Dog food-are these ingredients necessary?

I have also noticed inconsistencies in the Blue Basics Salmon & Potato formula. Recent bags have been darker, moister, and smellier than previous. We had one bag we threw out-dogs wouldn't even touch it. That's part of the reason why we are thinking about a new food.

X2.

Over the past 6 months I have noticed numerous changes in the Blue dry dog food. Kibble size changed, than there were 2 different shades of brown kibble (I think this was to give the illusion to the pet owner that there still was the bits in it at a glance), this is the same time the bits completely disappeared in the 50 lb bag, and reduced by 80% in the smaller bags. Now they are back to all one color kibble and VERY minimal bits. Last bag there were about 30 pieces of bits in the entire bag.

They are either playing with the recipe to reduce costs and/or producing their product at different facilities (to keep up with demand). Both would net inconsistencies in the product.

I generalized with the word quality equating it to unusable ingredients. When I had 'several' Great Danes it was quite evident which dog foods had more fillers and/or less digestible ingredients.

Just go back in the day of Ken-L-Ration Kibble and Danes eliminated COPIOUS COPIOUS amounts of stool. Then some of the earlier specialty foods came out on the market and WHAT a difference in output! Not to mention coat and condition. IMHO they have come a long way with dog food.

I.E. if more is assimilated as viable food within the body there IS less output. Add a ton of fillers/**roughage and it moves so fast thru the intestines, less is able to be used/extracted by the body. Fiber is good. Too much fiber or un-digestible ingredients added to bulk up a bag of dog food is not.

That said: when you open a 'new' bag of dog food and ALL the dogs poop quantity changes and there are no other changes I can relate it back to the current bag of dog food that is being fed. Yes if you have only one or two dogs there are variables but have 'several' dogs and the change is evident across all of them well it's a no brainer when the only change was opening a new bag of food.

If you have several dog's and they exclusivity eat dry food it is easy to see when something changes with the dog food. I call my pack of canines the perfect petrie dish, the canary in the mine. :W