Can you give me some ideas on this, im a bit miffed after looking around for ages and only finding fillers. This kibble looks fantastic to me and cant undersatnd why ive never heard of it - no maize, wheat, corn, 56% meat at a very reasonable price. Seems like a few ingredients really well put together.

Dry Dog Food | Best Additive free Dogs Food

cheers

wow what a price! Luckily my dogs are Greyhounds X's so I feed them Greyhound Mix which costs £9.99 for a 15kg Bag.

It does look good. I think what irritates me about this sort of food is that you have to pay for delivery as no one locally stocks it, this pushes the price up. Of course, if you want to start out its not really practical to buy a huge sack in the hope that it suits them or they will eat it.

It isn't actually 56% meat. A large proportion of that is FRESH meat which is dried out during production. The actual meat content is about 30%, which the manufacturer has admitted to me. He promised to get back to me soon but so far nothing.

thanks for the tips. I had a quick google around and delivery at one place is 2.99.

Rainmaker I had a similar thought hence my ask on extra dried meat if you could let me know what they say id apprciate it. The protein levels still look reasonably good even if cooked out its at 30%. Also it coming from meat is a + rather than grains.. im tempted

Hi James! I'm new here and after reading lots of recommendations on here I now feed my working cocker spaniel Orijen. Hope you don't mind me asking but why are you changing away from Orijen, as I thought you were really keen on it. Do you thinking the Barking Heads looks as good or better? I did think about Barking Heads but decided to go "grain-free". Any thoughts would be helpful.

I replied to your dried meat question a little earlier, I don't know if you've seen it yet? I know I'm being pedantic, but don't forget the protein level isn't 30% that's just the approximate dried meat content. The protein level in Bad Hair Day, for example, is 22%. That's too low for my liking, but as I am always keen to stress, I do understand everyone has a different idea of what's best and I'm only too happy to help them within the parameters of their own requirements.

With that in mind, yes you're right in thinking that Barking Heads is a decent food, with named grains, animal proteins and fats (no generic ingredients or derivatives) and seems to be from a helpful British company. At the price point, it's one of the best I've seen.

As I said I'm still waiting for the company owner to reply to my email in full, as I had pointed out how 'carefully worded' the site and its proclamations are, and asked for more details on the metabolisable energy in k/cal per KG and the feeding guidelines. I also asked them to quantify what 'vitamins and minerals' were, how they were sourced and what they comprise.

The final concern I had was that the site is keen to stress the products have no ADDED artificial preservatives or ingredients. Many "upstream" providers (the people supplying the manufacturers) add BHT, ethoxyquin and other nasty chemical preservatives to things like fish, lamb and fats to stabilise and preserve them. A manufacturer can quite legally state 'no ADDED artificial additives, colours or preservatives' and still have a massive quantity of them in the product!

Without access to that information and the recommended feeding amounts, it's hard to comment further. But it still may work out cheaper to buy a 'more expensive' food that is 70% meat, 0% grain and from 100% chemical, hormone and additive free sources. I'm thinking of Orijen here but Applaws do a similar product.

While Orijen (as an example) is £46 a sack, you only need to feed a tiny fraction of the amount you'd feed using a grain based kibble and as such it works out CHEAPER overall. My two dogs cost me about 18p per day to feed on the "expensive" Orijen, and that's not counting the fact I feed at least 50% raw (i.e. 50% the amount of Orijen recommended on the bag) so actually it's about 9p a day!

On the flip side, a kibble made with grains and suchlike, would cost me about 25p to 30p a day to feed, contains far far less meat, and has all the problems grain brings with it. Just something to consider.

Hi Henry,

I have to laugh, we posted at the same time and I didn't know James was already feeding Orijen. In that case James old bean, why switch down to a grain based kibble and then look at supplementing it with dried meat? You're shooting yourself (and the dog/s) in the foot, as well as exponentially increasing the cost of feeding!

Thanks for that, Rainmaker! After reading your views on Orijen, I'm happy that I'm feeding my dog the best kibble I can. He has Naturediet in the evening and Orijen in the morning. I spent a lot of time researching foods and hope I'm doing the best for my dog. It seems to me that you pretty much agree that the Orijen is a really good food. Thanks for your opinion.

As far as commercial diets go, yes. To date Orijen is my 100% recommendation and is almost in a class of its own. Grain free is an important consideration for any dog, cat or ferret. We have to be wary though, because some of the 'grain free' foods are still very low in meat.

For example, potato isn't considered a grain of course, so a 90% potato 10% meat kibble could still very correctly be called 'grain free' and yet still be of relatively low quality. I'm thinking especially of the JWB 'cereal free' foods here, which despite the HUGE price tag is still only 26% meat - that's less than a lot of foods costing half the amount they're charging!

As always, I agree that a 100% raw diet is best. By raw I mean WHOLE raw meaty bones, whole carcases, and suchlike. Not ground up, minced concoctions full of grains, fruits and veggies. But when it comes to recommending a kibble, Orijen has my vote every time. I hope this was of some interest to you.