what food? (again!)

[kate2]

I need some more help with this sorry! 

I started my two 3.5 year olds on Burns Chicken & Rice, but they started losing a lot of weight on it, I have now switched them to Simpsons Premium Adult Sensitive Lamb and Potato which has 45% meat content compared to Burns 20%.  Burns was also "Chicken Meal" whereas Simpson seems to be proper meat?

Simpsons:
Lamb (min 45% - Including 22% Dried Lamb, 19% Deboned Lamb, Lamb Fat) Potato (min 26%) Beet Pulp, Brewers Yeast, Lamb Gravy, Dried Egg, Salmon Oil, Minerals, Linseeds, Vitamins, Yucca Extract, Cranberries, Nucleotides

They are slowly gaining weight (and will eat anything tbh!), but now they are pooping for England! seriously I picked up 5 poops off Lilly the other morning on a 1.5hour walk! and they poops they do are whoppers 

Could this be down to the higher meat content? will it settle down? I understood if they were pooping it all out then that meant the food was full of fillers, but on paper the simpsons looks better than the burns for protein?

They are on 70g each twice a day, Simpsons recommends 95g-200g per day for dogs 5-15kg (mine are 11.5kg and 12.5kg), so I'm at the lower end of their scale as I am also using some of the Burns up as training treats, but not that much!

Should I look to swap them again? If so what will keep weight on them and not come out the other end so much?

Thank you

[elaine.e]

There can be a lot of trial and error in finding a food that suits your dogs. Pooping out large amounts is often down to the carbohydrates in food rather than the meat. With the Simpsons I'd guess at the potato as that's the next named ingredient after the meat. I doubt that dogs get a lot of nutritional value from potatoes so probably quite a lot of what goes in comes out again

[kate2]

I'm on the allaboutdogfood website and most seem to have either potato or rice or oats as a filler  am I right in saying rice or sweet potato is better than normal potato in that respect? or is no filler at all better?
and "freshly prepared" is better than "dried" which is better than "meal"?
I don't want them to go hyperactive either

I'm comparing Barking Heads Grain Free, Burns Alert, James Wellbeloved Adult, Millies Wolfheart, Orijen Adult, Skinner's Field & Trial and Wainwright's Grain Free Dry at the mo and my head is spinning 
 
http://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/compare-dog-foods/0663-0842-0297-0468-0034-0013-0875-0841-0006/barking-heads-vs-burns-vs-james-wellbeloved-vs-millies-wolfheart-vs-millies-wolfheart-vs-orijen-vs-simpsons-vs-skinners-vs-wainwrights

 

[Jane57]

Have you had a look at eden. It has no fillers, cereal, beet pulp , rice,
It does have sweet potato, which is fine.

[Andrea Ellie]

We used to feed Simpsons but now feed Millie's Wolfheart. They do white potato free mixes too. I did look at Eden and would have tried it but tried Millie's first and have stuck with it because it suits Ellie.