Kristen,
I ‘ll give you a bit on my background as it buried in numerous posts I’ve posted over the years. I have a strong background in science, hundreds of credit hours. I started out as a biology /biochem double major. Didn’t finish the degree… married my prof and became a mom. But as a wife of a prof I now could take classes for free, and I’ve taken a lot of classes! As part of my education I have taken a class which covered feed formulation for large animal, many many hours evaluating diets primarily for cattle and hog production as problem based class work. It was all very “mathey” and all hand calculations so I have a basic understanding of how to do nutritional calculations it isn’t hard to do … just time consuming.
Because of my background when I evaluate a company or product I look at the nutritional numbers posts and see if they “add up”.
The reason I said so far only balance it makes sense to me is because of the precision of the feed recommendations. I think the amount of supplement should vary depending on ingredient use. Use as much as needed and no more. Keeps costs down. Also specific vegetable fat recommendations are given which vary depending on meat source to meet linoleic needs as they should.
When I looked at the KBPF supplement I see that the nutritional information posted doesn’t meet AAFCO. I found it odd that though they post a decent amount of information there is nothing about linoleic acid. I would not be at all surprised to find that the diets as made are deficient. The company doesn’t have recommendation for vegetable oils and I doubt that there is enough dried egg in the product to meet needs. There is no break down of the nutrient profile of the supplement.
See Spot Live longer does a little better job… but vague instructions like add up to 20% whole food by volume… really turn me off. Nutritionists never balance by volume way too much variation. Huge difference to a nutrient profile/calories if you add 20% liver by volume vs 20 % green beans vs 20% chickpeas. It is all very odd.
The “synthetics” in balance it don’t bother me, perhaps because of my nutritional background. The NRC tables are based on highly bioavailable “synthetics” and the user of such tables is cautioned of a need to convert if using natural sources whose bioavailability may be poor. Even SSLL acknowledges the need for synthetics. I have to wonder if the dried spinach in SSLL isn’t somewhat of a filler window dressing. People like to see natural ingredients so marketers will oblige them.
Cheryl,
It doesn’t surprise me that all the recipes from balance it come up with deficiencies unless supplement is added as the recipes are based on just a few ingredients. It isn’t a “ploy” to get you to buy their supplement. Recipes are free when using their supplement but you can purchase recipes that use common supplements to balance them.
Is balance it perfect? I think it is good at what it is, but may not meet all peoples needs.
I’ve never used the supplements myself as majority of calories my dogs eat are from commercial foods.
