Puppy Food
We brought our puppy home with us earlier this year, and one of the first things we needed to decide on was what to feed her. There is a lot more that goes into picking the right puppy food than one would think.
Our breeder had recommended using food from a company called Life’s Abundance. While it looked healthy enough and was reasonably priced, none of the stores in our area carried it (and neither did Amazon). We didn’t want to have to online order dogfood, especially since there are times you need to buy some in a pinch.
There are a few main criteria that we looked at before settling on Fromm Large Breed Puppy Gold:
- Right life stage – Make sure you get a puppy food and not a dog food. Puppies have very different nutritional requirements and adults. We also made sure to get a “large breed” puppy food, because big dogs need more calcium and less protein when they are young, so their bones can grow faster than their weight to avoid issues later on.
- High quality ingredients – Stay away from foods that have grains, and look for those that use a variety of different meats as protein sources. The meats should be listed first on the ingredient list, and don’t get anything that uses meat “by products” (Google it if you don’t know what those are – gross!).
- Nutrient dense – Check the feeding chart recommendations for the amount of food you need to give your puppy, by age and weight. The more nutrient dense food, the less you have to feed her. For example, the Fromm we use suggests 2 1/2 cups for a 20lb puppy at 4 months, while the Eukanuba is 4 cups! And remember, the more that goes in, the more comes out the other end…
- Reasonable cost – wow, some of these foods are really expensive. We found one that fit well in our budget, but there are options both more and less expensive.
- Available locally – already talked about this
Our puppy loves her food, and according to her vet is growing at the perfect rate!
