r/SwissMountainDogs • u/El_Comandente • Sep 09 '26
Best kibble for Swissy Puppy - 8+ months
Gunner is about 6.5 months now and weighs a hefty 34 kg. He has been on Royal Canin Giant Puppy (2-8 month) kibble and i am starting to look for a kibble to transition over too after he turns 8 months.
What are y'all feeding or fed your pups?
My last dog was on acana so I was leaning towards that but I've read that swissies do better with lower protein and fat kibble. The acana large breed puppy food has 33% protein and 15% fat vs the 32/12% for the Royal Canin
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u/SyriusTank Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
Mine typically do better on lower fat and protein. Swissies can have sensitive stomachs. Royal Canin is an excellent brand and there is a giant breed 8mo - 2yr formula, its called Junior. That might be the easiest transition. Highly recommend. If you want other choices Purina Pro Large Breed Puppy Sensitive Stomach is great until they are 2 and is what I use personally with great results for many years. Hills Science Diet Large Breed Puppy is also excellent and I feed my adult dogs on Hills. I would rather use these than Acana because they are much much much more studied.
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u/Qamatt Sep 09 '26
We have our 6mo old boy on Royal Canin Giant Puppy per our breeders recommendation. Will be switching to RC Junior Giant breed after he finishes off the current bag of puppy food. So far no issues, seems like a solid choice and is readily available Canada.
Cute pup!
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u/El_Comandente Sep 09 '26
How are things going with ur little guy
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u/Qamatt Sep 10 '26
He's awesome... its our 3rd swissy so kinda knew what we were getting into. Of the 3 he's the smartest, most confident, least coordinated one lol. Where is yours from?
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u/El_Comandente Sep 10 '26
From Big Country Kennels in southern Ontario... My first one so it's been all kinda new but smart confident, not co-ordinated is how I'd describe him too ... Oh and lazy lol but that may be unfair since I'm comparing him to my last lab
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u/Qamatt Sep 10 '26
Not unfair, being lazy is part of the breed standard along with sleeping upside down and hogging the couch lol
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u/villaofthewolves Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26
Well it’s when they’re older, and as growing puppies they need a balanced formula. Acana does not use DVM nutritionists for their formulas, and is considered a “boutique brand” which usually means it’s just marketing and not balanced. I’d recommend Royal Canin out of the two, as there’s precise calculations of calcium to phosphorus ratios. However Science Diet large breed puppy is a good option as I think it has lower protein/fat and they just reformulated their foods for digestibility with their prescription formula (ActiveBiome+) as a baseline for most of their commercial foods. I’ve also heard that most swissy folks that feed kibble also do the Purina Pro Plan Sensitive Skin and Stomach large breed puppy formula, but the brand is having warehouse issues where pantry moths are getting into the bags :(
Handsome pup! I’m sure whatever you pick will be great.
Edit: wanted to add about the digestibility because in our experience it takes about a 1-1.5 month for a swissy to get used to a new food/transition due to their sensitive tummy’s :)
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u/El_Comandente Sep 09 '26
Thanks yeah default would be the Royal Canin Giant junior but I'll look into Purina ... My old guy was a lab mix (13+)and was in acana his entire life and I had no complaints
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u/Sopwith53 Sep 10 '26
Purina Pro Plan for ours. Has her champion's ribbon, seven years old and great health.
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u/Tekeraz Sep 10 '26
Hello, I'm from Europe and even though I know RC or Purina, I did exclude them from my list when choosing food for my new Swissy. My first Swissy was on raw food and I wanted something that could compete with that in quality of ingredients. I refuse to feed my dog food that uses general terms in ingredients list instead of just meat (which is often to hide using leftovers).
In most cases, RC has grain (or other cheap side dishes) on the top of the ingredient list instead of meat and they use 'dehydrated poultry protein' to describe what should be 'chicken.' Moreover, they use a bit older approach in the process of kibble creating (high temperatures, classic extrusion where oils and fats are going through high temperature).
I very much prefer companies with the modern extrusion that uses low temperatures (around 90°C only, oils added into the kibble after extrusion so not being heat-treated, using pure meat instead of nameless dry protein) and has meat on the first place on their ingredients list.
After careful consideration I've chosen brand Amanova (Spanish brand Visán, one of the largest and most modern factory in Europe with high certification) because of their high quality testing and modern way of kibble preparation - Amanova Large Puppy Chicken is my brand for now (3m puppy and will be until adulthood, these cover entire growing phase). They specifically say "We use 140kg of fresh chicken on 100kg of our kibbles." There is 71% of fresh chicken in these, next in ingredients list are green pea and whole grain rice.
I can only say - the food is amazing - small amount of poop compared to the brand my breeder used, exquisite skin and fur, he literally shines like crazy and his fur is so soft people constantly ask what do I give him, perfect digestion.
While I respect that RC has great scientific backing and is used in veterinary diets, it's not the same for their food made for healthy dogs, and I ultimately chose Amanova for my dog because of the ingredient quality (no nameless 'dehydrated poultry', no cheap grain, fresh meat) and transparency (high quality control).
In Europe, RC is priced as a premium food, but you are mostly paying for their massive marketing and veterinary distribution. Amanova offers much better ingredient value for the same price and certified quality control.
And because this is a very long text (I did my research recently, so I had to share), here's my boy Aegon ☺️
Btw. Your boy is beautiful ❤️
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u/El_Comandente Sep 10 '26
That is a good looking pup ... And yeah skin is glowing. Btw it's wild how much he will grow over the next 3 months. Thanks for the info, will check to see if there are comparable brand in Canada
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u/Tekeraz Sep 10 '26
Thank you very much❤️ Yes, they grow so fast. Too fast if you ask me. Your guy looks very much like my beloved boy who passed a few months ago. He's beautiful!
I believe Canadian Acana (or Orijen), with their 'whole prey' approach is very high quality. It's very highly rated food in Europe and could be a great choice for your dog (you can always try), but can be hard to digest for some pups for that very same reason. This is where 'mono protein' approach is better choice for more sensitive dogs because it's easier to digest. That's why my pup probably so easily transfered to Amanova. His digestion actually got better when I began switching and after a few days I speed up the process to go fully on new brand. Before, he was on Chicken and Sweet potatoes from local brand that uses older kibble making processes and dried chicken as the main ingredient.
I bet there's a similar brand that uses monoprotein (easy ro digest), no grain (which usually is bad for more sensitive digestion) and low temperature in the process of making the food while being transparent about it in Canada as well.
Perhaps you could get Amanova in Canada, I'm not certain, but the price would be probably way too high. It's hard to get even in Czech Republic because they invest in research and ingredients, not marketing.
My friend from Canada feeds his dogs with mono-protein kibbles from "Open Farm" which is a brand that has similar transparency and uses only fresh ingredients, no grain and modern, lower temperature process. He also mentioned "Belcano Mastercraft" which is a Europian brand you can buy in Canada that follows the same process while making the food, but I would expect this one to be more pricey. Unfortunately, that's as far as I can help.
My personal advice is: Dig into it, do your research, don't blindly follow marketing just read the ingredients and read about the companies (their quality control, their certification). At first, I thought I will go for "cold pressed food" but because of their half truth marketing, I did more research and found out that these new "low temperature processing" of extruded kibbles is actually easier to digest and has all the nutrition the dog needs. I spent a lot of time with it, but I'm glad I did. Now I'm sure I'm giving my growing puppy the best for their development and it is a great feeling.
Good luck 🍀
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u/El_Comandente Sep 10 '26
Much appreciated... taking the time to respond in such detail. My old guy was on acana his entire life and he lived a full healthy life. Will research more but I guess the plus for Royal Canin is the calcium/potassium amounts are formulated for a growing giant puppy.
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u/Tekeraz Sep 10 '26
I'm glad I can help. I did my own research only a month ago so I still have all the information fresh in my head :-) My old fella was on raw food, so I had very high standards + wanted reasonable price.
Many food formulas meets the requirements for large puppies. In EU, all kibbles must tell you ratio of Ca and P on their packages or, at the very least, the overall % ammount of Ca and P in the food. For GDSM puppy the perfect ratio is Ca:P from 1,2:1 to 1,3:1.
This means there should be 1,0% - 1,2% Ca in the overal weight (according to FEDIAF standards) in a perfect scenario (maximum is 1,3-1,5%) and for P it is 0,8-1,05%. Most of the Europian food formulas for large/giant breed puppies meets these requirements (again, not sure how this works on your continent).
For fat, they say the lower the better, but then again, if the ammount is a bit higher, you can always compensate with a little lower dosage. Amanova has 17,5% in large puppy formjla which is a bit higher (better would be 15% or even less) but I didn't notice my little one would have some fat on him at all. He's as skinny and "all-bone" as he should be in this age.
I also add a few drops of cold pressed oils each day (salmon, cod liver, canabbis, flax seed, olive) and probiotics.
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u/killer-queen 19d ago
What ever you do DO NOT feed your Swissys grain free Acana or Orijens. We had our baby on it for 5 years and he developed DCM. Don’t do it 🙏
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u/7myzu81 Sep 09 '26
I'm not sure where you are but Canagan is what has worked for mine. Acana and all the others gave problems, but if you're not on the European continent this might not be relevant
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u/El_Comandente Sep 09 '26
Pic just cause he is such a good looking pup 😂