what is the right commercial food??

Question
Hello my male siberian husky is now 3 months old. when we got him (at 8 weeks old) from the breader they had him on Pro Plan Puppy chicken & rice.  We have contiued with that food, however where we live there is no where to purchase this food.  We have to drive for more than an hour to get to a store that carries it!  We were just wondering what are the other 'good' brands of food that will provide our boy with the proper nutrition? (we have heard some say Beneful Puppy, Puppy Chow, Alpo, ect) But what is the best to your knowledge?  Thanks

Answer
Well, first, if your Sibe is purebred, you may be in luck . . .  The Siberian metabolism when treated with the right amount of exercise (and there isn't really too much of a good thing), is an extremely efficient machine.  They were bred to have very effective and slow metabolisms.  So, the bad news is that a lot of commercial brands are loaded with various "meals" (e.g., corn meal).  These have little to no nutritional value for the Sibe because of the design of the digestive system.  They are based on being carnivores, and lack the enzymes to break down vegetable based proteins and energy (they do have some of the enzymes, but also lack the organ structure to facilitate it).  That's why wolves don't eat berries - they eat bears (if they are lucky).

I haven't had experience with Beneful, but Pro Plan is a pretty good food.  Puppy Chow and Alpo are usually pretty bad actually.  To give you something to compare to - this is what I use:

Pro Pac Performance Puppy (even though mine are adults, I'll explain in a moment).  Ingredients: Chicken Meal (good protein source), Ground Yellow Corn (ok, not the best, but better than Corn meal), Chicken Fat, Dried Beet Pulp, Dired Egg, Flaxseed, Yeast Cultures, etc.  The main ingredient is a meat.  Good thing!  The rest of the list actually looks like the side of a Centrum bottle (vitamins and minerals).

Next, look at the Analysis (nutritional info):
Crude Protein (not less than): 30%
Crude Fat (not less than): 20%
Crude Fiber (not MORE than): 4%
Moisture (not MORE than):10%

There's some other stuff on there, but those are important. For a Sibe, a diet high in Protein and Fat is good, fiber at 4% is fine too, they don't need much.  Moisture is just a good indicator of what you are buying, you can add water, but paying $30 a bag for 25 lbs of dog food with 20% water . . . well, you just paid $6 for 5 lbs of water ;)

Because of the Sibe metabolism, we feed our two dogs twice a day.  Their daily TOTAL food intake (not counting random treats) is 1 cup of food (1/2 cup at each feeding) and a cooked hamburger patty (1/2 patty at each feeding).  Now, using one cup of high quality food a day - my 27 lbs bag lasts something like 45 days.  It's great!  I use the puppy formula because it still has higher protein/fat content.

Now, here's what I would suggest.  Hit the closest pet store and just take a look at the food available to you.  Grocey stores usually have a pretty poor selection.  Look at protein and fat content, and while they don't have to be as high as Pro Pac puppy (I keep my dogs pretty active), you should see some surprising numbers when you compare.  Then, look at the ingredient lists - if you see Corn Meal or something similar as the #1 ingredient, move on.  That means the main ingredient is nutritionally incomplete for your dog.

Also, you can check out www.propacpetfood.com for their list - and they do have a list of online retailers as well - heck you might be able to just order Pro Plan too.  Other foods I know of off-hand that seem decent - Eagle Pack is good, and Science Diet/Iams are ok - although I'm not a big fan there.

Hope that helps, and if you have any more questions, feel free to send them over.