[Carol G]

Hello everyone, new to this site and forum but in process of bringing home new male yellow lab puppy, currently being fed Blue Buffalo Wilderness chicken puppy food. While it’s not a “bad” puppy formula, I think I want to change him over to a more superior brand of food. This will be our second male yellow lab, the first of which lived until almost 16 yrs old, and who we also got as a 9 week puppy. I was looking at both the Orijen puppy large breed or the Wellness Core puppy. Need to know what is best way to incorporate a new food at this tender age, and appreciate any comments, opinions and recommendations about these brands as well. Thanks, and I look forward to being a member here. Carol

[bigthree]

I would recommend Orijen over the Wellness Core. If you Google the Wellness you will find out that they have started to put green tea extract in there food and that can do harm to dogs livers.

[Pitlove]

While Orijen is a great food, it does not meet the proper calcium requirements for large breed puppies (none of their food does including the LBP formula). Wellness CORE puppy however, does. I would go with Wellness CORE for now. Here is a link to other foods that have proper calcium levels for up until hes about 8 to 10 mos and can absorb the calcium properly.

https://docs.google.com/a/selu.edu/file/d/0BwApI_dhlbnFTXhUdi1KazFzSUk/edit

I would absolutely recommend Orijen for after the 8 to 10 mos. Its an amazing food and my dog loved it!

edit: I would also recommend either of the Nature’s Variety formulas mentioned on the list.

• This reply was modified 10 years ago by Pitlove.

[Carol G]

Thank you both for your replies. In order to avoid a sudden change in diet, what ratio of new food should be mixed with current food? Assume it should be increased over a week or two until completely changed to new food? Also, would you recommend any other type of food that’s okay to feed a puppy? i.e. carrots, pumpkin, etc. ?

[Pitlove]

Correct, most dogs especially puppies do need time to transition to new foods. Some dont. Just depends on how healthy their stomach is. You can start doing 25% new food 75% old food for a few days, then 50/50 then 75 new 25 old and then all new. If he needs 7 days fine, if he needs 2 week so be it. Monitor his stool. if they start to get loose when you have increased the percent of new food you can take a step back and giving him some canned pumpkin couldnt hurt. Someone correct me if Im wrong about the pumpkin though.

[Cynthia R]

Orijen large breed puppy is on the editors choice approved list of food for large breed puppies. The calcium is minimum 1.2% and 1.5% maximum. I feed it to my mastiff puppy. The Google doc has not been updated for some time.

[Cynthia R]

/reports/orijen-puppy-large/

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