Best dog food for a golden retriever pup

Alf32

Hi just wondering what are people experiences of the best dog food for golden retriever pups, I've got a 12 week old pup. The guy I bought him from was a vet and a dog nutritionist who seemed to know his stuff. He recommended Gain puppy (which was traditionally aimed at the grey hound industry) he said it was no problem for our puppy either. The dog seems to like it and his stools are fairly firm but smell pretty strong. @ €25 for 14kg it's not badly priced. But today when I went to the vet he said no way would he give him that food, because it's aimed at grey hound industry it's full of protein and other ingredients that would make my golden grow too fast, this his joints would not develop properly and he would get problems down the road. He recommended I give him Royal canin but this is €68 from him. I've read a lot of stuff on this forum saying Royal canin didn't really agree with their dogs so I'm just curious to see what ye use and how does your dog do on it.

cocker5

Alf32 wrote: »

Hi just wondering what are people experiences of the best dog food for golden retriever pups, I've got a 12 week old pup. The guy I bought him from was a vet and a dog nutritionist who seemed to know his stuff. He recommended Gain puppy (which was traditionally aimed at the grey hound industry) he said it was no problem for our puppy either. The dog seems to like it and his stools are fairly firm but smell pretty strong. @ €25 for 14kg it's not badly priced. But today when I went to the vet he said no way would he give him that food, because it's aimed at grey hound industry it's full of protein and other ingredients that would make my golden grow too fast, this his joints would not develop properly and he would get problems down the road. He recommended I give him Royal canin but this is €68 from him. I've read a lot of stuff on this forum saying Royal canin didn't really agree with their dogs so I'm just curious to see what ye use and how does your dog do on it.

OP royal canin is worse than gain dog food - its HUGELY overpriced low quality dog food. I cant advise you on gain but i feed my dog taste of the wild , its grain free and a pretty good quality.

Bells21

Hi Op, we had ours on Royal Canin for a very short time. It was recommended by a vet which was why we made the change but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone now. It didn't agree at all with our dogs, their poops were awful and they always seemed to be hungry. We then changed them to Acana which is dearer but they seemed to do so much better on it and from what I've read it's quite a good kibble. However, we've recently changed to a BARF diet and they are absolutely flying on it.

sunshine and showers

Burns puppy food is good. Our two (cocker spaniels) love their food. They just get the nuts, nothing else, and it seems to be doing them ok!

I wouldn't fall for the "breed specific" angle of Royal Canin. It actually makes no difference, we found.

Knine

There is a better quality Gain food called Gain Elite Bigdog. You can get this for about €35 to €40.

Personally once my puppies are about 3 mths old I put them on Adult Dog Food. I find they grow slower but finisher better then those fed on puppy food for 12 or so months.

Burns Food I found hard to keep weight on my dogs

Tony H

I have a golden retriever ,he's 7 and I have found James Well Beloved the best food of the lot , its not cheap but he has been on it for most of his life and he is in great condition . Have fun with your new puppy , and remember not to walk him too much until he's a bit older , plenty of play in the garden is fine ,
and if you can socialise him with other puppys as soon as possible it makes a huge difference to his development .

rejkin

I have a 8 month lab and moved her to James Wellbeloved cause of bloated stomach and dry coat.

She has been great ever since and her coat is amazing and she is growing at a great rate so try that out. Another one is Burnes, that might work too, they are both grain free which seems to suit.

Nody

Alf32 wrote: »

Hi just wondering what are people experiences of the best dog food for golden retriever pups, I've got a 12 week old pup. The guy I bought him from was a vet and a dog nutritionist who seemed to know his stuff. He recommended Gain puppy (which was traditionally aimed at the grey hound industry) he said it was no problem for our puppy either.

Clearly out of date or lazy with recommendations.

@ €25 for 14kg it's not badly priced.

Well seeing how you're serving up cornflakes with meat flavour of course it's going to be cheap.

But today when I went to the vet he said no way would he give him that food, because it's aimed at grey hound industry it's full of protein and other ingredients that would make my golden grow too fast, this his joints would not develop properly and he would get problems down the road.

It is anything but filled with meat; meat makes up 24% of the content. Also a proper puppy feed such as Taste of the Wild would be 80% meat and still grow him perfectly fine as well. The issue with growing to fast is easily resolved by switching to an adult food before 1 year or all raw fed dogs would have a ton of problems (and it's rather the other way around).

Honestly I'd start looking for a new vet who's not as keen to sell you in on what ever they are selling unless you've heard (s)he's a really great vet.

tk123

Alf32 wrote: »

But today when I went to the vet he said no way would he give him that food, because it's aimed at grey hound industry it's full of protein and other ingredients that would make my golden grow too fast, this his joints would not develop properly and he would get problems down the road.

Hands up who has a golden retriever who's joints didn't develop properly?....ME and he was fed RC at the time!

Both of mine are fed raw. I put my girl on it the day she arrived 3 years ago and she grew as I expected a raw fed pup to grow - nice and slowly and she had great muscle tone. And btw contrary to popular belief raw food is low protein!

Bunnyslippers

My last pup was on Taste of the wild and he did really well on it so can reccomend it, you can always switch to a cheaper maintenance brand when he gets to a year old. The Arden grange stuff we've used for pups in the past and found that to be good too.
But I'd ditch the Gain stuff, my chickens wouldn't even eat it and it gave my dogs bloody diarohea for weeks, we only bought it when we moved house as couldn't find any other brand on a weekend and had nearly run out of their usual stuff, it's purely cheap filler which dogs can't digest at all so you may as well be feeding cardboard! - my neighbor fed it to their working dogs and had exactly the same bloody poop!!:0

dubjay

barking heads grain free. the grain is what makes the gas smell. my dog finds it hard to digest any wheat or grain product.royal canin is grain free but as somebody else said its overpriced low grade food.

B0jangles

I switched my little guy over to this : http://www.zooplus.ie/shop/dogs/dry_dog_food/lukullus/156094 about 2 months ago and he took to it really well, even though he's a very picky eater. His digestion/poop is very good now. Previously he had been on Royal Canin (we got a free bag, I'd never pay for that stuff), and it gave him a terrible sick stomach.

Also if you get the 2 x 15kg deal it works out as 2.60 euro per kg, which is super-cheap for that quality of dog food.

Nody

dubjay wrote: »

barking heads grain free. the grain is what makes the gas smell. my dog finds it hard to digest any wheat or grain product.royal canin is grain free but as somebody else said its overpriced low grade food.

Are you sure about RC? From my experience RC in general tend to be meat & corn or corn & meat combinations with rice instead of corn/maize in cases of the hypoallergenic versions.

muddypaws

dubjay wrote: »

barking heads grain free. the grain is what makes the gas smell. my dog finds it hard to digest any wheat or grain product.royal canin is grain free but as somebody else said its overpriced low grade food.

My dogs haven't had any grain for the last couple of weeks, and their gas smells, so don't think its the grain. I know exactly when they have had tripe for their dinner :P

RC isn't grain free

dubjay

sensitivity one is. i was paying a fortune for it my lad developed looseness at around 6 months on hills science plan so put him on rice and chicken emergency as this was lasting for days and he was fixed withing 2 days on the different diet. i tried AATU great food but expensive so on barking heads now and so far so good. i have to feed him prebiotics every morning but anytime the vet changed to hills the smell was dredfull

dubjay

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/

good site to check out what really goes into their food. corn is also a grain and really hard to digest especially low grade corn

dubjay

B0jangles wrote: »

I switched my little guy over to this : http://www.zooplus.ie/shop/dogs/dry_dog_food/lukullus/156094 about 2 months ago and he took to it really well, even though he's a very picky eater. His digestion/poop is very good now. Previously he had been on Royal Canin (we got a free bag, I'd never pay for that stuff), and it gave him a terrible sick stomach.

Also if you get the 2 x 15kg deal it works out as 2.60 euro per kg, which is super-cheap for that quality of dog food.

look s good very similar to natures way and taste the wild. i get small bags at first as i made the mistake of getting 12 kg from the vet but luckily they have a policy of taking it back if it does nt work so i try him out on small bags

B0jangles

dubjay wrote: »

look s good very similar to natures way and taste the wild. i get small bags at first as i made the mistake of getting 12 kg from the vet but luckily they have a policy of taking it back if it does nt work so i try him out on small bags

Yeah, it was definitely a gamble to buy so much without trying him on it but we thought it was worth the risk; you.have to spend a good bit to get free delivery so getting a small amount wasn't really worth it .