The very first day I brought him home is when I first battled this dilemma. As a first time pet owner or new owner, it's only natural to want to provide your pet with the most nutritious meals possible, but with all the variety around, ranging from low cost supermarket duds to bank breaking vet's choices, it's hard to balance peace of mind and your bank balance (no one ever said getting a pet would be a cheap outing...).
For the first 3 months of Salvador's puppy life I was feeding him a popular brand, bought directly from the vet. I felt that while he was still growing and eating relatively little at that stage, I would give him the most nutritious thing I could find,
UNTIL...
we hit the 6 month old stage. At this age he was quite a bit larger, way more energetic and his appetite sky rocketed! This is when I started investigating other options. I was looking for something that would take care of all his growing needs, that was more cost effective than the expensive food recommended by the vet and that was perhaps a bit more natural (I became aware of natural alternatives to dog food while working on a bio dynamic farm, where the cook made dog food weekly for the farm dogs...but more on this later).
At that stage, making my own raw dog food was not an option due to the sheer amount of time and sourcing of appropriate ingredients this required, so I thought that if I can't go totally natural with this food thing, the next best option would be going local.
I found a few brands of locally produced dog foods, but in the end I was most impressed by Montego's Karroo Puppy food .
Montego offers a range of solid food options, but I decided to go with the Karroo brand. This food is produced locally and originated in Graaff-Reinet, a small town in the Great Karroo. For those of you who does not know this area, it's well known for it's ostrich and lamb meat, which happens to be what this brand of food is made of.
The founder of the brand lives and works in the area and after investigating cost effective, yet nutritious options for his own farm hounds, he started developing this brand specifically for their needs. On top of this, it contains all natural macro materials and has no added colorants or artificial flavorants.
This whole back story appealed to me since we were living on a farm and the sheer amount of energy young Salvador was using up each day, 'working' the land, meant that he needed something more potent than the everyday supermarket kibble to sustain his growing needs.
We've since moved on form the farm and I'm still feeding him this same brand - we have tried others, just to change things up a little, but we keep coming back to this rich, nutritious food. I guess nothing beats ostrich and lamb....
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| Montego Karroo Adult |
Licks & Kisses!
xxx
