Natural Balance Dog Food

[CavsRcute]

I have just come back from my local vet and saw Dick Van Patten's Natural Balance. They had a 2.27kg bag for$ 23.?? and a bigger bag. Chicken was the first ingredient followed by organic brown rice and other organic veges.

Such a coincidence after I had been reading this thread

[White Shepherd mom]

I'm with poodlefan on this one - reading the ingredient lists I'm so glad I do my own thing.

What's with the rosemary extract in just about all these foods? My one dog is epileptic and I have read that rosemary can bring on seizures to dogs that are prone to them.

Also, dogs with allergies can be grain intollerant, so out goes the rice, etc.

Oh well, back to the kitchen...

Ann.

[larry]

hi cavsrcute,

you must be in the united states ?

I think in australia the natural balance made here is about $25 for 3kg and $80 for 15kg (thats australian dollars)

While i do think that the usa makes some good pet foods, it seems very wasteful to the environment to import dog food to australia (and use all the energy with transport) when we have good quality pet foods made here. (plus after all the problems countries overseas had with mad cow disease, i'd prefer to get pet food made using australian meat)

Ann,

From my understanding, vitamin E and a rosemary extract are natural preservatives that are used in pet and human food, if your dog is allergic to either then thats quite bad luck.....but i haven't read of any dogs getting seizures from the rosemary extract, mind you that would be different to whole rosemary.....

Grain allergies-yes i've read that the most common grain allergy in the usa is corn, and the most common allergy in australia is wheat, so if your dog has a wheat allergy, then you need to use a food that doesn't contain wheat, i understand that this is why the natural balance is made with rice....but pets can also be allergic to a lot of other things..eg dust, dust mites, pollen, grass, various garden plants, etc

Edited July 1, 2005 by larry

[CavsRcute]

Hi Larry,

No, I'm not in the US.... I actually live on the North Shore, in Sydney

The vet had just got the food in and only had 2 small bags and 1 bigger one.

[Guest Tiggy]

After reading this post I did some research on Natural Balance and decided to try it. I got it from Risely St Vet, the Vet Nurse there said she feeds it to her dogs and they look great. The feeding guide on the back is in grams and I don't have kitchen scales so I rang Natural Balance to see if they knew roughly how much a cup weighed so I could work it out that way and I was put through to a really nice lady who said thankyou so much for buying my product and helped me out with how much to give my dog. I'll let you know how my dog goes on it.

[KitKat]

I've got a sample pack winging it's way to me and should be at my place by the time i get home At the moment i'm tossing between this and eagle pack as my suppliment kibble... :p

[KitKat]

Ok...i got my sample last night and they are only thin little kibble but they smell ok and i was giving them to my dogs last night as treats and they seemed quite happy with them, and they seemed to be a bit crunchy going by the sounds the dogs were making as they ate them..lol. So...in the next 1-2 months i'll be taking one of the dogs in for his yearly injection and i might pick up a bag/box of the stuff and give it a go

[dogcop]

Just whizzed through peoples replies seems no one mentions absorption rates. i.e. amount actually absorbed by dog average dry food or can 35-45% the rest is waste product as you would think. the better quality products have generally better absorption rate meaning you don't feed as much so you don't get as much waste. The best dry food I have come across is MERA DOG it has. It is an imported German product that has an absorption rate of about 80% with no dietry problems putting them on it. But you might get some going off it to a lesser product. I believe that there would be suppliers of this product in all capital cities.

Chris

[larry]

hi dogcop,

i haven't heard of that brand before ....

I would be very surprised if the various superpremium dog foods don't have higher digestibility %'s than 34% ?

Maybe that figure is true for the cheaper dog foods ?

I was told in the past that the protein digestibility of the Natural Balance we feed our dogs was about 85% and that seems to show they use good quality ingredients ? http://www.naturalbalance.net.au/

Canned food has a LOT of water due to the various starches and soya protein that most brands tend to add into canned food to bulk it up, so a lot of the weight you buy in cans is just water.....

I'm sure there are good dog foods from overseas, but i would prefer to buy a dog food that is fresher in that it's made in australia, plus support our local farmers...

don't you think australian meat and grains are safer to use than those from europe-especially after all the 'mad cow' problems ?

Edited July 29, 2005 by larry

[dogcop]

Hi Larry,

Your right 85% is good. Most common brands you supermarket stuff is low digestion rate. But I did open a can of Pal Professional one day in my pet shop that I used to own and i found offel. When I takled the rep about it an argument erupted and he and his products were shown the street with the final shot fired by him calling me a puritan saleman . Yes it would be gr8 to buy OZ if we can find a company that is OZ owned and ethical ( I think that word still exists LOL) They probably exist so I will rely on you good folks to educate me. One other good dry food I had In my shop was called KINTA, it was made in Yarrwonga Victoria dont know if it is still going probably is it was a good product but I couldn't sell it because bloody vets were selling it sales tax exempt so I couldn't match or beat their price. Vets should not be permited to sell retail products, you don't buy milk and bread etc when you go to the doctors !! Very unprofessional I think.

[Buster's Mum]

What about the tallow in this product, isn't tallow bad? And what about rice being the first ingredient?

[larry]

hi buster,

tallow-why is tallow bad ? tallow is fat from cows, and if a dog eats beef then you get tallow in that ? after all dogs need fat in their diet...

rice being first is not a problem, what's important is the protein/fat %'s you want for your dog's food, and the quality of the ingredients. If two different dog foods have the same protein %, they can list the ingredients in different ways-wheat, or wheat+wheat bran, etc and split up ingredients into different components if they want that particular ingredient to not come first.

Plus if a company uses raw meat slurry, then they count the weight of the water in the meat, so it's easy to put meat first (however you lose the water when you cook the biscuits), where if a company uses meat meal, because the water has been removed from the meat already, the weight of the meat meal (where the meat has been cooked) is a lot less, so meat won't be the first ingredient by weight. They are two different methods, but you can still end up with the same protein % in the final biscuit.

Edited August 1, 2005 by larry