The most common mistake made by pet owners is buying supermarket pet foods. As much as I adore Dr. Harry, just because a celebrity from the Animal Industry endorses a product doesn’t mean it is good for your pets, unfortunately I can’t think of any brands that a celebrity vet or otherwise endorses that is truly a good quality product.
Basically the way to think of it is, the brands that are sold in the supermarket such as Friskies, Whiskas, Pal etc. concentrate their funds on advertisement whereas brands such as ProPlan, Eukanuba and Advance among others concentrate on making their product quality.
When looking at the package of your chosen food turn to your ingredients list, these ingredients are listed in order of percentage used in the food. For example, on a packet of Whiskas dry food the first ingredient listed will be Wholegrain Cereals meaning that is the main ingredient.
The problem with Supermarket foods is that their main ingredients are Wholegrain Cereals and/or Meat and Meat by-product and they have a higher salt content – Salt naturally makes you thirsty, what happens when you add water to wheatbix? It absorbs the water and swells, these Wholegrain Cereals are being used as a ‘Filler’ and expand in their stomach making your animals feel full without providing the necessary nutrition. Your animal will pass this food and will be hungry again in no time which means you buy more of the product therefore spending more money.
Meat and Meat by-products can also create a problem with your pet, you’ll find that the Premium brands will use Chicken or Fish because Red Meat often causes skin problems particularly in dogs.
To get a good/high quality pet food visit a local pet shop, they should provide you with a larger range of foods to choose from, my favourite being ProPlan because it is now being made in Australia meaning that the food isn’t radiated repeatedly and doesn’t lose it’s nutritional value, they also use the muscle meat off the animal and add it to the food at the end of the cooking procedure so again, the nutritional value isn’t cooked out of it, I personally use IAMS for my cats because it is the cheapest of the good quality foods and it’s ‘Multi-Cat’ line suits my two perfectly, I also use Advance for my dog but this has the highest salt content of the good quality foods.
Buying a Premuim food benefits your animals by giving them the necessary nutrition, improving their coat and digestion and improving their overall health, the benefit for you is that Premium foods harden their stools making them easier to pick up and decrease the smell! And in comparison to a Supermarket brand you only have to feed a third of the amount to satisfy your pet.
The response I usually receive from this is ‘It’s too expensive’ – with the amount that you are feeding compared to the Supermarket brands you are making up the difference and some Pet Shops such as Petbarn and PetStock offer a bag free after you have bought 10 bags. Other than that if you cannot afford an animal you shouldn’t own one – would you feed your children a sole diet of McDonalds?
Please feel free to leave your comments. Xo
Great. Very Informative!
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