fish4dogs new recipe

I've seen this posted a couple of places else where. They have changed the recipe in most of the dry foods and have massively reduced the meat/fish content in them

Working dog salmon now consists of
Salmon (27%), Pea Flour (22%), Potato (23%), Fishmeal, Salmon Oil, Beet Pulp, Brewers Yeast, Minerals

etc

Just thought i'd post for those who feed it as a lot of people aren't impressed.

eta: i don't know what the old recipe was i'm just cross posting

They have just recently changed the packaging too, but I never look at the ingredients, don't understand them tbh, but it would make sense. Moo is getting bored of it now, time for a change! I wish could feed raw and vary it on a day to basis xXx

Like i said i don't know the old recipe, but from what i can gather they have added the pea flour and cut the amount of fish from over 50% to just under 30

it was 60% fish , well it's their loss because I'll be giving it up and finding something else as well , 1 and half bags to get my lot through first though

ahh thanks dave wasn't sure what it was

It mentions Beet pulp is that a sugar ?? as in sugar beet ??

was just reading a little about it on a post I found on the champdogs forum after seeing this here, seems everyone is a bit dejected and experiencing runny pooos and stuff. How to ruin a good food
One other comment I saw on there but can't really remember about was people saying it used to brag about the cod content now its just "white fish" and the fish deficit is made up with pea flour

yer alot of people aren't happy, the pea flour is a cheaper filler then potato and alot of dog don't seem to be getting on with it

kathytake2 wrote:It mentions Beet pulp is that a sugar ?? as in sugar beet ??

I assume so it seems to be in alot of them

finest fish complete
Composition:
Ocean White Fish (27%), Pea Flour (22%), Potato (23%), Fishmeal, Salmon Oil, Beet Pulp, Brewers Yeast, Minerals

yeh, we got the Finest Fish Complete , never saw the ocean white fish one , Tilly had it first as we ran Tommy's puppy food down then put Tommy on it at 6 months ish (5.5) and bought another 2 bags of large bite to qualify for the deals

it's a shame it sempt a really good dry food, but i think they will loose quite a few customers now

This is what Rocky has its called Barking Heads and its the TLC version. The ingredients aren't too bad compared to others :

Boneless Chicken*, Dried Chicken*, Brown Rice, Oats, Barley, (High Omega 3) Trout, Chicken Fat, Natural Flavours, Sunflower Oil, Lucerne, Seaweed, Dried Tomato, Dried Carrot, Hip & Joint Care Glucosamine 350 mg/kg, MSM 350mg/kg, Chondroitin 240 mg/kg)

http://www.barkingheads.co.uk.php5-18.dfw1-1.websitetestlink.com/product/tender-loving-care

i'm going to stick with them... it's still going be better then the supermarket crap.. and it's only £37

I've only just realised that F4D have changed their recipe, its a joke. Zeus was finally settled on it and all his problems were solved (itchy skin, loose stools), now theyve gone and changed it, his poo's are almost watery and he smells his food and walks away because he simply doesnt like it anymore.

When did they change the composition?

Think it was end August / Early September , stuff I bought early September is still Fishy

it still fishy just a bit less

Steve wrote:it still fishy just a bit less

Suppose one benefit is Tommy's breath wouldn't be so bad when he comes belting back upstairs and onto the bed for a staffy kiss after breakfast Not sure what effect all that pea flour is going to have though

i dont think their will be able effect i had 2 bags of the new stuff my dogs have been fine...

Alot of dogs haven't though steve the new recipe isn't agreeing with dogs and people are swapping brands. But if you don't have problems then you could stick with them

I'm going to have a look at some other stuff before I really think about it , I'm not paying silly money but I don't think you have to

i'm not going pay over £40 for dog food so if amazon carry on selling it at 37 a bag i'm fine with it...

all the top brand around around £35-£45 mark

Fair enough

Really p*d off about this as only just moved Lola on to F4D fron RC Sensitivity Control and just taken delivery of a 12kg new recipie from Best Pet and don't know whether to send it back. Their website is still dispaying the old packaging at 55%.

i dont know what the problem is it still going be a good quality dog food

It is, but its not what they advertised and for a premium brand food thats quite a lot of fillers! I have just bought 30kgs of this and when I bought it (about 2 weeks ago) the website was still displaying the old nutritional values/ingredients. not too happy and when you can get something like wainwrights with no fillers for the same price. I mean if I had wanted a food which wasn't top-of=the-range I wouldn't have spent so long researching & choosing F4D. Still guess I will finish the bag and maybe think about switching.

Nosipho wrote:It is, but its not what they advertised and for a premium brand food thats quite a lot of fillers! I have just bought 30kgs of this and when I bought it (about 2 weeks ago) the website was still displaying the old nutritional values/ingredients. not too happy and when you can get something like wainwrights with no fillers for the same price. I mean if I had wanted a food which wasn't top-of=the-range I wouldn't have spent so long researching & choosing F4D. Still guess I will finish the bag and maybe think about switching.

If you got something different to what was advertised on the website, you could probably ask for your money back.

I have, pointing out it's not as advertised, and they are going to arrange free collection so can't fault Bestpets customer service. Just need to decide what to feed instead now.....

Steve wrote:i dont know what the problem is it still going be a good quality dog food

it becomes a problem when the new recipe doesnt do well with my pup, when the previous one did. you're obviously not going to have a problem with it because your dogs fine with it.

I've emailed fish4dogs & politely asked why they've changed the fish content. Be interesting to see what they reply.

Caryll wrote:I've emailed fish4dogs & politely asked why they've changed the fish content. Be interesting to see what they reply.

I already spoke to them yesterday, they said the reason why they added pea flour was to add more carbs into the food, and to meet new legislations.. (whatever that means).

They also sent me out a new 12kg bag of food as they think the other bag I had might be a 'faulty batch'.. they asked for me to send a handful of the food that I've already got so they can analyze it.

It isn't the pea flour I've queried - I understand that - it's the reduction in fish that I've asked about.

Caryll wrote:It isn't the pea flour I've queried - I understand that - it's the reduction in fish that I've asked about.

OK great, it'd be interesting to see what they have to say about that.

Caryll wrote:

Nosipho wrote:It is, but its not what they advertised and for a premium brand food thats quite a lot of fillers! I have just bought 30kgs of this and when I bought it (about 2 weeks ago) the website was still displaying the old nutritional values/ingredients. not too happy and when you can get something like wainwrights with no fillers for the same price. I mean if I had wanted a food which wasn't top-of=the-range I wouldn't have spent so long researching & choosing F4D. Still guess I will finish the bag and maybe think about switching.

If you got something different to what was advertised on the website, you could probably ask for your money back.

I might just try switching back to the Wainwrights when this is gone , they did a Salmon and Potatoe I think which we never tried. I am so dissapointed after I made the effort to write mails like Caryll , discuss with them about the forum and sponsorship etc and they seemed like a really good company and professional just to drop it all in the name of a few quid

Pea flour is proven to "increase moisture" in stools (loose to us) and I've just spent months getting Lola's tum stabilised so actually I don't care if they reduce it down to 50p a bag - she's my priority. Like Nosipho I spent ages researching before braving a change so I'm totally unimpressed.

Jaq wrote:Pea flour is proven to "increase moisture" in stools (loose to us) and I've just spent months getting Lola's tum stabilised so actually I don't care if they reduce it down to 50p a bag - she's my priority. Like Nosipho I spent ages researching before braving a change so I'm totally unimpressed.

Totally agree with you, loose stools were the main reason that I switched to F4D in the first place.

There's another post running about Fishmongers food at Petsathome you might be interested in. I might give it a go - what do you think?

Jaq wrote:There's another post running about Fishmongers food at Petsathome you might be interested in. I might give it a go - what do you think?

I was just reading that one , think I may well have a look and give it a try , it can't be any worse than this is now

Jaq wrote:There's another post running about Fishmongers food at Petsathome you might be interested in. I might give it a go - what do you think?

Not quite sure about that, as Caryll stated in the post, there seems to be several random additives in there, not quite sure why theyre in there.

vet suggested a look at Wafcol salmon and potato. His OH does trials in skin sensitivity and swears by it - any thoughts?

be careful with anything the vet recommends, do they happen to sell it ??

Presumably, the pea flour will increase the protein content of the food and balance the amino acid spectrum a little.
It's also considered relatively good in terms of digestibility and low risk of allergic response.

Working dog wrote:Presumably, the pea flour will increase the protein content of the food and balance the amino acid spectrum a little.
It's also considered relatively good in terms of digestibility and low risk of allergic response.

whhooo Doctor Keith

I've got a couple of response from Fish 4 Dogs , their official line on the whole thing will post them now

Final reply from Fish 4 dogs reagrding the Finest Fish

Hi Dave

Thanks for your quick response.

Regarding the renaming of Finest Fish to Finest Ocean White Fish, the reason for this was a logical inconsistency – we had one variant called Salmon and one called just Fish - but fish is also salmon so the question was – what type of fish we used in Fish – that we have now answered by calling it Ocean White Fish. The reason we use the term Ocean White Fish in both the name and ingredients panels is that we had already transitioned from just using Cod as we did in the early days to Ocean White Fish – the reason being overfishing has seriously damaged Cod stocks and the advice is to reduce consumption of Cod. By declaring White Fish we are able to source from species of fish that are more plentiful – improving our sustainability. The change from Cod to Ocean White Fish hasn’t altered the quality or nutritional content of the food.

The fish meal in both flavours used to be Herring Meal. However, we now use single species Salmon Meal in both Finest Salmon AND Finest Ocean White Fish. Not only does the use of Salmon Meal from Norwegian farmed fish provide a more sustainable product it also gives a higher quality fishmeal providing improved digestibility and less variability. It is also produced from ecologically sound farming practices in Norway. The Salmon Oil in Finest Salmon and Finest Ocean White Fish is now sourced from Norway. Norwegian oils are purer, higher quality and have a higher Omega3-DHA content.

The new design also brings ingredients declarations in line with new EU rules. It is worth noting that the new rules have changed the way we declare Vitamins and Minerals. In the old format it was sufficient to simply declare “Vitamins and Minerals. The new rules require us to break this out under a section headed Additives. This does not mean that we are now using additives that we didn’t do so before - it’s simply a change in rules regarding the declarations. The previous bag design stated 55% fish on the front of the bag for marketing purposes. New Finest Ocean White Fish still contains a total fish content of 46% but the only percentage stated on the bag is the fresh fish content 27%. In my opinion this is a little misleading and has caused customers to wrongly assume that the fish content has been dramatically reduced from 27% instead of to 46%. The trade-off to reducing the fish content is the significant benefits of adding pea. Although we understand the concerns you are experiencing regarding new Finest, we’re confident that the new recipe is a better formulation as advised by both our vet (with a PhD in nutrition) and our external technical consultant who has many years experience in premium pet food and is recognised as a leader in his field of expertise here in the UK. We have to claim the technical high ground and not be influenced by playing games with fish percentages. Feeding trials have new Finest scoring ahead of old Finest in ‘blind’ feeding trials so palatability is better but also pea provides for longer satiety. All in all, the formulation of new Finest is an improvement we’re proud of.

Thank you for taking the time to ask for more information.

Kind regards

Carol

Hmmmm. Said like that, it makes a bit more sense.

Shame they didn't feel the need to put a statement like these on the website when they changed it all.

Very comprehensive statements - not sure how they will overcome the reality of runny poos.
The vet doesn't stock Wafcol - or F4D which he supported when I wanted to change. Just want what's best for my girl. Might just go back to RC sen control and be done with it. So fed up now.

Jaq wrote:Very comprehensive statements - not sure how they will overcome the reality of runny poos.
The vet doesn't stock Wafcol - or F4D which he supported when I wanted to change. Just want what's best for my girl. Might just go back to RC sen control and be done with it. So fed up now.

Think it's got to be said that not all dogs suit all foods and the only way to be sure is to try it , I have time on my side as got a good months worth of food yet before i make a final decision but I have discovered through my own mistake ours have been eating the new version without my knowledge without any problems as the last packages were all delivered cellophaned up for weather travel and I was just going by what I ordered not what I saw, so based on this whether it's right or wrong my 2 are ok on the new blend.

I'm sure you are totally right about about different dogs/foods. I only have a few days of original F4D left in which to make my mind up and it's been such a long journey to get her settled.

like I say I had the original first time round and then changed to the new without any problems and without realising , you could always get the 1.5kg pack as a tester ?? though economically it's a rubbish deal. See I buy 2 bags at a time now for the discount so still have 1 12kg bag to go through