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Reviews Views Date of last review
1 22192 Sun March 5, 2006
Recommended By Average Price Average Rating
No recommendations None indicated None indicated
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Description: Ingredients:
Poultry by-product meal, ground yellow corn, ground whole wheat, poultry fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and ascorbyl palmitate), beet pulp, corn gluten meal, fish meal, dehydrated whole egg, natural chicken flavor, brewers dried yeast, dried whey, dried cheese, lecithin, dicalcium phosphate, potassium chloride, salt, ascorbic acid, vitamin A acetate, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, vitamin B12 supplement, riboflavin supplement, dl-methionine, niacin, calcium pantothenate, choline chloride, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of vitamin K activity), folic acid, biotin, thiamine mononitrate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, sodium selenite, calcium iodate, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, zinc sulfate, copper sulfate.

Guaranteed Analysis:
Crude Protein (minimum) 29%
Crude Fat (minimum0 19%
Moisture (maximum) 10%
Crude Fiber (maximum) 3.5%



Editors

Registered: October 2005
Posts: 3953
Review Date: Sun March 5, 2006 Would you recommend the product? No | Price you paid?: Not Indicated | Rating: 0 

 
Pros:
Cons: Use of by-products, low quality grains and other controversial fillers.

The first ingredient is a meat product of unidentifiable origin. It is a meal made from the by-products of carcasses of a variety of fowl, but the origin is unidentifiable. We recommend avoiding any pet food using such ingredients. It is impossible to ascertain the quality of by-products and these are usually products that are of such low quality as to be rejected for use in the human food chain, or else are those parts that have so little value that they cannot be used elsewhere in either the human or pet food industries. The AAFCO definition of poultry by-product meal is β€œa meal consisting of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered poultry, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as might occur unavoidable in good processing practice.”


There is a further meat meal ingredient (fish meal) 8th on the ingredient list, but this is too far down to make up a substantive portion of the food.


The primary grains in the food are corn and wheat. Corn is a problematic grain that is difficult for dogs to digest and thought to be the cause of a great many allergy and yeast infection problems. We prefer not to see this used in dog food. Corn appears a second time in the ingredients, this time as gluten meal. The AAFCO definition of corn gluten meal is β€œthe dried residue from corn after the removal of the larger part of the starch and germ, and the separation of the bran by the process employed in the wet milling manufacture of corn starch or syrup, or by enzymatic treatment of the endosperm.” In plain English, that which remains after all the nutritious bits have been removed.


The use of wheat is a significant negative: wheat is believed to be the number one cause of allergy problems in dog food. This is another ingredient we prefer not to see used at all in dog food


Poultry fat is a further low quality ingredient and is impossible to determine the source. Unidentified ingredients are usually very low quality. AAFCO define this as "obtained from the tissues of poultry in the commercial processes of rendering or extracting. It consists predominantly of glyceride esters of fatty acids and contains no additions of free fatty acids. If an antioxidant is used, the common name or names must be indicated, followed by the words "used as a preservative". It is a concern to see a fat in the top four ingredients of a dry dog food. Research at Purdue University has identified a this as a factor that increases the risk of bloat in large breed dogs. Smaller breeds are untested.


Beet pulp is filler and a controversial ingredient – it is a by-product, being dried residue from sugar beets which has been cleaned and extracted in the process of manufacturing sugar. It is a controversial ingredient in dog food, claimed by some manufacturers to be a good source of fibre, and derided by others as an ingredient added to slow down the transition of rancid animal fats and causing stress to kidney and liver in the process. We note that beet pulp is an ingredient that commonly causes problems for dogs, including allergies and ear infections, and prefer not to see it used in dog food. There are less controversial products around if additional fibre is required.


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