed and also to help with expressing the anal glands. Our dogs have never ever had a problem with their anal glands. I can't recommend it highly enough. A few people on this site feed VAN, so maybe a search on that will also be useful to you.

Edited January 2, 2011 by Akay

[Jake-K9]

Thanks muchly for the feedback