What food is best

As you all know kobi is now 4 months old tuesday and he is currently being fed on supadog pupy complete and i mix this with pedigree chum tin and he has 3 meals a day.

My partners uncle who is the breeder feeds his pup wag complete mixed with pet mince and is a lot larger in size and i'm worried our pup is not big enough thing is though were going to be showing him and have been told that the size can't be no bigger than 24" to the withers can anybody confirm this please and give me helpful advice as we have been told that supadog is too rich in protein which will make him too tall too quick for showing.

Large breeds tend to do well on low protein diets, as you say. Why not try the breeder's food? If it's working out well for his pup? I personally feed raw and would recommend it. Dogs don't grow too fast when fed naturally.

I agree, when talking the "best" food, it's as nature intended - raw. It's around 20% protein (which is obviously high quality), 15% fat and 65% water, which makes it an ideal food for large breed puppies.

Next best, is home-cooked.

Thereafter, my preferred is James Wellbeloved.

So do you suggest i keep with the supadog puppy and change to chicken mince.

I have brought some mince today and started him on it today and he lapped it up i'm also feeding.

Thanks for the advice anyway.

So, you're a hunter/gatherer and never buy stuff from the supermarket
I've nothing against raw - provided the owner has the time, knowledge and dedication to provide a nutrional balance.
JWB is one of the better kibbles - but there are others.
Do whats best/right for you and your dog.

LOL you've said that to the wrong person! I live in the mountains where there are no supermarkets and everyone is self-sufficient.

Once you get started you'll find it's actually as simple or as complicated as you want to make it.

I feed prey-model diet which means take a chunk of carcass with bone still attached and feed. I feed a variety of meats over the course of a month so all bases are covered. Every so often I add some offal and liver. That's it. I feed 2.5% of desired body weight for pups and adults. Ok, maybe oversimplified and I do know the background nutritional stuff, however that is what it comes down to.

Others make it more complicated (although still a good diet) by adding veg, some even add oats or rice. Some add supplements. You don't have to though - all you need to do is roughly replicate the diet of a wolf and you're there.

It's also the kind of diet that can be as expensive or inexpensive as you want to make it. If you're a bargain hunter you can source some really cheap cuts of meat, especially if you go straight to the slaughterhouse and source stuff that humans don't eat yet are perfectly good for the dogs who are quite partial to heads, lungs trachea etc. Or, for really easy sourcing, Landywoods seem to have some excellent prices.

This is a good intro: http://www.rawmeatybones.com/diet/exp-diet-guide.pdf

I'm a hunter - always looking for the best deal on a decent complete food!
With a complete food (from a reputable manufacturer) I know what I'm feeding is nutritionally adequate and I don't have to have a fridge or freezer full of animal parts.
I admire raw feeders for dedication to their art, but it's not for me and my dog I'm afraid

It's whatever suits your dog and your lifestyle best. I find raw feeding very easy. We sometimes have to be creative when we go on holiday, but it's all part of the challenge!

Ziva, you told me the same thing and I took it on board at the time. But I've since realised that there's a serious flaw in your logic, and a meat diet is in fact much higher protein than that.

I'll try and explain...

I have a bag of James Wellbeloved kibble in front of me and it breaks down as follows:

21% protein
10.5% oil/fat
4.8% fibre
9.5% ash

The amount of water and carbs aren't stated, but the typical is 10% moisture in kibble, which leaves around 40% carbs.

Raw minced beef (as an example) works out as approximately:

20% fat
20% protein
60% water

Now your argument is that they both have roughly the same percentage of protein. But in terms of the dog's diet (rather than the delivery of the diet) they most certainly don't.

You have to discount the water in both diets to get the true percentage of protein in the diet. After all, if you added half a pint of water to your dog's kibble it wouldn't change the percentage of the energy that he gets from protein.

So to calculate the dry matter basis we calculate as follows (assuming 10% moisture):

21 divided by 90 times 100 = 23.3% protein

Now calculate the dry matter basis of raw mince (assuming 60% moisture):

20 divided by 40 times 100 = 50% protein

Or to look at it from another angle, consider the recommended feeding guidelines for each diet.

For my 10kg dog the recommended amount of kibble is 180 grams per day. That's

21 divided by 100 times 180 = 37.8 grams of protein a day

The recommended amount of raw meat is 2.5% of bodyweight which works out as 250 grams a day. That's

20 divided by 100 times 250 = 50 grams of protein a day

So the actual amount of protein you're dog is getting each day on an all meat diet is quite a bit higher. And what is more, the percentage is higher still as there are no carbs to 'dilute' the protein in the diet.

Of course, the logical thing to do next is to figure out what percentage of calories come from each component in the diet. I haven't got time to do that right now, but will figure it out when I get home. It could well be that as fat is much richer in calories than carbs the percentage of energy from protein is the same in both diets. I guess you need to know more about why they recommend low protein levels for large breed pups. If it's the actual amount in grams of protein that must be kept low then raw might well have too much. However, if it's the percentage of total calories from protein that must be kept low it may well be fine.

Also you need to weigh up the differing arguments as to digestibility. Some say that the protein sources in raw are much more digestable, indicting that you'd want your pup to be getting even LESS protein on an all meat raw diet. Others say that cooking partially digests food and the dog can therefore make use of more of the protein in a good quality kibble (such as Burns or JWB). If the latter is true then the higher volume of protein in raw might be ok.

But certainly if you stick to feeding guidlines you'll be feeding your dog more grams of protein on raw meat than you would be on JWB.

I'm at work at the mo so couldn't take in all your figures(!), however just to say I don't believe dry matter analysis is relevant when it comes to raw as it's not fed on a dry matter basis. Rawfeeders feed meat in it's natural form.

If you want to compare that to kibble, then you have to compare it "as fed" not "as analysed". The dog's body isn't going to negate all that moisture, so you can't discount it either. In fact, all that water content is one of the great things about a raw-fed diet.

Dry matter is just whatever is there without the water. Which is great, but when you start looking at a carnivore's design; it's not meant to eat food without moisture content.

This is depressingly illustrated by dry cat foods - which the pet food makers themselves link to renal failure over the long term. Their solution? Feed some canned food as well!

Once you start comparing an artificial construct like kibble to raw, you start getting into "weirdness" like protein numbers - kibble makers add grain-based proteins to their foods and use it to boost their numbers. Ask them and they'll tell you protein is a valuable addition to the food.

You also need to factor in that kibble is so highly heated and processed that all the 'life' goes out of it. In a sense it dies and becomes a new molecular inert substance, and therefore no longer 'food' as you know it.

During manufacture it is sprayed with an irresistible protein digest and vitamin mix ....... it is so dead and inert that it doesn't actually matter what goes into it. After it's processed, heated and extruded, it's really that magic 'protein digest' spray that gives it all the nutrition.

Mmmmmm ...... yummy!! Just what I want for my dogs!!