Hello all
           My golden pup is now 7 and a half weeks and is on pedigree chum puppy, the canned variety. He's doing quite well on it, although he's eating one and a half cans a day and its increasing rapidly, i can see this isn't quite going to work in the long run :D

  I have to say though his stools are regular and firm, but i know pedigree chum isn't the best food out there, so when the vet recommended i try science plan for large puppies i was only too happy to try. So i mixed in small amounts with his regualr food as recommended and lo and behold, he had diarrhoea.
  I was talking to my neighbours who had a GSD and they also said their pup had the same problem (though i have to say he always did have a sensitive stomach).

  So has anyone else had a problem with science plan and can anyone recommend a different brand of food. As i say his stomach has no probs with the pedigree chum, but reading the analysis 8% protein does seem awfully low for a large breed pup.
  Any suggestions please?

  Jasmine

When anything new is introduced at this age their little tums can become upset.
Gus has been on it from an early age and has always been fine (after the initial introduction)
Lel

weaning any dog from one food to another should be done gradually - ideally over 7-10 days. With a pup even more care should be taken to introduce a different food. It really depends how quickly you changed the diet. If you want to try him on Hills, I'd do it slowly starting with his normal amount of chum & a sprinkle of hills. As the days go by, increase the hills & decrease the chum. Once he's fully weaned over give him a few days & see how he gets on. If he still has upset tum, you'll need to rethink.

snoopy  :)

Hmm, i only added a small amount for a few days and it really did upset his tummy.

  I've heard many wonderful things about burns and Nature Diet, is this better than the Hills??

It's all down to personal choice when it comes to food.
Personally I wouldn't rear a pup on ND, but there are lots of people who've had good results doing this (check out a recent post titled pedigree chum - there's a lot on there about ND) Burns, I know lots of people are feeding this & it seems to be getting very popular. Most people I know who use it say it's excellent.
I do think certain foods will suit some dogs & not others.

Oh & about Hills, lots of vets will recommend it. One reason being you can only buy it through very specialist suppliers or from your vet. :)

My pup came to me on Beta and I have during the last 2 months changed him over to Burns adult (did not use the Burns Puppy as it is too small kibbles) at the moment he is on about 80% Burns Venison and rice and 20% Beta. He is doing well, I am delighted with his progress and my vet, unprompted, said he was the nicest pup she had seen in a long while, others have asked how I managed to have a well boned, well muscled pup with no fat, well I don't know but he has had a definition at the loin since I had him and he has not ever got that puppy rotund look. May be the food, may just be the puppy or it could be he has no or very few worms. He has plenty of loose skin though, so may be he has ambition to be a fatty in the future.

Dizzy came to me on Beta puppy too but it was too high in protein for her and she started to knuckle over. I too switched over to Burns adult and she loved it and is doing really well on it.

I was always brought up to believe that dogs are fed on whatever is cheapest but I really do think this is the best and worth every penny :)

Hills diets are primarily maize which a lot of dogs can be intolerant of if not allergic.  It also contains all sorts of other things that your dog does not need and is, IMHO, a very expensive way of buying a lot of carbohydrates.  Vets prescribe it because they sell it!

IMHO, although I feed raw, if I was going to feed commercial food I would choose one that had very few ingredients in it, not useless filler such as peanut hulls (some Hills diets contain these) or sugar beet pulp. I have know many dogs reared from pups on both Naturediet (complete wet food containing meat, rice and carrots) and Burns (complete dry food containing meat, rice and veg, although I would stay away from the variety that contains SBP which can ferment in the gut) all of whom are successful in the shooting field, working trials and agility etc not to mention showing.

Just because the vet sells Hills and it is expensive is no indicator of its suitablity for your dog I am afraid

what's the alternative though?
and please don't mention raw, after reading this forum for a while and sourcing
info from other sites I don't think I can switch to preparing raw.
with the complete diet my dogs have a better chance of getting everything they need.

anyway, in South Africa we only have Eukanuba and Hills, I feed the Hills, I've mailed
both Burns as well as Nature Diet, Burns has not replied after 2 weeks or so
and Nature Diet sent me the following.

>We do not export to South Africa at present. We are a very small manufacturing
>firm with limited production at the moment and we are concentrating on the
>European market before we export to other areas.

>I am sorry that I am unable to be of further assistance.

so besides the Eukanuba and Hills that I mentioned, we have tons of complete
foods found in supermarkets etc.
can you think of any commercial foods that you'd feed your dogs if you
didn't feed raw?
perhaps we have them locally

else based on this

>if I was going to feed commercial food I would choose one that had very few ingredients in it

I'll have a look around the supermarkets, but I'll having a really hard time understanding why
the supermarket stuff with possibly less ingredients(if I find some) will cost up to 5 times less
and still give my dogs everything they need.

Hi Taariq, we all have to make decisions on the basis of the choices and information available. 

Many many dogs do extremely well on Eukanuba and Hills and lots of other different foods.  If the dog and owner is happy there is not an issue; it only becomes an issue if the dog has problems or it interferes with the owner's philosophy :D

Commercial pet food labelling is at best incomplete and at worst misleading.  I would always avoid soya as though it is a complete protein it is notorious for producing gas which is something anyone with a breed prone to bloat would want to avoid.  I would also try to avoid brewers yeast (this can be a problem with dogs who are prone to suffer from yeast overgrowths such as ears etc). Maize is unavoidable in Hills and Eukanuba. 

Don't be misled by cost a bag of Hills egg and rice costs £53 in the UK!  I could feed fresh eggs and homemade rice for a fraction of this cost!  However, it would untrue to say that cost does not always reflect quality.  But you need to understand as much about labelling as possible and the ingredients before you are in a position to conduct comparison shopping with any degree of logic.  As for Crude Protein content you will be in the dark unless you write to the manufacturer and specifically ask what percentage of the crude protein is bio-available to your dog and what %age is cereal and/or meat based; bearing in mind that this is the key criteria for some people's purchases the current labelling is as I said at the beginning either incomplete or misleading!

Don't suppose this is of any practical help though; sorry :)

>Don't suppose this is of any practical help though; sorry :)

was pretty informative though, and I appreciate it, I'll do some more reading
and watch my dogs develop before I make a switch, they seem to enjoy Hills,
only problem I have with feeding ATM is what you guys say about Hills, not that you say
it but that they actually use these fillers, and also that my dogs always want more, and
they already get a tadd over the recommended allowance, so I won't feed them a gram more,
they're growing too fast to handle excess fat.

>Can you get Chappie over there?

I'll have a look around, but have to say thats a foreign name, although I could have missed it
on the shelves.
the big names in supermarkets are things like Pedigree, Epol, Husky and some others.
thanks for the pointer Jeangenie, I'll take a look

Can you get Chappie over there? I've fed my lot on it for years and they are in excellent condition.
:)

Hi Taariq

I've also asked Burns and they don't export to Denmark either!

Jeanette

*what's the alternative though?* In answer to that question, try & keep on trying to get hold of John Burns, the owner of Burns dog food, don`t give up till you do. He may be able to help you formulate a home made diet to help your dog :) Email Burns with your problem, ask him for help & keep on till your emailS gets to him personally :)

Christine, Spain. 

Hi Jasmine

My girl is on Hills Natures Best Large Breed! I've changed from Eukanuba a few weeks ago, because there wasn't enough oil in the Eukanuba, Luna got rough, dry and cracked pads.

I've changed over a period of 10-13 days, and Luna hasn't had any loose stools, and now I'm changing from puppy to adult food again I'm going to do it over 10 days.

I started out with 5% (per meal) the first day, 10 the next, and when I got to 50% I stepped up to 10% per meal.

I would NEVER use Pedigree of any kind.

Jeanette

Can you get Purina Proplan out there?? my 15 week old Gordon Setter has been on it all the time, and is doing really well. He did have an episode of "the runs", but that turned out to be caused by Drontal puppy wormer! he is very happy on proplan, but I intend to change him over onto Burns, mainly due to it seemingly having the best ingredients for his anticipated size. ( that and the fact they deliver free - not much help to you though huh??!! ) Good luck in your search!