Orijen review
September 18th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
When we planned to breed Grey, we had intended to feed her Orijen during pregnancy. Orijen was the highest protein food I could find, and everything I read suggested that the higher the protein content of food during pregnancy, the better. So I got in a bag of Orijen in preparation.
When we decided not to go ahead with breeding Grey, we then had this bag to use up. So, during the summer holidays, the dogs were fed on Orijen for a while.
I know about the excellent reviews Orijen has received from many, many people. And I’ve read all the blurb on the website about it, including Orijen’s ‘white paper‘. The ingredients indeed are excellent and everything about the company seems fantastic.
Well, the only problem, is that it creates sloppy poos in both dogs. This is actually the second time we’ve tried Orijen: We also tried it a while back when it first became available in the UK. It had exactly the same results, both times.
I wondered if perhaps I was feeding too much of it, and that it was more rich than other comparable foods, and perhaps ‘over-feeding’ was causing the runny poos. So I massively reduced the quantity I was feeding – Slate was getting literally half the amount she gets of other foods. Still the poos were sloppy. Not to the degree that we had to stop using the food – they weren’t diahorrea – but they were difficult to pick up cleanly.
After Googling ‘Orijen runny’, a lot of reviews and accounts on various forums came up – all reporting similar problems. Consistently people propose ‘over-feeding’ as a reason and suggest that reducing the amount fed will help. For my dogs, this really had no effect even when I continued feeding the reduced amount for 2 weeks. Slate lost quite a bit of weight, in fact. After a month on it, I think I gave it long enough of a trial to see whether my dogs were getting used to it.
So – no more Orijen. Which is just as well, because it’s bloody expensive and Mike’s WorkingHPRs food is far more economical, produces beautiful poos and both dogs love it. I reviewed it a while back here.
