Animal Welfare Professionals

Just curious, we feed Iams, but I'm thinking of switching to a higher quality food. What does everyone else use?

Hi there! Pet nutrition is a very "hot" topic these days. At my shelter, we use Purina One for a base for cats and dogs and then mix in higher quality foods. We do this for a few reasons. One: we buy a lot of our base food so we need an "okay" one that is affordable. Two: It's a brand of food that is readily available for donors to purchase and not break their banks. Three: We find a lot of animals turn their noses up at "high" quality food because they are used to something else. Four: for those pets that love the food, they tend to overeat it and we see more vomiting/diarrhea which tends to freak out new staff members and volunteers.

I always advise feed the best food that you can afford that your dog likes and one that is available to you. Definitely do a gradual change with your old food to your new food.

Good luck!

Our shelter also feeds Purina One as a base for the exact same reasons. We used to do Purina Dog/Cat Chow but we decided to "test the waters" and try asking the public for a food that was still widely available, but was a bit better quality. The community responded well, and while we still get some donations of Dog/Cat Chow, we've been fortunate enough that donations of Purina One have been so numerous that we have not actually had to buy any Purina One since we did the switch.

As far as canned food, we feed a wide variety, but most of it tends to be Fancy Feast or Friskies.

That's fantastic! We find that if we ask our community to donate, they will come through. Any donations that we don't typically use for the in-house or foster population, we put on our food pantry for those in need.

We feed our dogs mostly natural balance. We do use other brands as long as they are grain free due to most of our dogs having allergies

thank you for advising me