Food Friday: Spot Farms Grain Free Pork Dehydrated Dog Food

When I spotted Spot Farms Grain Free Pork Recipe Dehydrated Dog Food, I was intrigued. When I read the list of ingredients I knew I needed to get this for Brisbane. He had major surgery less than two weeks ago, and still has quite a lot of stitches in his mouth. I've been feeding him canned food Honest Kitchen premix with cooked meat, and Fresh Pet Vital dog food. Having another very soft food option is awesome. As Brisbane is allergic to chicken, turkey, duck, eggs, corn, barley, and sweet potato, having a limited ingredient, single-protein dehydrated food is amazing.

The Company

Spot Farms sources all of their ingredients in the USA. They use chicken, turkey, and pork raised without antibiotics. Our box of pork dog food has a picture of Ralph the pig farmer from Iowa on the back. The website and product packaging loudly proclaim the food to be human grade, but with a asterisk leading to a statement that the food is indeed for our pets and not for humans.

The lack of detailed company history or information about the founders or inspiration for their products leads me to believe that Spot Farms is probably one of several brands owned by the same company. Their contact info is for Arthur Pet Products of North Carolina. This same company owns Full Moon Dog Treats, which has a website almost identical to the Spot Farms site. 

Following the trail further, I learned that Arthur Pet Products is a division of Perdue Farms Inc. Perdue Foods produces chicken, turkey, and pork, and is indeed a family owned business. I had to really dig to find whether Arthur Pet Products was really theirs, and it is. They seem like a good business with a decent focus on meat animal welfare, it's toobad they decided to go the giant faceless corporation route with their dog food.

The Food

My first thought when preparing this food was that the recommended portion sizes for this food seemed very large. My second thought was that it seemed very much like canned dog food as soon as it was wet. It even smells like canned dog food. The food soaks up a ton of water, and gets really thick and difficult to stir. I actually had a bit of trouble getting all of the powder moistened before the whole thing turned into a giant squishy glob.

Since there's no gelling agent or thickener like carageenan or guar gum in here, I'm guessing the potatoes are what gives the Spot Farms food that particular texture. Have you over over-mixed mashed potatoes with an electric mixer, so that they turn gluey? It's kind of like that. 

Bottom Line

Brisbane likes this food. It's soft enough to be safe for a dog with missing or sensitive teeth, or a mouth full of stitches. At $35 for a 3.5 lb box, I doubt it's any cheaper than canned dog food, but it's a hell of a lot lighter to haul home from the store.

Spot Farms dog food is new enough that the Dog Food Advisor website has not yet analyzed or rated their products. It looks like Perdue Foods had a recall earlier this year due to plastic bits found in chicken nuggets. They've also had recalls due to improper handling of raw chicken. All of their recalls seem to be voluntary, which means they value their customers over their reputation at least to an extent. 

This is only the second dehydrated, rehydrated dog food I've seen on the market. It is sold exclusively through Petco. I like Spot Farms because they are a people food company that has branched out into dog food. 

Food Friday: Honest Kitchen Instant Goat's Milk Plus Probiotics

Honest Kitchen's Instant Goat's Milk Plus Probiotics is a great way to get all the microbial goodness of yogurt without refrigeration. This was another fabulous product for Brisbane when he was recovering from surgery and on massive doses of antibiotics. Those wreck havoc on the gut flora, and probiotics are a great way to help get things back to normal. My vet usually recommends yogurt with live cultures for a few weeks after antibiotics, but this was less than convenient when I was taking Briz to work with me and feeding him lunch.

The Company

I'm a big fan of Honest Kitchen, even more since they expanded their product line to include allergy-friendly egg-free poultry-free foods. I'm not crazy about their stance on GMOs though, I'm a big fan of better crop yields through science so I am anti-anti-GMO. Yay genetically modified organisms!

Honest Kitchen is both super honest and super responsible, which is why they had a recall for salmonella in 2013. None of their products tested positive for it, however a batch of their human-grade parsley was recalled by the supplier so they recalled everything it went into out of an abundance of caution. They could have decided their food was ok after testing it, they could have waited to see if any dogs got sick with a link to their food, they could have put their image first, but they didn't.

The company has added some new products recently, including their Propper Toppers for adding a special treat to meals. Unfortunately these are made from either chicken or turkey so Brisbane can't have them and therefore I am too annoyed to buy them for my non-allergic dogs. They also make a dry digestive supplement called Perfect Form that sounds like it works a lot like pumpkin only way more expensive. They also recently added an instant beef bone broth which proves they've been stealing my ideas.

The Food

When I opened my can of Instant Goat's Milk, I was rather surprised to find it contained a plastic bag. A half-full plastic bag. I know these things are sold by weight not volume, but this was seriously like buying one of those big boxes of candy at the movie theater and opening it to find like five Skittles.

I love kids!

This stuff mixes up like any powdered milk, with tons of stirring and some lumps no mattered what you do. The dogs like it ok, and the probiotics worked as well as any probiotics do, which is to say Brisbane's tummy issues showed a regression to the mean (normal poo) that may or may not have happened in the absence of the probiotics. 

The Verdict

This is way more convenient to carry around than yogurt, and great when you only need to add probiotics now and then because it's non-perishable. It's also super expensive, at $20 for a can that's maybe 1/4-1/3 full. The can makes 12 cups, I'm pretty sure I could buy 12 cups of goat's milk for less than that. Or maybe I could just milk some goats.

Food Friday: Real Meat Beef Dog Food

Real Meat Dog Food is an air-dried food made from beef, bones, and organs. It is produced in New Zealand from free-range grass-fed cows, and has all the nutritional awesomeness of raw meat, without the need for refrigeration or raw food handling precautions.

I found another air-dried dog food! I would be madly in love with this food if I hadn't found Ziwi Peak first. I was aware of Real Meat's jerky treats, and this is basically a giant bag of those. Only instead of just treats, it's actual dog food so I don't have to feel bad if all of Brisbane's calories come from training treats.

The Company

Real Meat's most widely available product is probably their 95% meat jerky treats. These are great for training, and available in several different proteins for dogs with allergies. They have lamb, and venison jerky treats, as well as the more common chicken and beef. They also make some really cute dog food seasonings made from several different meats. I've never seen these in a store before, but they all have chicken in them so I wouldn't be buying them anyway. 

Brisbane is allergic to chicken, turkey, duck, and eggs, so I appreciate that most of Real Meat's products are made with a single protein source. They don't feel the need to cram chicken or eggs into every recipe. I like that this company is family-owned, and their website says they put their investment into making really good food rather than advertising and marketing. It's a pretty incredible food, and a bit less expensive than Ziwi Peak.

The Food

Real Meat originally made three varieties of their food: beef, lamb, and chicken. Each is made from just that protein source, with a little parsley, rosemary, pumpkin, and vitamins. They have recently added a turkey food, and a turkey and venison food; both of these also contain ground beef bone. I really appreciate that their packaging and website aren't plastered with statements about nature, dogs being wolves, or their diet in the hypothetical wild. The food stands on its own, it doesn't need a bunch of hype. What little hype there is can be found in small print.

This is a pretty amazing food. Naturally Brisbane loves it, as Brisbane loves all things edible. Sisci also enjoys it. Ru...likes it, but it consistently makes him reverse sneeze. It's weird. Usually spicy food that does that to him. Dog Food Advisor gives all the Real Meat recipes five out of five stars.  

The Price

Real Meat Beef dog food is really, seriously dense. At 724 calories per cup, it's the most calorically dense food I've encountered after Ziwi Peak. This is great for 6-lb Ru, who needs to fit a ton of calories into his tiny body. Not so great for 40-lb Brisbane, who needs the same amount of calories as Ru and is the most efficient dog on the planet. A 2-lb bag of Real Meat beef cost around $24 and provides 4250 calories, so $0.56 per 100 calories. If I was to feed Brisbane only this food, it would cost me well under a dollar per day. Were I to use the company's recommendations, it would cost closer to $5 a day.

It's cheaper than Ziwi Peak, but Real Meat air-dried dog food just doesn't work as well for training treats. The food is made in much bigger chunks, so I have to break them up into much smaller pieces before I can use them. The dogs also just aren't quite as nuts for the Real Meat. I guess it's not stinky enough.

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.

Food Friday: Honest Kitchen Love

Honest Kitchen makes dehydrated dog food that is prepared by adding warm water and soaking for a few minutes. Their products include a line of base mixes that can be added to raw meat, a line of whole-grain complete foods, and a line of grain-free foods. Each comes in a cardboard box lined with a plastic bag.

Honest Kitchen food is pretty awesome, there are a lot of benefits to dehydrated diets. Increased water consumption is one of those benefits, each serving of properly-prepared Honest Kitchen food contains more than half water. Ru is currently having some urinary tract issues and I've been trying to talk him into eating Honest Kitchen food as a way of getting more fluids into him. Ru is so far unimpressed, he would still rather eat art supplies and wine corks.

The point of dehydrated food is that it is less processed than kibble. It hasn't been stewed, baked, and extruded into little pellets. Sometimes I think this is a good thing, other times I'm pretty sure I would subsist on People Chow if it existed. The lack of processing mostly means that the food retains a decent amount of it's nutrients and doesn't need to have a giant list of vitamins and minerals added back in. Having personally read through the individual ingredient lists of nearly a thousand different dog foods in the process of assembling the Dog Food Wizard, I can testify that Honest Kitchen Love has an impressively short ingredient label.

This food comes in powder form.

Ingredients:
Beef, sweet potatoes, potatoes, organic flaxseed, organic coconut, parsley, chard, papaya, cranberries, pumpkin, honey, tricalcium phosphate, choline chloride, zinc amino acid chelate, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, potassium iodide, potassium chloride, iron amino acid chelate, copper amino acid chelate.

That's it.

Add water and soak for five minutes. Ta da! Homemade dog food!

Questionable Claims
Like most good dog food companies, Honest Kitchen is guilty of excessive use of the word "natural". Their website also heavily promotes the health benefits of their food while criticizing nonsense words like "fillers". I'm sure Honest Kitchen's food is world's better than most grocery store kibble, and I believe it to be one of the best foods out there, but I still don't think it's that much better than the top quality kibbles. I definitely wouldn't expect a dramatic difference between this and Orijen, for example.

Following the Trail
Honest Kitchen food uses human-grade ingredients, and is produced and packed in an FDA-approved human-grade facility. This means it would be safe for me to eat if I decided it looked good enough. (It doesn't.) The downside to this is of course that Honest Kitchen food is crazy expensive. Love, the only egg-free, poultry-free, grain-free choice on the menu, is a little over 500 calories per dry measured cup, making it actually a bit more nutritionally dense than most kibble. This basically means that I can feed a similar amount as I would kibble, for both Brisbane and Ru that's a quarter cup. There's about sixteen cups in a four-pound box, which would last me about a month for both dogs. At $40 for the 4-pound box, that's not actually terrible. That said, the only reason I can actually afford to feed this to my dogs is because Brisbane eats like a lapdog. If I fed the recommended amount for a less active 40-lb dog, I would be spending $80 or more a month on this food. Still, it's a lot cheaper than Stella & Chewy's.

The Good Stuff
It's all good stuff. Brisbane loves it and I could probably get away with freezing it in Kongs if I felt inclined. The Love variety in particular is awesome because it's just beef and veggies, with no eggs. Almost everything else has eggs, even the fish-based Zeal flavor.

If I can talk Ru into actually eating this stuff, we may be using it to help keep him more hydrated. The possibility of prescription urinary food is looming as we try to get his infection under control and make sure he doesn't have stones or crystals. I love that this is such a calorically dense food, for a wee tiny dog that tends to shiver off all his calories, it just might be what we need.