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Old August 12th, 2004, 02:49 PM
shan shan is offline
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Eukanuba...

Just a little confused....I have been doing some research the last couple days on dog food. I know that alot of you are not fans of Eukanuba. Is this becuse it is a poor quality food, or is it due to the fact that it is manufactured by Iams? I looked at the ingredients (for the Lamb & Rice Puppy Formula), and they dont look too bad....
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Old August 12th, 2004, 02:52 PM
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LavenderRott LavenderRott is offline
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Both. I have looked at so many ingredients lists, can you please remind me what the first 5 ingredients are?
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Old August 12th, 2004, 02:54 PM
shan shan is offline
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I can only remember the first 2 as I looked at it last night, but they are Lamb, and brewers rice. What does "Brewers Rice" mean?
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Old August 12th, 2004, 02:56 PM
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mastifflover mastifflover is offline
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The problem withit is that it is expensive and is filled with fillers corn soya etc. The ingredients are listed in the amounts 1st ingredient most 2nd and so forth. You can buy a much higher quality food for the same price. You want to try and avoid corn and soya a lot of dogs have allergies to these to ingredients. If I remember correctly brewer rice is a lower quality and more of the hull then the acutal grain.
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:01 PM
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It is my understanding that brewer's rice is what is left over after the rice has been processed for beer. If such is the case, it sure doesn't have any nutrients left. Unless it is white rice or brown rice, I wouldn't feed it.
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:03 PM
shan shan is offline
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Okay, since I already bought it, I guess Annie will have to finish the bag, but does anybody buy a good quality one at their local petstore (Petland etc.) I was looking at Nutro, and Eagle Pack there last time, are these good? I also think they have Natures Choice or something like that. Annie really likes that Eukanuba stuff...maybe she willl ike a really good food better though.
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:08 PM
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Eagle Pack is supposed to be excellent food.
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:10 PM
shan shan is offline
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Thats what I thought....Look at all the things I am learning here! Before coming on here I would have just went to the grocery store and picked up something...
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:25 PM
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GsdDiamond GsdDiamond is offline
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Before it was noticed that my girl had a chicken allergy, we used Iams. The people at one of the local pet stores said that Eukanuba was a better quality dog food, and that we'd sure notice it with the amount she would poop. Boy...did we ever notice! We gradually moved her over to Eukanuba and the poopies changed alright....there were tons more!!!

It went right through her! Eukanuba = bad (at least for Diamond)
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:29 PM
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mastifflover mastifflover is offline
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Eagle pack is a good food. Don't you find that they can clear a room when they are eating Iams especially Eukanuba. My rescue was on it when I first got him and man he would leave the room after he let one go. You know peel the paint off the walls.
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:30 PM
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Solid Gold is incredible
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:31 PM
Goldenmom Goldenmom is offline
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If you go to the top of the forums and go to "search" and put in the word Eukanuba, you will find posts that have been done in the past in regards to dog food and which is better.

Solid Gold is a superior food.

Heather and her 3 Golden Girls
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:38 PM
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GsdDiamond GsdDiamond is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mastifflover
Eagle pack is a good food. Don't you find that they can clear a room when they are eating Iams especially Eukanuba. My rescue was on it when I first got him and man he would leave the room after he let one go. You know peel the paint off the walls.

Oh...don't I know it! Sitting in another room and my eyes started to water when she squeaked out a little one!
Since she's been switched over to a dog food that doesn't contain any chicken (there aren't many brands!! For treats either!!) her "poofs" are hardly noticable.
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Old August 12th, 2004, 03:38 PM
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Shan,aside from the fact,IAMS and Eukanuba are not good quality food,I always used to think it was,they have an inhumane way of testing food on lab-animals(dogs/cats).
Although I never bought grocery-store food for my cats,I was never really aware of the differences until I joined this Forum.
I was told Royal Canin is a good food,so I bought it without checking ingredients and the second ingredient is corn-meal,the crows now eat it every day
Other good foods are Wellness,Chicken-soup-for-petlovers-soul(my cats love it) also Paul Newman has dog and catfood,good ingredients and most of the proceeds goes right back to animals in need.
In the long run,it will be cheaper to buy good quality food,they will eat less and not get fat on fillers.
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Old August 12th, 2004, 04:22 PM
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I went and read past posts on this topic. Am I right in understanding that Eagle Pack Holistic Chicken is better than Eagle Pack Original because the original has corn as the 2nd ingredient? Or is Eagle Pack original good also? Also from what I was reading, I need to be careful and not feed Lamb and Rice formulas as they have more fat content? I want a happy healthy dog, not a fat one...
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Old August 12th, 2004, 04:33 PM
sharte1978 sharte1978 is offline
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Try a diet called BARF

Hello,

I've done some research on this diet and there are a lot of positives about it.
http://www.willowglen.com/barf.htm
Many other websites with plenty information this is just one I pulled.

Steph
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Old August 12th, 2004, 04:59 PM
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mastifflover mastifflover is offline
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Barf and most of the raw diets are excellent. But for myself the cost is prohibitive. My guy would bankrupt me in a few months if you look what I would have to feed a 155 pound dog. I would highly reccommend it for small and medium breeds. I actually know 4 or 5 dogs that are eating raw and they look great and have a lot more energy (you might want to think twice if you have a Border Collie or another high energy dog).Will you be able to keep up with them if they have more energy. I am actually thinking of feeding raw and kibble. I have told this also works well. I had Buddy on Solid Gold and it is excellent food but again it only comes in 30 pound bags. I perfer to buy a bag that will last at least 2 weeks. I found his output to be brutal on this food as well and have spoken to other Mastiff owner and for some reason this food has this effect on this breed. Not pleasant. I would go with the eagle pack holistic, over the other eagle pack.
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Old August 12th, 2004, 05:03 PM
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Thanks, I will look into the Eagle Pack Holistic. I thought of the raw diet, and cost is also a concern, although shes little...actually time is probably more of a constraint. Maybe I am also diging my heels in a bit on the raw diet as I have never done it or anyone I know has never done it. Who knows, maybe all of you will eventually change my mind as you have on the quality of food...
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Old August 12th, 2004, 05:13 PM
sharte1978 sharte1978 is offline
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Cost is an issue for sure

But you can make good with a local farmer and you could be set. I'm getting a Bullmastiff in late Jan 05'. Since the breeder has always feed her dogs this way and they are so beautiful I figured why not. After my research I was pretty impressed. Your 155 pound Mastiff sounds very nice. He is still growing right. At the begining of my dog search I was looking at the Mastiff but if found them a little big for me. But I loved the look so much I looked into the Bullmastiff and fell in love.

Steph
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Old August 12th, 2004, 06:24 PM
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Hey Shan! I just started my 10 mth old border collie on raw food, and it's not that expensive in comparison to Eukanuba, which i was feeding her before. The benefits have been astronomical and she's been on it for less than one week! We only feed her a pound a day as they're only supposed to eat 2-3% of their body weight. I'm not sure where you are from, but if you have a store called Pet Planet nearby, go there. We have her on Mountain Dog raw food and it comes already prepared. It comes in one pound blocks and you get 16 for less than $19.00 CDN. We feed her 1/2 a pound twice a day and all we do is cut the block in half and mush it around. Everything they need is in there and she loves it! We haven't started our heelers on it yet for the same reason you don't wanna change food yet. They need to finish their bags first!. anyways, check it out at local pet stores as I'm sure Pet Planet isn't the only one to seel it, or check out their website at www.mountaindogfood.com for distributers. They told me to start her on the chicken and bone one as Eukanuba's primary ingredient is chicken. Good luck!
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Old August 12th, 2004, 08:25 PM
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Hi

I did alot of reading and looked at many things when picking a good food for my golden retriever pup. It does also depend on the size of your pup, I need large bred puppy he will be over 50 pounds. I feed Nutro Natural Choice large bred puppy than close to 1 yr Blaze will have large bred adult. I like that this food has no corn no fullers that have no fake value. Well good luck, hope you find what you are looking for.
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Old August 13th, 2004, 08:03 AM
MBRA518 MBRA518 is offline
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I've done a lot of research on this lately too - you can check out my post... I've found, IMO, the best value for the money is Preformatrin Ultra.. I actually just bought a bag last night - so I can't tell you any difference I see in my dog yet but the ingredients look great - no corn at all, all natural food.

adited to add:

here are some good links that helped me on my search

http://www.api4animals.org/689.htm
http://www.thelittlefoxes.net/html/pet_food.html
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Old August 14th, 2004, 02:29 PM
bbv bbv is offline
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I took Roxi to the vets yesterday and the Dr. told me I should maybe change her food to Eukanuba......after reading your discussion on this food I have to wonder shouldn't a vet know a good food from a bad one?
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Old August 14th, 2004, 03:51 PM
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Sometimes and some vets will tell you what they think you want to hear,my vet sells Medi-Cal(i think that's what it is called )and of course that's what she wants me to buy for my cats,but they don't like it
She told me Wellness,Eagle Pack,Nutro Natural Choice are all good foods,Iams and Eukanuba,anything Purina,always check the ingredients before buying any pet-food!! It's a BIG money-making business and some companies unfortunately do not have the health of the animals as a priority.
Actually there are plenty of good foods in any Pet-supply store,people are becoming more and more aware of the importance of good food.
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Old August 15th, 2004, 11:30 PM
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Yeah, even vet's are out to profit from the food they sell. Medi-cal is made by Science Diet so they're all related somehow. Eukanuba is a higher quality of food, but there are holistic brands that are better, and usually cheaper or the same price. Solid Gold is a terrific food and my dog was on that before we started raw. I've heard royal canin and Nutro are really good too. If you're gonna feed kibble, go with those. I honestly can't say enough about the raw diet though, but I'll save that for another thread!!!
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Old August 16th, 2004, 10:39 PM
Lady_Eleven Lady_Eleven is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shan
Okay, since I already bought it, I guess Annie will have to finish the bag, but does anybody buy a good quality one at their local petstore (Petland etc.) I was looking at Nutro, and Eagle Pack there last time, are these good? I also think they have Natures Choice or something like that. Annie really likes that Eukanuba stuff...maybe she willl ike a really good food better though.
As for local stores (such as chain type stores), I don't know of any great foods (though the local store here is getting a bit better), but if you were to have to chose between eagle pack and eukanuba, by far go for eagle pack (eagle pack holistic is even better).

I feed my dog California natural. So far it has done wonders for her. It seems to be only sold in health based pet food stores or individually operated stores. Theres also a way to get it by a UPS provider.

Other foods by the company are innova and healthwise (I've also heard these are really good). You can check out thier site at naturapet.com.

My Maggie used to be on a food called Natures Variety. It's a great food as well but extreamly expensive here.

Others I've heard are good are: solid gold, go natural!, back to basics, foundations, and Canidae. Some people swear by a food called Wellness, but I found my dog pooped alot on it. She also got kinda smelly. It's also more expensive than her current food but I've been told it's lower quality. I'm sure there are more foods than those, but I'm just going off of what I've heard or looked up for myself.

When you're trying to pick a healthy pet food, take these things into consideration:

Quality Foods Should Contain:

-Superior sources of protein, either whole fresh meats or single source meat meal (ex. chicken meal rather than poultry meal)
-A whole-meat source as one of the first two ingredients.
-Whole, unprocessed grains, vegetables, and other foods. Nutrients and enzymes are more likely to be found in unprocessed foods.

Quality foods should contain very little to NONE of the following:

-Food fragments
- lower-cost by-products of another food manufacturing process, such as brewer's rice and wheat bran...Manufacturers usually include at least one fragment to help lower costs. Beware any food that includes several fragments.
-Meat by-products (not handled as carefully as whole meat)
- any food that contains meat by-products as the MAJOR protein source indicates a low-quality product.

HIGH-QUALITY FOODS SHOULD NOT CONTAIN:

-Fats or proteins named generically (ex. animal fat/poultry fat instead of beef fat/ lamb meal)
-Artificial preservatives (BHA, BHT, ethioxyquin)
-Artificial colors.
-Sweeteners (corn syrup, sucrose, ammoniated glycyrrhizin) to improve unappealing food Propylene glycol - a toxic substance when consumed in large amounts; added to some "chewy" foods to keep them moist.


Also remember that if something says human grade, it very well may be, but you have to be careful on what exactly they consider human grade. Some companies include excellent meat cuts and quality ingredients, but there are alot of things that can qualify as human grade. It's just that some of these questionable ingredients wouldn't be included in our human food because of it's low nutritional value (example: Pig snouts). So you kind of have to do your research on making sure a company isn't "cutting corners" and trying to sell you something that sounds better, but infact it turns out to just be a sales ploy.

Might be more information than you are looking for but I thought I might as well share. Maybe someone else will find this information useful ( I did my research lol )

Edited to add: also remember that a higher quality food you are likely to have to feed less. For my 50 lb puppy I only feed 2 1/2 to 2- 3/4 cups a day. On low quality foods I would likely have to feed her around 5 cups or more a day.
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Old August 17th, 2004, 09:16 AM
Lady_Eleven Lady_Eleven is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bbv
I took Roxi to the vets yesterday and the Dr. told me I should maybe change her food to Eukanuba......after reading your discussion on this food I have to wonder shouldn't a vet know a good food from a bad one?
Yeah you would think and hope so, but the thing that I do find sad is that alot of them also get benefits for selling more of that type of food (such as science diet, medi-cal, and possibly others). So they sell it, weither it is healthy or not, just to get the extra perks from the company. Maybe Eukanuba is jumping the bandwagon and starting to do the same thing, I don't know.
Im starting to think maybe it would be better to go to something like a holistic vet with my dog; I find it disapointing that a regular vet will sell you garbage food because they benefit from it, they often tell you your pet needs certain procedures even if it doesn't, and try to get you to vacinate your pet overly (and from what I've been hearing about all these problems with this, it scares me) just to make a good buck off you yearly. I'm finding it seems to be all about money now, not for the best care of the animal. I hope somewhere out there this isn't the case, but I have yet to find somewhere that it isn't.
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Old August 17th, 2004, 09:58 AM
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Quote:
Im starting to think maybe it would be better to go to something like a holistic vet with my dog; I find it disapointing that a regular vet will sell you garbage food because they benefit from it, they often tell you your pet needs certain procedures even if it doesn't, and try to get you to vacinate your pet overly (and from what I've been hearing about all these problems with this, it scares me) just to make a good buck off you yearly. I'm finding it seems to be all about money now, not for the best care of the animal.
I totally agree with you!! My vet's did that to me with my oldest heeler. I took her in for a check up and they found one of her back teeth were abcesed. The vet said we had to pull it. That's fine as I knew it had to be done for her sake. Well, they decided to go ahead and clean her teeth and pull 3 more that weren't as bad, but looked like they could have been an issue!!! This forced them to charge me more for anesthetic, and for the cleening which I never asked for, and the pulling. It cost me over $1200.00!! I was severely angry and haven't been back there since. My heeler fractured her front canine a few months ago while disciplining a malamute and I took her to a smaller vet just outside of Calgary. He pulled it and it only cost me $250.00 and he didn't get into any bull about her needing anything extra! My baby's tough and get's into scraps with younger houlligans!!

Whenever I go to any vet clinic here, they try to sell me Medi-cal, or heart worm prevention medication. We don't even have heartworm in Alberta!!!What crap! I can't imagine being a vet and seeing an animal suffer, and not helping it because the owner's can't pay all of the money up front! Not everyone has $3000.00+ lying around the house! We all do manage to come up with the money, but I think vet's need to be in the business of helping animals, not just making a profit!!! That's the same for doctor's too I guess!

There's my 2 cents for this post! Thanks for letting me rant!
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Old August 17th, 2004, 05:23 PM
HUGH LAWSON HUGH LAWSON is offline
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i have been feeding my dogs beneful mixed with two cans of tuna for more protein do to the amount of work they do (weight pulling and some tree climbing) is this healthy. i use the one with natural fish oil.
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Old August 17th, 2004, 05:32 PM
bbv bbv is offline
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Hey I liked your rant! I know how you feel, last week I took my new dog (4 yr old Pom) to my regular vet of 6 years for a check up. I just wanted him to look over her because I adopted her from a shelter. He charged me $46 to take her temperature and that is it.......

I mean $46 is not alot but my point being I could have done that myself for nothing........

He didn't even touch her(besides her butt),didn't look at her ears,eyes or anything. So needless to say I high tailed it to another vet who was excellent
and gave her a complete exam and it was less money.

Anyways thanks for listening to my little rant!
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