Best Labrador Food
Image by Tobyotter via Flickr
Finding the Best Labrador Food for Your Dog
If you are having trouble figuring out what the best food for your Labrador is, you are not alone. There are so many different brands of dog food to choose from, and all of them make different claims about how they provide the best nutrition for your dog. With all these different options, it is hard to decide what the best Labrador food is.
Even with all the store-bought options we have nowadays, making your own dog food is still the best way to insure your dog is getting the right nutrition. The best Labrador food should include 40% meat, 10% carbohydrates, and 50% vegetables. Feeding your dog lean meats, fresh fruits and vegetables (without pits or seeds), and occasionally cooked rice and pasta will provide them with a well-balanced diet to meet all their nutritional needs.
Foods You Should Not Give Your Dog
Before you can start making your own dog food, however, you need to first know what dogs cannot eat. Although making your own dog food is usually the best option for Labrador nutrition, it can also be harmful to your dog if you do not know what they cannot digest.
You may have heard before that dogs should not be given chocolate, but there are quite a few other foods that we eat which dogs cannot digest. These include anything with caffeine or alcohol, large quantities of dairy, grapes and raisins, macadamia nuts, avocado, onions, garlic, salt, and foods with large quantities of sugar.
There are also quite a few foods which we would not eat ourselves but many people mistakenly believe are OK for dogs. One common misconception is that it is fine to feed your dogs raw meat and eggs, but these foods can contain bacteria that are just as harmful to dogs as they are to humans.
Many owners give also give their dogs table scraps to eat, such as the fat that has been trimmed off meat. Labradors will gobble this kind of food up, but that does not mean that it is good for them. Fat trimmings have been known to cause pancreatitis in dogs, whether these trimmings are cooked or raw.
Finding a Good Dry Food for Labradors
Although the best Labrador food is food you make yourself, making your own dog food can become time consuming and expensive, especially since Labradors are such large, active dogs with big appetites. You may therefore want to find a good brand of dry dog food that will make up at least part of your dog’s diet.
Searching for the best Labrador food amidst all the different brands at your grocery store can be difficult. Of course all brands claim to provide your dog with all the nutrients he needs, but how can you know which ones are telling the truth?
When you are at the store, make sure to check the labels on the dog food you wish to purchase. If it does not have a named meat source, such as chicken or lamb, at the top of its list of ingredients, don’t buy it. Do not use foods that are made up of mostly meat byproducts, which are unhealthy for dogs and a common source of allergies. Chicken or lamb meal, however, is a good thing to see at the top of the ingredients list because this meal is just dehydrated meat and not byproducts or fillers.
A dog food should also be avoided if it lists a corn or wheat product as one of its first five ingredients. Dogs cannot digest these items and they can be a common source of allergies. You will inevitably have some grains in your dog food, but you want to look for a brand that uses rice (preferably brown rice) rather than corn or wheat.
Finding the best Labrador food isn’t easy, but hopefully now you are more aware of what to look for and what to avoid when feeding your dog. It takes some time to find the right food, but providing your dog with the right nutrition is worth the effort. What your dog eats directly affects both his health and life span, so make sure you feed him well so that he can live a long and happy life.
