I was at the grocery store (Hannaford) the other day, and wandered down the dog aisle, as one does. An unfamiliar bag of food caught my eye. Oh, Nutrisca? What are you? Grain free? Potato free? At my grocery store?!
So yeah. According to Dog Food Advisor's standards, Nutrisca is a 5 star food. The bag of kibble that my store had was lamb and chickpea which, frankly, sounds like two basic ingredients for a lovely curry or something I may make one of these days. An oh! Look at the picture! There's a little flag on there....might Nutrisca be made in the U.S.A? According to the website it is!
Even though I've looked at the bag a couple of times, I've failed to take note of the price. There's only that one size bag on the shelf, 4 pounds, which would not last long in this house. Don't get me wrong, I'm not immediately willing to jump the Blue Buffalo chuck wagon; I'm just pleased that my regular ol' grocery store has an actual high quality food instead of Pedigree, Beneful, and a no-name mass produced brand that doesn't seem to have any actual meat in it.
There is a variety of canned options now as well:
You can kinda read the prices in those pictures. I don't feed canned food to Elka, so I have no frame of reference for volume required, and appropriate price. I do wish that treats were available; I would totally buy treats of that caliber! Especially if they make hip treats, as I'm not really happy buying the Pedigree ones, but do want to pay attention to Elka's hip and joint health.
I hope I'm seeing the beginnings of a trend, and other good brands will creep onto grocery store shelves. A girl can dream, right?
Woof! Woof! never heard of it. Made where? We don't pay much attention on other food cause of my allergies ... and mom makes my treats. Happy tasty Tuesday. Lots of Golden Woofs, Sugar
ReplyDeleteMade in the USA, though I'm not sure if they have their own plants, where the plant is, etc.
DeleteYou're lucky, that your mom makes your treats! Home cooked things are great.
Never heard of that brand! We live so far in the boonies that it's hard to find good pet food...
ReplyDeleteThat's why Amazon and Chewy.com are so great ;)
DeleteYou spend a lot of time thinking about dog food, don't you? We are bad pet owners. We find one that works and that is it until it doesn't work anymore...lol. It looks like a decent food, but that canned food is pricey. We have to draw the line somewhere. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, it's certainly endless blog post fodder!
DeleteIs the canned food pricey? As I said, I have no frame of reference for how much it's "supposed" to be, and how many foods a day a dog would be fed. I'm not like, morally against canned food, it just wasn't something we ended up doing.
Yes, even for good quality it is expensive. But I have really only priced it at the store we buy our food, which sells at a decent discount. We have used canned as a supplement. For example when a dog needs to gain weight and you don't want to increase kibble amount, you can add some canned. We have always fed our puppies a bit of canned with their kibble. Again added calories. Right now Freighter could use more weight. We are trying one thing, but may start adding a bit of canned food until he porks up a bit. We have a tough time keeping weight on the dogs at the end of summer through hunting season. They burn too many calories. The thing I liked about the food you found in your store is the fat content was nice and high. That and the protein amount makes it food we would consider. With our dogs getting older we may not have the issue of keeping weight on Thunder and Storm much longer....lol.
DeleteI think it's a trend that a lot of places will jump on. It's good business for them, and if they can convince people that they have what they need there, that will keep more dollars in the store. My guess is that we'll see more brands cropping up in grocery stores that we'd actually pay for. Everybody wants to be one stop shopping these days!
ReplyDeleteThat would be nice! I do think that it's a smart move on grocery stores' parts, especially because the stores where I can buy Elka's food do have limited hours, and that grocery store is 24 hours.
DeleteIt seems like all the stores are starting to carry some top notch dog food. I quit looking at different foods as it drives me crazy and just go with the stuff we have that works. :)
ReplyDeleteI call it "professional interest" ;) Right now, Blue Buffalo is working for us, which is great.
DeleteWe mostly order ours online, but it would be great if our stores would carry premium foods and save us an extra stop at the pet store.
ReplyDeleteI think that the titanic industry that pets are nowadays really will encourage "regular" stores to start carrying better pet items.
DeleteHmmmm may be worth checking out
ReplyDeleteBenny & Lily
It's something I can keep in mind should I ever have a pet food emergency, anyway!
DeleteMy grocery store has started to carry the Fresh Pet brand in the freezer, which is kind of exciting. I honestly don't even look at the dry food anymore so I can't say for sure what is there. I do think more dog owners are becomming smarter about what they buy, especially as they become more knowledgeable about their own human food. It's only natural we start to think of our pet's health too. Hopefully this is just the beginning!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, I went to the Fresh Pet web site to search stores near me that carry it. One of the Wal Marts in my county carry it, but not the one in my town!
DeleteYea, grocery stores are finally realizing that pet owners want the good stuff. My store carries the refrigerated food (don't think it's Fresh Pet, but something else) of good quality, and some other good brands, but since I only eat prescription food, Ma hasn't paid much attention to the price. It is good to see thou!
ReplyDeleteKisses,
Ruby
It's smart of grocery stores to get on the bandwagon. Maybe I should email that store manager and mention things like Fresh Pet ;)
DeleteAwesome! We never buy at the grocery store until the other day when mama saw a little freezer with Fresh Pet Select. She got excited like you an got one of each - real ingredient s made in the USA!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see something like that in a "regular" store. Kind of an affirmation.
DeleteNot personal concern here, but still very cool!
ReplyDeleteNola's MOm
Just one of those things!
Deletenever heard of it..but then again it is over the pond for us! :)
ReplyDeleteSlobbers
Don't worry, I'd never heard of it before either!
DeleteThat's a nice dream! We are in the midst of a huge research project in our house, trying to figure out what to feed our dogs, after R's probable poisoning by a high caliber brand. Along with good foods for our dogs in grocery stores, I'm dreaming of some real standards and oversights for the dog food industry.
ReplyDeleteYes, especially with the scare you had with R, I can definitely imagine how you must be investigating every food avenue. Standards and oversight are a beautiful dream!
DeleteThat is encouraging! I love seeing that. I don't know much about Nutrisca (other than that I think they're a branch of Dogswell), but I love seeing a higher quality of food available in a location like that. I also loved when my local store started carrying FreshPet. The pups get the fresh rolls as treats!
ReplyDeleteWow! Nice to see. I love that even grocery stores are getting in on the healthy dog food train. I hope that happens here soon. then I wouldn't have to make a separate trip to the pet food store.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very nice post and is also very helpful in getting to know about which food is good for dogs.
ReplyDeleteBuy Dog Food Online
This is a very useful post!
ReplyDeleteBuy Dog Food