Treat Tuesday: ZiwiPeak 'Good Dog' Treats vs. Daily Dog Food

I love using ZiwiPeak's Daily Dog air-dried dog food as training treats, but they also make actual training treats. Both are made from air-dried meat, organs, and seafood, so is the only difference the size of the bag? Kinda.

Treats versus Food

Visually, the only difference between the ZiwiPeak beef treats and beef dog food is the size of the pieces. The food comes in tiny little squares that are exactly perfect for training treats. The treats come in longer strips that I then have to rip into appropriate sizes to use for training. Otherwise, that's it. Unlike the Real Meat dog food and treats, there's no discernible difference in texture.

The primary difference between dog food and dog treats is vitamins and minerals. Just about anything can be in dog treats, but in order to be labeled as a complete and balanced diet, dog food has to meet a certain nutrient profile. This is why pretty much every dog food ingredient list ends with a bunch of chemically-sounding things. 

ZiwiPeak 'Good Dog' beef treats are made from beef, lecithin (hopefully not derived from corn), chicory inulin (a prebiotic), and parsley. ZiwiPeak Daily-Dog air-dried cuisine is made from all that, plus organs, green-lipped mussel, and assorted vitamins and minerals. Oddly enough, the website states that the treats are made from meat, organs, and seafood when all three flavors appear to be made from only meat.

Treats on the left, complete and balanced dog food on the right.

The ZiwiPeak treats and food are so similar that the dogs don't seem to really notice a difference. I personally find that the food makes perfect training treats right out of the bag, while the treats need to be chopped or broken into pieces. As an added bonus, the food is actual dog food, so I'm not filling my dogs up with extras when we have long or intense training sessions. Kibble isn't always exciting enough to work for, but they'll do nearly anything for a piece of ZiwiPeak.

Food Friday: Ziwi Peak 'Daily Dog' Air-Dried Cuisine

Ziwi Peak's Daily Dog Air-Dried Cuisine provides all the convenience of kibble, but is made almost entirely out of meat. It is highly-palatable and not unlike feeding my dogs jerky, so they think it's amazing. I have yet to encounter anything like this before, it's not freeze-dried, nor is it a dehydrated powder. There is no need to add water, and it does not need to be refrigerated either.

I found this food at a shop in a nearby town. The name was familiar, but I had never actually taken a look at their food. I'm glad I did, because this stuff is amazing! It makes the best training treats ever. The dogs all love it and will eat it in almost any circumstance, it doesn't crumble, smell bad, or make my hands all gross. As far as I'm aware I don't have to treat it like raw meat, either. There aren't any warnings on the website or packaging about handling safety.

The ingredient list is pleasantly short. We have the beef version, which consists of meat with ground bone, organs, green-lipped mussel, and that's pretty much it. There are some vitamins, a little kelp and parsley, but this food is basically meat. That's amazing!

What's not so amazing is the price tag. Naturally, good food isn't cheap. This 2.2 lb bag cost me a little over $30. Measuring the food is a bit interesting, it comes with its own 2oz scoop. The bag and website both have feeding calculators that, of course, tell me to feed my dogs way too much. One scoop of food contains about 279 calories. According to the feeding calculator, Ru should be eating 3/4 of a scoop per day, Briz should be getting 2.5 scoops, and Sisci should be getting a little over 3 scoops. Brisbane and Ru both seem to need around 100-150 calories per day, so they actually only get half a scoop. Sisci seems to need around 400-600 calories, so she would get around 2 scoops.

The 2.2 lb bag contains about 18 scoops, that would be a month worth of food for Brisbane by himself. It's a little over two weeks worth of food for Briz and Ru together, and would only last us six days if I decided to feed this exclusively. For Briz by himself, it wouldn't be terribly cost-prohibitive at less than a dollar a day. At $1.78 per scoop, Sisci would cost me about $3.50 a day to feed though, and closer to $6 a day if I were feeding her what the package recommends.

Fortunately, ZiwiPeak also sells a 5.5 lb bag which should contain approximately 45 scoops of food. Unfortunately, the price per ounce appears to remain the same. It goes down to about $1.60 per scoop, but that's not a dramatic reduction. This is an expensive but very high-quality food. Dog Food Advisor gives in five out of vie stars across the board, with a brief mention of an unpleasant interaction with the company's customer service. While many customers seem to have had wonderful experiences, it's possible that ZiwiPeak doesn't like dealing with difficult questions from the extremely well-informed.