We have been using the Black Gold Ultimate performance food 32/21 food for years and when we went back to the store, and asked for the Ultimate blue bag as always, we got a different formulation. It does say 28/20 on the bag instead of 32/21 but it is the same price and if you didn’t really look at it you may not realize you just bought something else since the bag colors are identical. The 32/21 food is now in a purple bag and is called super premium. Ordinarily you may not have a big problem with this switch unless your dogs don’t digest brewer’s rice with the same efficiency as corn and have horrendous GI problems for more than a week. Fish meal went from the third ingredient to the eighth ingredient. Eventually they did adjust but there was no option to transition since the change in formulation was not very obvious and no one said anything. No old formulation was available to transition with and the store had no idea the purple bag version existed to order any. Why did they have to change the food and call it the same name as another and then rename the old version? The person on the phone at Black Gold said people didn’t like the corn. They just said to feed a little less. Well the bag feeding directions have you feeding more per dog per day also. Well corn is not my favorite ingredient either, but the way they did the switch was not good business. Since someone else dumped the bags into the feed container the person feeding had no idea the formulation changed. I was a little tired of trying to deal with liquid stools and gas problems. You could not be in the same room with one of them it was so bad. At least I figured out the problem before having a large vet bill. This sort of situation could send an elderly dog over the edge, health wise – one of my 13 year old dogs did not deal with this very well. I just think this was a really stupid choice on Black Gold’s part. Does adding more rice increase the arsenic content? I asked and am waiting for an answer next week.
.
