I have been a member of the RC breeder club for some time and always been very happy with their products and services. Although I had noticed the dogs had been quite loose recently in their stools but didn't think too much of it as it was not really bad.
I ordered some food last week and as I was running low, bought a small bag from the pet shop to tide me over til Monday. I was having a look at the ingredients on the small "pet shop" bag just out of interest as I assumed the ingredients would be the same. The small bag listed dehydrated poultry meat as the 1st ingredient with maize 2nd  - great. When the large bag arrived I was suprised to read maize as the 1st ingredient, dehydrated poultry meat 2nd! I phoned RC to query this and was told they have changed their formula so that maize is now the main ingredient as it was more "cost effective"!! So now I am assuming this could be the reason why the dogs were getting loose!
I was in 2 minds as to whether to change them over to Arden Grange after hearing good reports about it and looking at their list of ingredients but this has made my mind up for me. Has anyone else noticed any differences?

You know I noticed the change when reading my new supply and wondered if I was imagining things.  I didn't worry about it as I I don't feed it all the time I give a hand ful to my youngsters as a breakfast sometimes if I have not defrosted my meat in time.  90% of the time they are fed  tripe, meat and mixer. Raw meat bones etc but I did noticed that and was quite suprised that I could have missed that when I first chose RC to use several years ago.

Yes, that was my thought initially! Did I miss something? but no, we are not going mad! Not something they are going to advertise either!

Why does it not surprise me when the same company that owns pedigree took over the company.  Funny enough that company's product makes my dogs loose too, as did Hills.

I read one of Hills Science plan bags recently the natures choice one for small adults. I think it had 47% maise.

Wish we could do our own stickies on here :-D  we could put up each food and the ingredients etc for a quick look up guide. 

Do you know how JWB affects yor dogs?  after all thats owned by crown pet foods like RC :)

we fed royal canin for a few years and the dogs did very well on it.  

then about 3 years ago ( i think ) the dogs just started to lose condition.  their coats were dull, poo was soft, and they just had a 'dull' look about them.

we swapped to purina pro plan and saw an improvement in a couple of weeks.  never went back to RC. 

Tell you what I've found with Canin, I had a sample pack from my vets pup loved it, bought a new sack and the kibble was a lot smaller and she wouldn't eat it.  This was exactly the same food

I wonder if they will reduce the purchase price if it's not costing so much to produce and I assume that the protein content will change too

I used to feed Royal Canin since I know Antony Bongiovanni (Rep at champ shows) through having Pharaoh's but hounds weren't very keen to eat when transfered onto adult.  2006 summer I changed and now feed Laughing Dog complete food (it's baked not extruded).

Pam

well ive just checked all 20 odd sacks i have here and all have poultry as 1st listed ingredient. maybe it depends on the particular type?

It has only just changed apparently so there will still be sacks in circulation with the "old" ingredients on. I usually use the Adult Maxi. Why do these companies have to interfere with something that was perfectly fine as it was?!!!

I haev 2 juniors bought within about 8 weeks of each other. Different % s !!!!!!!!!

>and I assume that the protein content will change too

Probably not.Corn is high in protein,allbeit mostly undigestable protein :rolleyes:

I think the ingredients have changed since Mars bought out some of the pet food companies.  I have heard James Wellbeloved ingredients have changed aswell.  Mars have also put an end to Pedigree sponsoring the champ shows.

Lucy

I always had mine on RC for years without any problems until about 18 months ago.  It just started going straight through them, one dog in particular.  I managed to balance it by swapping to the 'Sensible' formula, but the cost was far greater, in the end I swapped to a different food.

I must say this has been a very interesting thread -not for the sake of the dog food as I don't feed RC for dogs, but I feed RC to the CATS and guess what, yep, lots of diarrhoea recently! Unfortunately I empty out all feed bags into large plastic containers so have binned the bags but I shall now make sure to have a good look at the ingredient list next time we buy more, who knows if it's changed there as well.

I've had 2 x 17kg bags delivered this week and the ingredients for Adult Medium are listed as Dehydrated Poultry meat, Wheat Flour, Maize Flour, Maize.....

Strangely enough I had a couple of bags on 'trial' before signing up to the breeders scheme, they were fine on that, but since opening the new bag we've had a few upset tummies........I hope the food is ok and not contaminated in any way

Think I might call the rep and see if any other people have reported problems.

If your worried about contamination then ring your rep who should ask you to send a sample of the food to them for testing.

We did it with what turned out to be our last back of RC bought from them - turned out that the food was already starting to decompose and had high levels of salmonella in it which had given all of them upset stomachs.

We also found that something at the time (around 2 years ago now) in the food was staining their teeth.

We've since moved to other foods.

I called them today they said only 1 of all the products had changed a Maxi one. !!!!!!!!!  So god knows. :-)

certainly all my sacks of Giant are unchanged.