Science Diet puppy food good or bad?
 

When I got my puppy the owner was feeding it Science Diet Puppy food so I kept her on it. I also have 2 other male yorkie pups. They don't seem to have any problems from it. Am I feeding them good quality food or hurting them in the long run. I was going to ask my vet but I noticed they sell it in their office so I assume its good. I have heard several negatives about this food.

Science Diet
 

Bad...

I have know people on it and swares by it but I have also heard its not good. There are so many other good ones. I would try to feed something else. I feed mine "Chicken Soup for the soul" it has all kinds of veggies, fruit, ?


Just my two cents worth

Cheryl

I've heard loads of bad things about Science Diet -

however, I find it strange how many people promote. I would have had no idea if it had not been for this site, considering my vet promotes the hell out of Science Diet. Also, the rescue shelter near my house feeds Nutro Natural Choice which has gotten bad reviews... and that's someone you usually can trust to know. I guess dog nutrition just isn't well-known??

What is it in that makes it bad?:confused:

In general SD wouldn't be my first choice.
However, a few of their prescription diets are fair (if absolutely necessary) and I do not mind one type of kibble they sell.

Can you copy and paste the ingredients in the food you are feeding and the guaranteed analysis?

At one time Science Diet was considered the premiere of pet foods, this was at a time most pet foods, had no quality controls, and were sold based on how much they looked like people food. There were pet foods that looked like t-bones and cheeseburgers, and this is what people thought was good. Scientist Diet came along and changed all that, they did studies and found dogs do better on certain diets. They also made a special line of food for dogs with particular health problems. They were truly pioneers. Since then, there have been other companies who say that they have found even better foods, and the ingredients and chemicals found in Science Diet are not good. My own feelings are that it's probably not as good as most vet's think, and it's probably not as bad, as most forum posters think. What particular variety of Science Diet were you thinking of using? It would be easier to see which ingredients are controversial.

IMO, compared to a lot of other foods on the market, SD isn't great. It has a lot of fillers, corn, by-products, etc. not really any natural ingredients.

There are many pet foods so much better quality and healthier to feed then Science Diet. Yorkie's don't eat much, so a little food goes a long way. Spend more on a higher, super pre. high, quality food for your pup, and know you are giving the best for your Yorkie. IMO, it makes me feel so good to do that for my Suzi. :aimeeyork

This food issue stuff gets really bad here sometime. I just took mine off of a 6 star food and put them on a 2 star food. They do have a food analysis website, but, I don't know who it is that reviews the food. I just put mine on Rachel Rays nutrish the other day. I had gotten a free bag and they loved it. The thing with me is I say if they like it and are doing good on it(no itching, excessive licking, crappy looking hair), then leave them on it

Yeah, it does. I don't know, I go back and forth. Because I want my dog on good food but it's just SO hard to even pick because you don't know who to listen to, theres so many different opinions, but I've learned a little bit more myself on ingredients and such and informed myself. I just feel like you can never win! Jackson's switched a lot in his 5 months of life lol. He's picky but I think he just gets bored. So I've decided to switch it up every now and then. He's currently on Before Grain (made by Merrick) and he loves it. They've got three flavors - salmon, buffalo and chicken. So I figured that may be our best bet having 3 different flavors and rotating every day but it's still the same basic food so I'm not going to be switching it up like crazy. He liked the Dog Whisperer food too and since that's what he was on last, I've still been mixing some of that in with the Before Grain still. I think those two foods are what we will be using from now... Dog Whisperer and Before Grain!

I am feeding them Hill's Science Diet puppy formula small bites.The first 5 ingredients are ground whole grain corn,chicken byproducts meal,anima fat(preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid),liver flavor, flaxseed, soybean oil. It says it is also rich in fish oil. Which foods would you recommend?

My vet sells Science Diet at his office as well, but I know that vets aren't necessarily experts at dog nutrition. Also, product placement probably equals kickbacks. It doesn't make them bad vets, but keep in mind they have a business to run. I have learned so much from this site! Sorry to say, but the ingredients they use in Science Diet are mostly fillers :(. A website I found helpful in researching dog food is Dog Food Analysis - Reviews of kibble. Currently, I'm feeding Innova Puppy. Hope this helps!

I would listen to Ellie May when it comes to nutrition and health. She is really well versed in these areas:)!

My shih tzu was on various Science Diet formulas from 2002-2007 :( with a break somewhere around 2005-6 of pre-packaged raw dog feed, then raw/cooked organic buffalo meat sold for human consumption. Before that, from 1997-2002, she was on IAMS (:eek::eek::eek:) mainly their chicken formula since the lamb and rice made her stink of lamb game-yness. She did start off '97 on Diamond Dog Food and did well on it for one oversized bag's worth. And before '97, she was on random table scraps and I'm not sure what kind of dog chow.

Science Diet at the time seemed to be one of the most expensive brands found in the readily available chain pet supply stores. It says, "formulated by veterinarians" so one would think it was a safe choice and the vet I used at the time sold that brand as well. :(

My previous choice of IAMS was because of exposure. I was a sucker for advertisement, and that seemed most advertised and so I thought it was more "premium" than brands like Puppy Chow or Kibbles & Bits or Pedigree even. Those seemed more "common". I never thought of doing online research on it. I guess I used the internet for other things back in the day. :p I only remember at some point though, coming upon some IAMS hate statements and found a "ihateiams.com" type of website (can't remember exact url) but it wasn't so much going on about the low quality food as it was a concern about their use and treatment of their animals employed at their facilities for product testing. That's when I switched both my cat and dog to SD.

My cat's been on SD from '02 to current as I've been mixing in Wellness with her SD food though she keeps picking out and dropping the Wellness all over the place while digging for the SD kibbles. She then would eat the Wellness if there really isn't any SD left and we ignore her vocal complaints for her old food. When the bag of SD is finished, she will likely be on Wellness 100% except that the hubby wants to give her something else she might like better as he thinks she really doesn't like Wellness. She actually didn't protest the switch from IAMS to SD. :(

Ellie May would be my advisor of choice with regards to diet and nutrition queries also. ;)

We feed our dogs Blue Buffalo.First eight ingredients are deboned chicken,chicken meal,whole ground brown rice,whole ground barly,oatmeal,rye,whole potatoes.We had our lab and shepperd mix on Science Diet for years 10 plus thing it was a good food until you look at the top ingredients.If you go to Blue Buffalo web site you can get a $5.00 coupon.

I feed Royal Canin for Yorkshire terriers, and I switched to Blue Buffalo because the ingredients sounded healthier than those in RC. Joey begin have a brown discharge from his eyes two days after the switch, it continued to get worse, and I took him off the food, and they got better within 24 hours. Do your dogs have any discharge from their eyes? I don't know if it was connected to the food, right now it just seems like a major coincidence, but I'm afraid to try the food again, because it might start up an eye problem that will never go away. Anyway, Blue Buffalo sounds like a really healthy food, I wish Joey could eat it.

I do know that the first ingredient(s) are supposed to be meat. Dogs are carnivores in nature so the grain is not entirely natural to them.

I have not found that problem.We had Bella on Royal Canin puppy but if you read the ingredients on all of the Royal Canins they are the same. The specific breed naming of their product is a gimmick.

Oh, I wasn't trying to imply that Blue Wilderness was not a quality food, I was just wondering if you had any eye problems with it. I mean I really wanted to use it. As far as specific breed formulas being a gimmick, if you read the contents of the different breed formulas, there is a difference between ingredients. Dog Analysis doesn't always list the same ingredients as the company lists, so maybe this is why you didn't see any differences. I happen to believe in different formulas for different breeds, whether they found the "right" formula for the right breed, I couldn't say.

There is a blue wilderness that is 6 stars and blue buffalo(which is different) and is 3 and 4 stars on dogfoodanalysis

I talking about the Blue Wilderness formula, I think the company that makes it is Blue Buffalo, and they have different formulas. Here's a picture: Dog Food Reviews - Blue Wilderness - Powered by ReviewPost

Well, I know a lot of people that use blue buffalo, and have said it's 6 star, so looked, not realizing there was a blue buffalo and blue wilderness, then I saw where the blue wilderness was actually the better rated food. I'm just wandering how many more people don't know there are actually 2 different ones

From reading past threads, I know many people use the words interchangeably. I was confused too, but the Blue Wildness package is so pretty, it really stood out in my mind, and when people were talking about Blue Buffalo sometimes they meant blue wilderness, and sometimes they didn't, but you are right, they have completely different ratings. The Blue Wilderness formula has little black balls in it that are referred to as "LifeSource Bits", and I was wondering if these were causing the eye problems for Joey. Here's the actual company, it's called Blue Buff. Blue Buffalo — Discover the Best Dog Food and Cat Foods with our Pet Food Comparison Tools

Well, that's a definite possibility. I was confused too, everyone had said blue buffalo was rated high, but, now I see, it's just so so(well, from foodanalysis anyway, and Lord knows who does those reviews

I have used SD in the past with good results. My cats are currently on the SD hairball control and have been for years, again good results. Everytime I have tried to switch them to something "better" they spend days puking. So not worth it for me. They will stay on the SD untill they die. My dogs are on dogswell dry and canned right now. However within the next month I will be switching them over to SD natures best. It has all natural ingredients and no by-products like the original SD. Im switching because dogswell is becoming harder to find, Ive been getting it online through petfooddirect, right now its on sale and very afforable, once the sale goes off I cant afford it with the shipping. This past weekend I bought my first small bag of the natures best and added alittle bit to 3 of my dogs food and they ate it. So I will be slowly adding it to thier food over the next few weeks. One of my older dogs is on SD prescription canned and he is doing wonderful. He seems so much happier. I know that its not THE best food out there but if it works for my pets then I will continue to feed it. I have tried the best out there and I wasnt happy (or were my dogs) with most of it. You need to feed your pet what you feel is the best for them, if they are doing well on the SD and you are happy with it, then by all means keep them on it, if you want to switch then switch. IT IS YOUR CHOICE and YOUR PETS :)

I saw that at our TSC the other day and had acutally thought about that, let me know how your dogs do on it. I've been doing a lot of switching lately, they seem to like this nutrish pretty well though

In one of my many dog food switches. :rolleyes: I tried nutrish (before this board and Tucker :)) and my dogs liked it ALOT. They were on it when I joined this board. LIke I said in a early post my sheltie had skin issues before the nutrish and they went away in less then 2 weeks of being on it. So I thought it was a good food. Once I started on this board I learned about better foods, well Im done searching. Im tried of switching my dogs from one food to another, it cant be good for them and Im broke because of it, not to mention the aggrivation of finding a food that they will eat do well on then finding out that its not being sold anywhere in your area anymore. :mad:. They were on SD in the past and all done well on it. So Im pretty confident they will do fine on the natures best, they seem to like it. They pick around the dogswell to eat it and they like the dogswell. I looked on ebay and got a ton of coupons for it and when I signed up on thier webpage, they sent me an email with an 8.00 off coupon for any SD and on Saturday in the mail I got more coupons.:thumbup: I know its not the best out there, but its not the worse either and I know I will be able to find it anywhere. :)

I know exactly what you're saying

The first ingredient is generally by products which could be feet, hooves, udders and god knows what, they also have corn, wheat and probably soy big allergens for dogs. They also have bha and bht in their food which are nasty preservatives. They are a big multi national company that puts whatever in their food just to make money. The vets recommend it because I have heard thet get a kick back from it.

solid gold. merrick, wellness, innova, natural balance something that has no corn, wheat or soy and no by products is the biggest thing.