What is Crude Protine in dog food ? What do you feed your dog?

Question

Hi, I have noticed that different dog foods have the same amount of protine. How can this be when the ingredients are so different. One is meat and the other is meat meal?? some are corn/ or rice? I Love to feed Bil-Jac as it makes my dogs coat beautiful (no dry skin here), Gives them great muscle tone, and Condenses their poop. Less Poop less mess. I love that. But how can other dog foods that are corn have the same protine? Bil-Jac Dry food is 28%.

Answer 1

Crude protein simply refers to the protein content in the feed. It is a nutritional term. It has nothing to do with digestability, as said by another answer. The reason that contents vary but protein is similar is because of the amounts of each ingredient in the food. Think of it this way, you have $100. In one store you buy a shirt for 25 pants for 25 shoes for 25 and a hat for 25 you have a 100$ outfit. In another store you buy a shirt for 40 shoes for 10 and shorts for 50, you still have a $100 outfit, it just has different parts. Dogs have a certain protein requirement, so most all foods are around the same protein content for each lifestage. "meat" means that there is whole pieces of meat used in the recipie. "meat meal" means that there is ground pieces, so it is essentialy the same thing. The only word you shoud be concerned with is "byproduct". for example, "poultry meal", means ground up chicken/turkey. "Poultry by product meal" means it is poultry litter, feathers and other byproducts of poultry. In cattle, sheep and goat feed that is ok, becuase their digestive system can break it down, but in cat, dog, horse feed, you want to stay away from that because it is pretty much filler. Rice vs corn depends on what the dog and owner prefer; It is like are you going to have a potato or pasta with your dinner...its a starch.

Answer 2

Crude Protein refers to the protein in the food that their body can't utilize. For instance, in some animal feeds, feed manufacturers will add ground up chicken feathers into the feed to increase the amount of protein in the feed. However, the animals digestive system cannot utilize the protein from the chicken feathers so it is called a crude protein.

So basically, you don't want your dog food to have a lot of crude protein in relation to the total amount of protein in the dog food. If it has a lot of crude protein, then it is not a very good dog food.

The reason why the protein can be the same is that the animal nutritionists know how much protein certain ingredients have. To get the right percentage of protein you can use completely different ingredients you just have to balance how much of each ingredient you put into the food. I took an animal nutritions course at Purdue University and we learned how to do this. If you notice on the bag they will either give a percentage range or guarantee that it has a min or max of that percentage. Like for instance the feed may state that it guarantees a minimum of 17% protein. The feed could have more than 17% protein, but it won't have less than that. Different products can be used to up the protein like meat, soybean meal, chicken feathers, etc. However some are better for your animal than others. A good way to differentiate which is the best dog food is to look at the list of ingredients and see which ingredients are listed at the top. The list of ingredients is listed from greatest to least as far as the percentage in weight that the ingredient constitutes of the feed. You want the best ingredients listed closer towards the top and you want a low amount of crude protein.

Another thing to note and watch for is that many feed manufacturers won't keep their formula the same. They may adjust the feed formula based on what ingredients are expensive at the time and what ingredients are not. For instance if the price of soybeans go up, they may reduce the amount of soybean meal and replace part of that with another ingredient to keep the protein percentage the same but at a cheaper cost. The best feed companies won't change their formulas even if the price of an ingredient goes up. To find out if your dog food company changes their formula based on ingredient price, give them a call. I've seen where the animals will eat their feed great then all of a sudden all of them start turning their nose up at it and won't eat it. If you see that happen, there is probably a good chance that the feed company changed the formula to cut costs due to an ingredient price hike.

Answer 3

In answering late - it really depends on what you feed, how much you feed, and where you buy. I have 2, 80 pound dogs - the younger gets around 2lbs a day whereas the older dog gets about 1 1/2 lbs of food a day - soon to be taken down to 1 1/4 lbs for winter. the health benefits far outweigh the cost for me. other benefits are my dogs don't stink, skin/fur or breath. teeth are always clean, coat soft and shiny, no big sticky/mushy poop to deal with. I probably spend about $100 a month on food for my dogs. They actually don't eat $100 worth of food a month. I fill my freezer on a monthly basis so they will never run out of food. Although I get most of my meat between $ .50 and .99 per pound I do buy a variety of not-so-common things to feed them that may cost a little more than a $1 a pound.