My 3 year old GSP does very well on Guru cold pressed food, but as it is so nutrient dense there isn’t so much of it. I train using her food as rewards but would like to replace some of the volume with lower calorie food (grain free) to avoid her putting on weight as she gets older. I have been wondering if it would be OK to replace some of her daily allowance with a good quality senior food - or is there a better way forward? Thank you.
Hello and welcome to the forum. I fed cold pressed food for some time so I know exactly what you mean about the quantity being low. It takes some getting used to and it can be easy to overfeed if the owner is not careful.
Calorie wise, fat has the highest number - 9 per gram. Protein and carbohydrate contain 4 calories per gram. Clearly there is an incentive to keep fat down. In commercial dry food that is labelled as weight loss (or similar) the fat tends to be low but the carbohydrate is usually high/above average.
Personally, I wouldn’t add another type of dry food because you would be raising the carbohydrate content. IIRC the cold pressed food that you use already has an above average carb percentage. It is low in fat and has a protein level of about 28% and is similar to the one that I used to feed. I used to try to balance things up a little by raising the protein level, adding cooked fish/meat/poultry, using the leanest types. I also used to add cooked, pureed vegetables. I didn’t want to add more starch so chose green leafy ones - they have nutrient value and help to sate appetite. A small amount of suitable fruit can be added eg blueberries.
There is information on the Internet about enhancing dry food with fresh cooked ingredients and we have a thread about this here.