Can I feed adult food to Gunnar?

Gunnar turns four months tomorrow and I am going to pick up some chicken soup for the pet lover's soul for Neva. Can I feed this to Gunnar too? I do supplement with some raw.
Thanks!

I have always heard you need to leave them on puppy food until they are a year old. Their bodies are growing so fast, and puppy food has nutrients to help with their growing bodies. Adult food is for dogs already at their maximum growth potential.

Moe?

I thought that large breed dogs shouldn't be on puppy food for very long because you want to slow their growth down and make sure they don't pack on any extra weight that could be detrimental to their bones...Anyone else heard this?

Yep, that's the right track, Adrienne. Gunnar, being a relatively large breed, should be on a good quality kibble - not necessarily a puppy formulation. It may have been a mistake for mine to have been on puppy kibble, but Charley was SO stubborn about feeding them puppy food! At least I got him convinced that Purina was crap and that we should be feeding the Innova!

Once I brought home the EVO formula he changed his tune about the puppy kibble though. He could see the difference in the formula, even as good as the regular Innova is, the formulation of the EVO made perfect sense to him.

Darn vets! I guess I screwed up with Brady on that! Sorry Adrienne!

Most of us have done that, Bogo! At least Charley was supplementing with calf milk replacer so I'm not too worried about future problems with bones and joints being strong enough.

My pups are 5 months, and one's lab/chow mix, and the other (I believe) is pittie/st bernard. Should I not keep them on puppy food?

From what I understand you shouldn't. The puppy food is formulated with higher levels of everything and in large breed dogs the higher levels will cause them to put on too much weight too quickly. You want a nice steady growth without any major growth spurts. I would switch them to adult if they both have large breed in them.

B/T/W They LOVED the chicken soup!

Thanks Adrienne! I'm going to get a bag of Canidae, when I run out of Nutro. From what I understand, Canidae is one formula, that you can feed to dogs from Puppy to Senior. Is this right, or did I read the website wrong? www.canidae.com

Yep Purr, that's exactly right! I wish I could find it around here!

Thanks Adrienne!!

I have Dante on the Kirkland Chicken and Rice which is actually a really good food. His coat is glossy and shimmers, and I'm nervous about buying the adult food as I don't want this to go away!!! I planned on doing it at 16 weeks.

adult food is healthier for large breed puppies than regular puppy food. but one thing you absolutely must be aware of is that the adult food needs to state that it is "for all lifestages". if it only says "for maintenance" it is not enough to support healthy growth, not even for large breed puppies.

Mordy, what about Large Breed Puppy food? Is it different?

I absolutely disagree with NOT feeding puppies puppy food. There are vital trace minerals and other nutrients in proper amounts, which are essential for puppies to develop properly, in puppy food. It is designed for them. What causes bone and joint problems in large breed dogs is primarily being overweight as puppies. You can cause a lot of damage by depriving your puppy of these nutrients. I recommend looking into it further and consider your sources from where you get your information. Talk to vets. Believe it or not, they have gone to school for a very long time and studied anatomy and physiology of animals, know how their bones develop etc.... and you can even find a nutritionalist.

I've had GSDs, Labs, larger sized mutts, Doberman, smaller dogs and I always fed puppy food for a year. Get a premium one like Chicken Soup or Canidae, Innova....there are several. I've never had a dog with any hip or other skeletal problems what so ever, other than a little old age arthritis.

So, I SHOULD keep them on puppy food? LOL Now I'm confused...

I have alway had large breed dogs for the first few months they were fed puppy food then changed over to adult food, I NEVER fed puppy food til they were twelve months old, puppy food has higher concentrations of all ingredients and the puppies tend to have growth spurts (which you dont want) as this can cause joint problems at a later date, having had dogs for approx 30 years I have never barr one(which I got as a 16month old that had been fed puppy food til over 12 months)had any problems with the joint on my dogs. I now feed a raw diet,(I have been for quite some years) which is basically the same for adults and puppies apart from amounts, so I cannot condone shoving oversupplimented puppy food into a young dog.

Mo

I'm just going to buy Canidae, because you can feed it to puppies, adults, and seniors. Nice, simple, food LOL.

Canidae is a good food. Innova is coming out with a Large Breed Puppy food I believe this week. My local pet store has it on order for me so I can give it to Kona. She will eat that until a year old and then I will slowly put her on Innova EVO. She also has raw chicken in her diet. We buy Bravo that grinds it up so it looks like ground chicken and comes frozen. She loves it.

Barb, what breed is Kona? She's beautiful.