Hi there
I've recently adopted a lurcher dog (2yr old approx) and have never owned one before. He has been in kennels for the past year and had been fed 2 x 200g daily of Pedigree Complete for a Large Adult and I had been advised to keep him one this diet by the kennel owner, however I have been reading up on various literature about Lurchers and have a sneaky feeling that this is most certainly not the best of foods to be feeding him! He is unbelievably excitable and hyper and I read that this can be down to his diet.
Was just wondering what you guys think are good brands of food. I'd prefer to keep to dry if at all possible as he seems to get an upset tummy easily when he has tried various tinned/fresh foods.
Thanks in advance!

I notice you say you want to feed a dry food, but have you considered a raw diet?  That way you can be sure there are no additives to make him hyper and you know exactly what you are feeding him.

If you do consider raw feeding, then it is worth reading up on it so that you know you are doing it properly. I feed BARF and have got a couple of books by Ian Billinghurst.  As well as raw meat and bones my dogs get raw fruit and veg too.

Pedigree Complete that you get in the stores etc is full of colourants, additives, preservatives and just general rubbish to be honest.  If you wanted to keep to a dry complete diet then I'd consider one of the hypo-allergenic brands such as JWB, Burns, Arden Grange, Wainwrights etc (there are many of them).  With regards to the many tinned/wet foods, there are a few decent ones such as Naturediet, naturesmenu to name a couple (there are others which names escape me of present)  And then again as MariaC said there is the BARF diet to which you can be sure exactly what you are feeding...

so as you can see, there are many options, just a case of finding which food suits your dog best really, though with the upset stomach thing i'd lean towards one of the more natural diets :)

We have always fed our hounds and running dogs on tripe/beef etc and wholemeal mixer as a base and have added scraps, pureed raw veg(frozen into cubes in ice trays in batches) brewers yeast and stuff to suit. They will get fat though unless you work or walk them hard.
I hope you enjoy your Lurcher, they are the bestests fun.

We have two lurchers and both are on dry food. One is on CSJ 18 or 21 (though he puts on weight on 21 as it is higher in protein), an excellent food free of artificial additives. Dylan never has any problems on it and is in excellent condition. The other one is on a vegan dry complete food (Benevo) as he is allergic to animal protein.

Vera

Thank you all for your advice. We have been along to the local pet store and bought some JWB duck and rice and he seems better already! He was mulling over his food before and just nibbling where as he wolfs it down now and his tummy seems to be on the mend! Again thank you for your help!
Michelle x