Food charts guide you to buy certain foods?

Well, I've been back and forth with dog foods. I fed Purina One for awhile but Harley would eat it and throw it up right away. I was then guided toward Diamond. I tried a few different formulas over almost 2 years, ending with Performance then Hi-Energy. This food Harley could keep down, but either made him constipated or have loose stools depending on the day. Sasha developed allergies, and they were getting worse recently.

A friend and I were discussing the benefits of RAW food. Of course in theory that is great, but not everyone has the time and resources to feed RAW. So what is the next best thing? If you think about it in respect of our food, for example veggies. Raw veggies are more healthy because once you cook them the nutrients start cooking out. So if you put that same thinking toward your dogs food wouldn't you look for dog food that tries to use a process that keeps the food fresh and the nutrients packed in it?

So the food my friend found with this process is Bil-Jac. I'll attach some info for anyone that does't know much about the food.

~ From there, we protect the meat's nutrients by using the industry's only low temperature vacuum process. This means the heat sensitive Amino Acids are protected from heat damage that occurs in most "expanded" dog foods. And we add just the right amount of vitamins and minerals to make a complete and balanced diet.

~ Because of our unique processing, no fat is added to Bil-Jac Premium Dog Food. Fat occurs naturally with the use of fresh meat ingredients. Most other foods list fat as an added ingredient. At the rendering plant (where our competitors purchase most of their protein sources in powdered meal form-not fresh) the fat is separated from the meal in a high temperature/high pressure process. Not only are the Amino Acids subjected to high heat and pressure, but our competitors also have to spray fat on the food at the very end of their process. The quality of Bil-Jac Premium Dog Food’s fat is superior because of its absolute freshness, because it has not been repeatedly subjected to high heat and pressure, and because it was never separated from the meat in processing.

~ And my friends correspondance with a representitive of the company....
.. Hi,

I have currently switched to feeding Bil-Jac select dry dog feed, and that’s b/c I’m trying to find the best feed available for my dogs. I’ve been doing research on different dog food company’s and the products used, I was wondering is there a guarantee behind your product that the ingredients used are fresh, wholesome, not decayed or cancerous animals, I guess what I’m asking is are the ingredients in this dog food really that much more superior as to ingredients used in any other premium dry dog food? Thanks in advance for taking the time to look over my email
RESPONSE:

Dear _-

We go to the chicken processing plants our selves to collect the fresh chicken ingredients we're using. These are processing plants of "brand name" producers who make food for your dinner table,. That chicken is chilled and transported to our plant and made into dog food within hours. Bil-Jac is more in control of our ingredients than ANY other pet food company we know of because no one goes to the lengths we do to source our ingredients.

You can feed Bil-Jac with confidence and know that we use no decayed or cancerous or otherwise "deficient" ingredients.

Please feel free to call us toll free with additional questions or concerns.

Here are the ingredients to their select food:
Chicken By Products (Organs Only, Including Chicken Liver), Chicken, Corn, Chicken By-Product Meal, Dried Beet Pulp, Brewers Dried Yeast, Cane Molasses, Egg Product, Salt, Sodium Propionate, (a preservative), DL-Methionine, L-Lysine, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Niacin, Biotin, Choline Chloride, Folic Acid, Thiamine Mononitrate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin B12 Supplement, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Manganous Oxide, Inositol, BHA (a preservative), Ferrous Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Cobalt Carbonate, Potassium Iodide, Sodium Selenite.


So, I've taken the Bil-Jac challange so to say.. lol. Since starting this food Sasha's allergies have gone away. Her fur has grown back around her mouth and the sores under her chin are healing. She has stopped chewing in between her paws, and is gaining weight nicely. For once she is enjoying her kibble without needing to add can food to entice her to eat. Harley has had no stomach issues at all. Both of my dogs fur is like touching velvet now, it's no longer course. I also can feed less amount of food so 35lbs of this food is lasting longer than 50lbs of Diamond.

So I wonder how many people use food ratings alone to decide the food they are going to feed their dog. And if a food such as this has low stars ratings, but a lot of good reveiws. Would that still deter you from feeding it?

The low rating would prevent me from feeding it, yes. Also consider that the reviews you've heard on Bil-Jac may not be the same as the ones I've heard. Around here, AmStaff people call it the fattening-up food, and I've only ever heard one person like it. (But that same person liked Science Diet, too.)

Touching on the rating system, I believe that some foods in X or Y "tier" are better than others in the same tier. I'd feed Bil-Jac over, say, Pedigree or Alpo. But I made a conscious decision a long time ago not to stint on quality as long as I can avoid it. So what it boils down to for me is the best of a bad lot vs something that has the backing of more than just customer reviews.

I do like to read peoples' personal experiences with products that they buy, because I think they tell at least part of the story. For example, I like to go on MSN and read peoples' reviews on their cars, even though they may run counter to what places like Consumer Reports tell us. But at the same time, with something as nebulous a dog food quality, people may not know that a food is actually crap until they try something better. I never saw anything wrong with my dogs back in the day when they ate whatever plainlabel crap we could buy. When we switched to Iams (a better food then), I saw changes that I'd never even considered. In my house, dogs had always been smelly and taken huge craps. I didn't even know there could be anything different.

And then there's always the "different strokes" factor. Different dogs need different things. That kind of renders reviews meaningless. So whereas someone may talk about their dog doing great on Diamond, my dogs may need something with a little less emphasis on protien and a little more emphasis on coat health. And what some people consider important just isn't that big of an issue here. For example, the review that a certain dog loves to eat X food. My dogs will eat anything, so to me, I don't care what they like, but rather what likes them. Case in point, they ate the new Canidae vigorously, but it didn't agree with them. They eat Nature's Variety just as vigorously, and it does.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Or 5. :)