In order to be covered by our health guarantee, your new puppy must be fed a quality food. There are several different brands that we approve for our puppies.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE RECOMMENDATIONS ARE THE OPINION OF MINIATURE MIRACLES KENNEL. THEY ARE FOR THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATING YOU ON GOOD NUTRITION OF YOUR NEW PUPPY.
Your new puppy will leave our home eating Canidae dog food. It would be ideal to keep them on this food but if you would like to switch them over to a different brand ( from the list provided to you when you pick up your puppy), then its best to mix the two brands together for several days and gradually add less of the Canidae brand.
You may be asking why it matters what brand you chose. Like anything, quality matters. Many dog food manufacturers use cheap fillers in their food. This allows them to produce mass quantities the cheapest way possible.Grains are not a natural part of a dogs diet and very difficult for them to digest and should not be included in their food. Check out the web site below to see where each brand of dog food falls in the rating:
http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/
Learn to read labels! Wording on the bag can be very misleading. You may think your feeding a good food because of what the packaging says.The dog food manufactors have perfected this! They know that catchy wording and bright colorful pictures will catch your attention. Do not be mislead by these tricks!
When choosing a food make sure that you are choosing one thats intended for your new puppy. You will come across puppy food, dog food, and senior food. Yoou will also see different types for dogs who may be over weight or extremly active. Different dogs need different levels of nutrion. The canida food that your puppy is sent home with is an all life stage food. This will be the only food your puppy needs. It will suit your new puppy from the time you take it home until it reaches its senior years.
Foods you may find in a grocerry store are usually of less quality. Thats not to say that you may not find a food that has a relativly good quality, but generally speaking its best to stay away from foods that can be purchased in a grocery store.
Lets go over some of the things you may see when reading the label:
Animal Digest: Animal tissue that is exclusive of hair, horns, teeth, hoves, and feathers.
Animal Fat: From tissues of mammals and poultry through the process of rendering and extracting.
Beet pulp: This is simply dried residue from sugar beets.
Brewers rice: Dried extracted residue from of rice
Chicken by product meal: ground, rendered clean parts of the slaughtered chicken such as necks, feets, eggs, and intestines that have been cleared of their contents.
Corn germ meal: Corn germ that has other parts of the corn kernel which oil has been removed and the product retained in the dry milling process.
Corn gluten: Part of the shelled corn that remains after the extraction of the startch and gluten.
dehydrated eggs: dried whole eggs that has had moisture removed by thermal means.
ground corn: the entire ear of corn except the husk
Meat by products: ground parts other than meat of the carcass of the animal. This may include bones, livers, fatty tissue, stomachs, and intestines that have been cleared of any contents.
Meat Meal: rendered product from mammal tissue. Does not include blood, hair ,hoof, horns, hide, trimmings, stomach or other such contents.
Check for a meat source to be the number one ingredient. Its important that it states just what the meat source is. Such as chicken meal or lamb meal. Not just meat or meat meal. Its best to see the meat source followed by "meal". So instead of chicken, you would want to see chicken meal. When it states meal the water has already been removed. Ingredients are listed by weight before the food is cooked. So when the ingredients say chicken the water has not yet been removed and once that was done the ingredient would most likely be further down the list of ingredients.
Never buy a food that uses chemical preservatives. This can be ver ytricky as dog food companies do not have to list preservatives if they did not add them! This is very misleading and may make you think your dog food is free of any preservatives.
FInd a food that has a good protein amount. I like to see atleast 22%.
All this may still be a bit confusing. After all dog food brands cant be "that" different. Can they?! Oh but they can! Most of the cheap brands you will find in grocery stores can mostly fillers. This allows the to mass produce the cheapest way possible. Your pets health is not their top concern.
For a run down of what you should be looking for in a food click the links below:
http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=betterproducts
http://www.thepetcenter.com/article.aspx?id=3395
http://www.bornfreeusa.org/facts.php?more=1&p=359
