Friday, April 27, 2012

Nature's Harvest Natural "Gently Cooked" Dog Food

A little while ago a respresentative from Global Pet Foods asked me if I was interested in trying out a new food they were carrying - "Nature's Harvest Natural Gently Cooked Dog Food" - and I said "SURE!" - I never turn down anything that's free and sounds interesting.

It was also a good time to try something new because I had willing young participants in the house and I've been trying out different brands of food to see if they liked one brand more than another - and also to see if one brand made a difference in the amount that Sidney is chewing on himself - which is pretty bad at the moment unfortunately.

One of the things that I've been doing for awhile is home cooking for the majority of the dogs' diet - and giving some kibble to round things out - I've been feeding them rice, carrots, chicken, then some other meat on the side - either liver or steak or pork or something like that. They of course love that - in fact the rice and carrot mixture tastes so good that even I eat it! haha! (My Dad isn't very impressed that my life has gotten so low that I've stooped to eating dog food!)

An interesting note about home cooked food - usually when you say to a vet that you home cook for a dog their eyes pop out of their head and say that you're not giving them all the nutrients they need - but a couple months ago when I had Buttercup in and said what I was doing - the vet said to me that they thought home cooking was good for dogs and that they have a dietitian that they recommend people contact to get an individualize diet for your dog. That person is a lady named Monica Segal - who has a very impressive website at http://www.monicasegal.com/- the information on her web site looks fantastic - and the vet I was talking to went up several pegs in my mind when she didn't immediately shoot down the fact that I wasn't feeding carboard kibble - she did however go back DOWN many pegs when she wouldn't let me leave the clinic without buying several cans of carboard soft food for Buttercup because of her thyroid problems. You can never win.

Other kibble that I've tried them on is Holistic Select, which they like pretty well, California Natural Herring & Sweet Potato - which they all refused to eat, NRG's dehydrated Range Fed Roast Beef which none of them liked - which really surprised me because Charlie and Daisy used to love it and it always smells so good - and of course Orijen Beef because that's what I always fed my old crew - which they also liked pretty well.
So on to the Nature's Harvest - did they like that? And what did I think of it? I'll say what I thought of it first.

I personally liked it because it was no muss no fuss - it's even easier than other frozen patty type dog foods like Carnivora because they don't want you to let it defrost naturally - they says to microwave it for 30 seconds before feeding - which makes it super convenient. It really is as convenient as kibble. I found the texture of it when I was serving it out to be a little different - but the dogs didn't seem to mind - so it wasn't a problem.

The dogs liked them too - and they have healthy ingredients - on the Nature's Harvest website you can see the ingredients on each of the 4 types of dog food's labels and it's all good stuff.

As for the price - I think it's $26.00 for a box of 10 patties - and I was giving the dogs 1/3 of a pattie per meal - so for 3 little dogs that's 2 patties a day - that's 5 days's per box - so like $26.00 a week for super premium soft stuff to mix into your super premium high quality kibble. I'd imagine most people like me would pay that without too much problems!

There's 4 flavours - beef, chicken, salmon and lamb.

As far as I know it's only available at Global Pets so far - so go there and try some out - I bet you and your dog will like it - it's like when they started putting cauliflower in Kraft Dinner!

2 comments:

  1. Interesting Joan. We've put our dogs on the raw food diet. So far so good. Gateway on Main Street at Forest Hills Parkway, sell raw food.

    It's not as convenient as the pre-packaged stuff, but I know everything they're eating. I certainly didn't know what was really in the kibbles I'd been giving them.

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  2. I hope you do a follow-up post as to how things go with the new food. Thanks for the link to Monica's site, I'll have to check it out. I too have been home cooking and I'm always interested in how others are feeding their dogs. I have come across some recipes that are just way too crazy complicated and some who make you feel that you need a phd to put together a meal plan for your dog.

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