Food Friday: Dogswell Nutrisca Lamb and Chickpea Recipe Dog Food

Dogswell Nutrisca was the first non-potato, low-glycemic kibble I can remember seeing. When it first hit my local pet stores, they sold promotional 2 lb bags for $3. Brisbane was eating a homemade raw diet at the time, but I used kibble for training treats and this was a great option at the time. I could buy a small bag and not have to worry about it going bad before we used it all. Nutrisca kibble originally came in lamb, chicken, and salmon recipes. The concept of making dog food out of chickpeas seemed so radical a decade ago!

The Company

Dogswell has been around since 2004, their flagship product is their Happy Hips glucosamine-fortified chicken jerky. Obviously they must have branched out into dog food fairly quickly, since I was buying promotional bags of it in 2006. 

Dogswell does use a co packer, Tuffy's Pet Foods actually produces Nutrisca. For this reason, Dogswell is more of a dog food marketing company. Tuffy's is the maker of Pure Vita though, they have some pretty serious manufacturing technology and very few recalls of products from their facilities. It's proably impossible for a little startup like Dogswell to make a state-of-the-art kibble production facility so I'm glad they chose Tuffy's as their co packer.

The Food

I bought this particular bag of Nutrisca Lamb and Chickpea Recipe kibble for Sisci and Ru. Brisbane can't eat it because it contains chicken fat. I used to use the salmon version for training treats for him, until I discovered his issue with eggs. Poor allergy dog.

Nutrisca kibbles are very small, so they should be great for little tiny dogs. Unfortunately, Ru won't eat them. He's a picky beast, and mostly refused to eat this food at all. Sisci loved it, though.

This is a grain-free, potato-free food that I like to recommend for diabetic and overweight dogs, as well as ones with yeast issues. It seems to be a very digestible food too, I've had several clients and work switch to Nutrisca and see improvement in their dog's stomach issues.

The Verdict

This is a very high quality dog food. The Dog Food Advisor site rates all of the Nutrisca foods as five out of five stars. They are suitable for all life stages, and this particular food has a moderate caloric content of 370 calories per cup. I don't think I would choose this as an everyday food for my dogs at this point because Brisbane is allergic and Ru won't eat it, but it would be a perfectly reasonable choice for Sisci.

Food Friday: Dogswell Nutrisca Raw Freeze Dried Bites

Nutrisca now has Raw Freeze Dried Bites in addition to their kibble and canned foods. These little squares are made with either chicken or beef, including bone and organ meats. Other ingredients include apples, peas, cranberries, and of course chickpeas. Nutrisca is all about the chickpeas.

The Company

Dogswell was founded in 2004, and I first became aware of their food a couple of years later. When I was trying to get Brisbane to lose some weight I was still doing a lot of raw feeding, but I wanted to use kibble as training treats. Nutrisca's foods were just becoming available in my local stores and so they were being heavily promoted. I could get a 1 lb sample bag for $2, and it was being advertised as good for fat dogs with its low glycemic index.

It looks like Dogswell was acquired in 2009 by TSG Consumer Partners, but they seem to be operating independently. Dogswell got their start with jerky treats manufactured in China. This led to at least on treat recall due to contamination with antibiotic residue in 2013. Despite this, the company continues to defend its manufacturing practices and insists it hold the facilities to strict standards, and uses third party testing to ensure purity. While most of the newer Dogswell products and all of their dog food is made in the USA, their website proudly states that this is only due to consumer pressure and not anything wrong with things sourced and made in China where standards are often more like guidelines.

Dogswell does not own their own manufacturing facility as far as I can tell. Their canned food appears to be co packed by Simmons Pet Foods, who also produce canned food for Nature's Variety and a bunch of other companies. Their kibble is produced by Tuffy's Pet Foods, who recalled some Nutrisca kibble earlier this year for salmonella contamination. 

Sometimes cats happen.

The Food

These are really dense little nuggets, much denser than Stella & Chewy's or Wysong Archetype. The Dogswell website has them listed under treats, but the package states that the food meets AAFCO standards for a complete and balanced diet. I don't think I could use them for treats, they are much too big, and crumble when I finally succeed in breaking them up a bit.

The Verdict

I got these when Ru had a dental cleaning that included removing nine tiny teeth. He was supposed to eat soft food for a week or so, and he is ridiculously picky. He eats Stella & Chewy's most of the time as long as I don't add any liquid or put anything on it, so I figured he might be interested in these. I was wrong, he doesn't like them nearly as much. He eats these about as willingly as he eats any type of kibble or canned food, which is to say he'll eat them about half the time with no rhyme or reason why or why not. Sisci is far less picky and likes them, and Brisbane adores them as he adores all things edible.

These rate five out of five stars on the Dog Food Advisor website, with no worrisome ingredients. They are only available in 5oz bags, no big bags for big dogs. Obviously Dogswell isn't really expecting anyone to be feeding these as a complete diet to anything but a super picky tiny dog.