Quality wet complete foods

Dog food and feeding Dog foods
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It seems to me that recently there has been a rising number of good quality wet foods for dogs. Has anyone else noticed it or am I imagining it? ??? Anyway, I quite like feeding wet food, the reasons being:

[i]* They are less processed than extruded, some of them being steamed.

  • They sometimes come in mixed varieties so the dog can have a change of protein without too much risk of upsetting them.
  • Recipes are often simple, which makes them useful for dogs with intolerances.
  • They are often quite tasty so can be good for fussy eaters. [/i]

Here is a bit about my experience of this type of food:
[i]* Weight gain - in the past when I gave a quality wet food I came a cropper because the dogs piled weight on although I was feeding less than the RDA. Looking back, I didn’t get it right because I sometimes added a bit of terrier biscuit meal for crunch and I shouldn’t have done that. Of course these products tend to have a high protein and fat so it is important to give exactly the correct amount if the dog has a tendency to weight gain.

  • More recently I fed a different type, but good quality wet food and didn’t have the same weight gain problems. The only trouble was that I was spending a lot of money, even buying it online so I had to stop as it was simply too expensive. I was also getting through a lot of packaging, some of which was not recyclable.
  • I’m currently trying another wet food but only for a change - just one tray per week. The product is on offer at the local supermarket right now so that might not continue once it is back at the usual price. The trays are recyclable. I’m marginally tempted to continue this type but again, it will be expensive and my dogs do very well on their current food so I do not want to rock the boat.[/i]

Looking at some of the products, they seem to almost match raw in that many are low carb, high meat content and fat, the difference being that they are cooked. In that sense, they are perhaps useful for pet owners who would like to feed a raw diet but cannot for one reason or another.

What do you think about wet food? Do you use it regularly, just as a treat, as a topper or perhaps never?

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I tried feeding the naturediet once as I wanted to give a bit more variety. It was popular with the dog. I think she also put on a little weight with that one but I may have been getting the portion size wrong. I stopped feeding that when I found out they were cooking the food when it was in the plastic containers. She was also on a spoon full of pedigree chum when she came to us from dogs trust as a topper but I stopped feeding that and the other dry food she was on quickly and used cold pressed. I also tried some of the fish4dogs finest tins and mousse. I got them from The pets show at a bargain price and used them for holidays so not long term. Again they were popular.

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It seems that way to me too, that there is an increasing number of wet foods of respectable decent quality becoming available, and I have a theory that one of the reasons may be that we are learning more about how dog food is processed; and together with our greater understanding and our expecting better transparency - detailed information - of ingredients being used by manufacturers; is rightly leading to us becoming more ‘demanding’ :wink: as consumers, to ensure a higher quality end product. I feel that manufacturers are to some extent responding to our greater expectations.

This is most welcome as personally my preference is avoidance (as far as is possible) of feeding dogs solely dry food for multiple reasons.

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Dottie, I always feed Terrier meal with wet foods, apart from tinned Chappie, or fresh meat. Its an old fashioned but well tried and tested way to feed dogs.

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Yes, it is an old fashioned method of feeding and one which I used myself a very long time ago. We used to buy tins of Chum or Winalot and add mixer biscuit for crunch. The last time I mixed terrier meal with wet food I used Fold Hill. I suspect that problems can occur nowadays because some of the wet foods are good quality with high meat content and fat so owners may need to be very careful with quantities of their pet is prone to weight gain.

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I use Foldhill, but having energetic entire male Border Collies weight gain isn’t a problem I’m glad to say. I mix and match foods for my dogs, they will have either kibble, wet +Terrier meal or fresh cooked meat which can be either chicken ,beef or lambs heart+ Terrier Meal.

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