"Exotic Proteins"

[Helen]

On dogaware.com, the author warns against using foods that have "exotic proteins" such as duck, venison, or fish because those are designed for dogs with allergies to other foods, and if your dog develops allergies while on one of these foods, you'll be hard-pressed to find a protein for them.

Thoughts? (The reason I ask is I've been feeding Charlie NB Duck and potato.)

[Lisa]

Mine get venison a lot. I actually choose it because of the lack of hormore injested feed it contains. I hope they don't develop an allergy to it, but they do get a full rotation of protein, chicken, fish, beef, lamb and venison. If he is doing well on the food, I would not make a switch Helen.

[Courtney]

The problem lies in if you have to do an elimination diet and feed only one type of protein for an extended amt of time to figure out of the dog is allergic. The novel proteins most used in commercial foods are duck, rabbit and venison while chicken, lamb, beef are more common. If your dog has eaten duck already and is having issues on it, you can only try rabbit and venison. If he's allergic to the rabbit, you can only try venison...and so on and so forth. Basically it limits your options. Does that make sense??

Is there a reason you feed the duck and potato? If he doesn't really have any itches/allergies/food sensitivities it's probably OK to feed.

And as far as raw venison, duck, etc., I think that is totally different. You want to feed things like that for variety. If you do have a terribly allergic dog you might have to do the novel protein thing on raw too. But the options in commercial foods are much more limited, I think.

Dogaware is a GREAT site and I would regard just about anything I read on there to be very true and well-researched.

[Patt]

Intesting and sounds logical, I guess I should reconsider what I'm feeding Trixie.

[Helen]

Is there a reason you feed the duck and potato? If he doesn't really have any itches/allergies/food sensitivities it's probably OK to feed.

The only reason I feed it is the NB is a higher quality food that I can get easily, since they sell it at Petco. Charlie currently has no allergies or sensitivities.

Thanks for the info, Courtney.