Your Puppies Diet:
We rear our dogs as naturally as possible, with little chemicals and CORE vaccines only. Puppies under one year, pregnant and nursing mothers are fed a higher fat/protein content and a slightly different diet. Otherwise, all of our terriers are fed a 50/50% combination, all natural diet including human food ingredients like raw meaty bones, chicken, beef, legumes, fresh fruits & vegetables with roughly 50% of their diet being a premium, grain free, LOWER PROTEIN kibble.
*We currently feed: Grain Free TASTE OF THE WILD "Pacific Stream" (due to lower protein/fat content). Not all dogs are exactly alike, therefor you may need to change to another kibble based on your terriers needs... We can help you with this decision if you will contact us. All our puppies are raised on Grain Free TASTE OF THE WILD - Bison & Venison or Fowl and Wellness Puppy Formula recipes - due to the higher fat/protein content needed for growing puppies.
Every terrier in our home is fed a diet of real, human food ingredients as well as a premium kibble. The meats are not cooked, extruded or heat-processed in any way and completely free of chemicals, by-products, fillers and corn.
Some families will prefer to feed only a ready-made dry kibble to their pup from Connemara. We do support you in this decision and are happy to also suggest some alternative premium kibbles for your consideration.
BELOW IS A LIST WE HAVE COMPILED TO HELP WITH YOUR SELECTION:
Brands/Blends we highly recommend: *lower/fat & protein for adults over 10 months - NOT PUPPIES
(lower protein)
TASTE OF THE WILD "Pacific Stream"
NATURAL BALANCE L.I.D. "Sweet Potato & Fish"
NATURAL BALANCE L.I.D. "Potato & Duck"
Brands/Blends we highly recommend:
*higher/fat & protein FOR PUPPIES
TASTE OF THE WILD (they have two puppy formulas)
ORIJEN grain free PUPPY
PETCUREAN grain free PUPPY
SOLID GOLD - "Barking At The Moon"
ORIJEN 6 FRESH FISH
WELLNESS CORE "Ocean Recipe"
WELLNESS PUPPY (grains but good for growing pups)
ORIJEN ACANA GRAIN FREE
*ALL brands above we believe are SUPERIOR to anything else on the market. Some of the mixes may not be appropriate for your terrier. If you have questions as to which formula best suits your individual pet, please give us a ring and we can help you determine this.
Brands we do not recommend:
SCIENCE DIET (Corn & By-Products)
IAMS (Chicken By-Products & Corn Meal)
EUKANUBA (Chicken By-Products & Corn Meal)
ALL NUTRO'S LINES OF KIBBLE
Or anything listing by-products, corn or flour.
We also recommend as a rule, to avoid grain based foods. Once your pup is 12 months old, move from a puppy formula to one of the foods we HIGHLY recommend.
SELECTING YOUR DRY DOG FOOD - If you had any idea where meat-by-products came from, you would never feed them to your pets. Rendered animal parts, to be exact. Otherwise known in the industry as; "The four D's" - Dead, Dying, Decaying or Diseased. I visited a rendering plant once. I won't go into the details ...please trust me on this one.
In researching many of the dog foods on the market today, we came to find a few brands that stood out and away from all the others - We have already listed them above. Any of the above recommended dry kibble should be acceptable for your adult terrier. *Puppy formulas are listed as well. We do not expect everyone to agree with us or feed as we do. But at the very least, we will look for families that are health conscientious and will at least go the extra expense to feed a premium kibble.
We also supplement them every day with SOLID GOLD Sea Meal. This is by far, the best supplement we have been able to find. We prefer Solid Gold's formula over all others because it does not contain the highly debated additives; Yeast and Garlic.