Ingredients:
Ground Yellow Corn, Beef & Bone Meal, Soybean Meal, Digest of Chicken By-Products, Animal Fat (preserved with BHA), Poultry By-Product Meal, Brewer's Rice, Salt, Iron Oxide, Calcium Carbonate, Choline Chloride, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Vitamin E Supplement, Copper Sulfate, Vitamin A Acetate, Manganese Sulfate, Niacin, Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin Supplement, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Potassium Iodine, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Sodium Selenite, Folic Acid, Biotin.
Guaranteed Analysis:
Crude Protein (minimum) 21%
Moisture (maximum) 12%
Crude Fat (minimum) 8%
Crude Fiber (maximum) 5.5%
Linoleic Acid (minimum) 1%
Calcium (minimum) 1%
Phosphorus (minimum) 0.8%
This food receives a 1 star rating simply because there is nothing lower.
The primary ingredient in the food is corn (it should be meat!). Corn is a problematic grain that is difficult for dogs to digest and thought to be the cause of a great many allergy and yeast infection problems. We prefer not to see this used in dog food.
Beef and bone meal is a low quality meat product. Soybean meal is a poor quality source of protein in dog food, and a common cause of allergy problems. Some believe that it is the number 1 cause of food allergies in dogs (outstripping even wheat).
The next ingredient is by-products. It is impossible to ascertain the quality of by-products and these are usually products that are of such low quality as to be rejected for use in the human food chain, or else are those parts that have so little value that they cannot be used elsewhere in either the human or pet food industries. The AAFCO definition of chicken by-product meal is “a meal consisting of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered chicken, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as might occur unavoidable in good processing practice.” Digest is material from poultry by-products which results from chemical and/or enzymatic hydrolysis of clean and undecomposed tissue.
Animal fat is a further low quality ingredient and is impossible to determine the source. Unidentified ingredients are usually very low quality. AAFCO define this as "obtained from the tissues of mammals and/or poultry in the commercial processes of rendering or extracting. It consists predominantly of glyceride esters of fatty acids and contains no additions of free fatty acids. If an antioxidant is used, the common name or names must be indicated, followed by the words "used as a preservative".
This food uses chemical preservatives (BHA) which is believed to be carcinogenic, and is banned from use in human food.
The next ingredient if further by-products, this time poultry (unidentifiable source). The AAFCO definition of poultry by-product meal is “a meal consisting of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered poultry, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers, except in such amounts as might occur unavoidable in good processing practice.”
Brewers rice is a waste product – a spent grain that is a by-product of the alcohol industry. The AAFCO definition is “the dried extracted residue of rice resulting from the manufacture of wort (liquid portion of malted grain) or beer and may contain pulverized dried spent hops in an amount not to exceed 3 percent.”
