dog food : royal canin vs meradog ?

4 Answers

• Let me go look at Meradog. I will get back to you. Where do you live? Is quality food easily accessible?

  The reason I ask is that Royal Canin (for all their "touted greatness") is not a very good product anymore. Currently the first ingredient (on most kinds) is "chicken meal". They are changing their product because they "claim" that chicken meal is too hard to get now (gee...no-one else had that problem!) and the are going to use "chicken by-product". As the sales rep told me in confidence, that is "feathers, beaks and a**holes"). Do you really want to give that to your dog???

  I am a professional groomer and I am also a part time pet food store manager. I will NEVER EVER recommend Royal Canin to my clients. THeir quality keeps going down and the price keeps going up.

  For any dog, the first ingredient should be "meat". Not "meal", not "byproduct".

  I'll edit this once I see the other food because I have never heard of it.

  You really truly need to read the ingredients list before deciding on any food. I'll "edit" my comment once I check out the other food.

  EDIT: I just looked up Meradog. From what I read, that is the way to go. Royal Canin cannot hold a candle to their food. The first one I looked at was 30% poultry...did NOT say "byproduct"

  Hope this helps. However, it seems that others have read, it isn;t as good as what the website I was looking at. Will get back to you once again.

  Re-Edit: I looked again. I would still pick Meradog over RC. Are there other brands available to you? If so, what are they? Also, why am I doing YOUR research??? LOL. Maybe because you are unsure as to what your dog really needs. That's ok. I am here to try to help you.

• The ingredients will tell you everything you need to know about a food.

  A good quality dog food will have meat and/or meat meal at the forefront and as the main staple ingredient - and it will always be named. Chicken, Beef, Salmon. Never "meat", never generic like "poultry". Never a by-product, either, as by-products tend to be parts of the animal that are nutritionally low in value. You're also going to want to see - in minimal amounts - fruits, vegetables, and some grains. They should not outweigh the meats. And they should be quality - not filler.

  What you should NOT see in a dog food is just as important as what you SHOULD see. You should not see corn. Corn is a filler, holds little to no actual nutritional value, and many dogs have allergies or sensitivities to it. Brewers rice is also a filler - no value to it, it's just the hulls of the rice used in breweries. Beet pulp is another filler. By-products, as already said, are also not the best to see in a food.

  Looking at these two foods, i'm not impressed.

  Royal Canin contains corn and/or heavy grains in many of their formulas. They also cater to breed-specific formulas even though the ingredients lists are very similar. Hardly any notable difference between small and large breed formulas except for the very basic differences you would find in small versus large breed kibbles. Grains outweigh the meat - IMO, junk.

  Meradog is also unimpressive. Poultry meat meal, with only 25-30% being chicken - what is the rest of that meat meal, and where did it come from? Maize is a fancy name for corn, a filler. Then nothing much worth mentioning after that, just grains. Grains outweigh the meat AND meat is unnamed and unspecified for the most part - IMO, junk.

  You can do better.

• I already know Royal Canin's not a very good food, not the worst, but not a good one. Never heard of meradog so I looked it up. I only checked the puppy food and given that the 2nd ingredient is maize (corn) its a terrible food. I wouldn't choose either one.

  A good food has meat as the first ingredient and NO corn or wheat or other cheap fillers that are hard for dogs to digest and a major cause of food allergies.

  Read the labels and find a quality food for your puppy.

• are you able to get blue buffalo, nutro, or wellness where you re by chance? I would not use either.