With more recalls in the pet food industry, it is becoming increasingly challenging to know what to feed your pet. You want balanced nutrition made from whole foods without hormones, antibiotics, byproducts, or fillers and yet with the March 2010 recall including Nature’s Variety, a raw food manufacturer, the question of what avenue is safest has become even more difficult!
Throw into the mix the need to address your pet’s individual requirements such as food allergies, age, energy level, and possible genetic and/or digestive disorders, the equation is now next to impossible.
So what is the best pet food choice for your pet? What about trying the new kid on the block?
Custom Pet Food
Custom pet food addresses the belief that no two pets have exactly the same nutritional needs. This is not a new concept; pet food manufacturers have been making growth, maintenance, and senior formulas for years. However, custom pet food takes the process one step further by not only allowing you to decide exactly what whole foods your pet will eat, but what caloric value or energy requirements your pet requires along with what supplements and kibble size best fits your pet’s needs.
Your Pet’s needs Change
From season to season, from year to year, your pet’s needs change.
Less calories in the winter may help fight the natural weight gain cycle as pets spend more time indoors but they may also require a natural supplement to combat stiffer joints when the cold weather really sets in.
In the summer, energy levels go up but then so do the opportunities to play outside or eat something bad for them. Customizing your pet’s food allows you to increase the caloric density of the food for the busy summer months while adding digestive and immune boosting supplements to their diet to help support their natural defense systems.
Custom pet food allows you to make the needed adjustments to your pet’s diet from bag to bag, an improvement on the old system. This is especially important for dogs that have ‘jobs’ or play sports – search dogs during busy rescues, agility dogs during competition, and hunting dogs in the field require up to four times their normal daily caloric consumption and yet ingesting that much food can put added strain to their digestive system. What about ordering a bag of regular food for the ‘off’ days and a bag of high-energy food for the ‘work’ days? If only human diets could be so easy!
Individuality means Healthy
The smaller production of custom pet food manufacturers means that ingredients are purchased locally and from human food sources. This helps to guarantee the freshness of the finished product and lowers the chance of ‘tainted’ ingredients being introduced to the production line to almost nil.
This process of customization has one other added benefit – individual batches of kibble means the food is as fresh as possible when it is delivered to your door. This means little to no preservatives are required and no more wondering how many miles your dog’s dinner has traveled to be sitting on the shelf at the pet store.
What About Pet’s that have Diet Related Health Concerns?
Can a custom pet food take your pet’s unique health concerns and ailments into consideration? In general, yes. Because the food starts out as a specific base formula, it is simple to choose ingredients that best address the medical condition. From there, choosing various supplements can take the food one more step and because ingredients are fresh, whole foods, the nutritional content of the food should automatically be high.
Beyond that, custom pet food companies work with doctors in animal nutrition and natural pet nutritionist to create their products who would be able to address individual conditions as needed.
Is a Custom Pet Food the Right Decision for your Pet?
No one but you can answer that question. However, trial size bags are available to test to see first if your pet enjoys this new, fresh kibble but also to see how the food works with their system. Like with all changes in diet, the switch to the new food should be made over three to seven days depending on the sensitivity of your pet’s digestive system.
They may be the new kid on the dog food block but custom pet foods are not a necessarily new idea: it is only taking the tried and true system and putting a fresh new spin it!
For more information about custom pet food visit RedMoon Pet Food
