|
Dog Food: Chicken in Dog Food
When you select the best dry food for your dog, is it better to go with the chicken meal than the pure chicken?
Chicken is simply pure chicken. Chicken meal is made mostly of water and is better because it is simply chicken that has been baked to remove the bacteria and other toxins. If a label on a bag of dog food says 60% whole chicken then it may be quite misleading. You will get more of the chicken when the label on the bag of dog food says 60% of chicken meal which has already been baked and removed the unwanted affects such as bacteria.
You need to understand that all pet foods have different levels of moisture. In case of canned foods, the moisture is up to 80% whereas, some dry foods have as little as 6%. This is important for two reasons, the first is that the food is priced by the pound i.e. when you buy dog food you get 20% food and 80% water. This means that the amount of food your pet consumes is small and expensive. The other reason is to help you compare crude protein and fat between brands and between canned and dry. You will not be able to compare them accurately without converting both the brands of food to a dry matter basis. If a dry dog food has 10% moisture then we know that it has 90% dry matter and checks for the protein level that reads 20%. We need to divide that 20% protein by the 90% dry matter and we get 22% of protein on a dry matter basis. Now let us compare this to canned food that has 80% moisture.
When the label shows 5% protein, we take the 5% and divide it by 20% and we get 25% protein on a dry matter basis. Now we know that after all the water is taken out the canned food has more protein per pound on a dry matter basis. We can do the same for fat, fiber and more. By doing the calculations you will be able to understand the whole nutrition of the dog food.
|