I'm currently on Nature's Variety Prairie Large Breed Puppy. I don't think it's working for him. He's healthy but his poops smell far more than they should and I don't think they're hard enough. I heard some people on another forum say they don't even feed puppy formula because it's unnecessary. I was thinking of doing Tastes of the Wild or California Natural Lamb formula. I also feed green tripe and a salmon oil supplement.

My gut is telling me that I should switch. I can't afford to feed raw right now and I usually give him the occasional topper anyway (raw egg, a little bit of chicken breast when I make chicken for dinner, etc). I also don't think his coat is doing as well as it could. It feels dry.

Should I try looking for another LBP formula or should I just jump the gun and feed him an all age formula?

I'm feeding Kaos California Natural Chicken and Rice when the Nature's Logic that I intended to feed her wasn't agreeing with her. She's 15 weeks.

It's working very well for her

While I don't feed "puppy food", I would ONLY feed a puppy one of the puppy formulas of Taste of the Wild. The other formulas have to much calcium. (Which is typical of grain free kibbles.)

How old is your guy? I would not feed lamb until over 12 months, unless he has a food allergy or intolerance. If you can stick with chicken or beef right now, that would be great. Puppies need a certain amount of protein and calcium in their diet. Feed puppy food until about 6 months of age and then the standard rule of thumb for large breed dogs is change to adult or all life stages food after that.

Make sure it isn't the tripe that's making his stool smell. Tripe smells !!!!

I second Barb's suggestion of the CN c&r.

Tripe is highly digestible so that shouldn't be the source of the smell. When you say it smells more than it should, what exactly do you mean?

You might try adding a good probiotic and some digestive enzymes before switching foods and see if that helps.

Some dogs do well with a lot of protein in kibble, others do not. Fat content can also cause problems for some dogs.

You can also try adding a tablespoon of plained canned pumpkin to his food.

Over feeding is the main cause of poop that is too soft.

How much is he eating? Have you tried cutting back on the amount you feed him?

The California Natural Lamb and Rice puppy is HIGH in calcium.

The L&R puppy is 2.21%. The Chicken and Rice Puppy is only 1.36%.

Personally, I wouldn't feed ANY of the California Natural Lamb and Rice formulas to a puppy. And that INCLUDES the adult formulas which are also high in calcium.

TOTW just recently added puppy formulas which I will probably try whenever I get a new puppy in the next year or so.

You do want to watch the amount of calcium and some adult foods can have too much.

I would second that you may be over feeding a bit causing lose stool. If you are not overfeeding would look at adding a bit of pumpkin. It is good for him, he will like it and it will act to both firm up softer poop and soften too from poops. It is great source of fiber and antioxidants. Pumpkin rocks I feed it several times a week to my dogs. I open a can and use a tablespoon to drop globs of it on cookie sheet and then put the cookie sheet in the freezer for an hour or so to freeze the pumpkin. Then I put it in a ziploc bag in the freezer until I want to use it.

And poop stinks....

I agree feeding pumpkin is good for them and most dogs like it.
HOWEVER I personally feel that if you HAVE to feed it to have the pup/dogs stools be firm enough, (either to firm it up, or loosen it up if constipation is an issue.) It is time to switch food.

Even though I haven't fed puppy food for a long time, (thru several puppies off different breeds.)
I may give one of t he TOTW puppy formulas a try for my next puppy since I feed TOTW to Siren but won't fed the "regular" formulas to a puppy.

Okay, so I was feeding him 1/3 a cup 3x a day and his poops were soft. I found out he had coccidia and started meds. His poops became much more firmed, however he was also really underweight (skinny enough that if he wasn't a coatie I'd see his hip bones). I upped it to 1.5 cups and saw some improvement. Then I upped it to 2 cups. The poop didn't change at all when doing this.

I'm thinking about going back down to 1.5 cups to keep him lean and continuing to add toppers (maybe even moreso). The calcium tip is good. I recall someone at the pet supply shop saying to try a probiotic for it or an enzyme. Any recommendations for those?

Whenever I picked up after dogs the poop either did not have a scent at all or only when I was picking it up. With Viking it smells foul and I can smell it from 6+ ft away. I'd like that to be reduced. I know he doesn't have anything because he's been checked for it and he's cured of coccidia now.

Either way, before changing anything I'd finish my current 30lb bag which I'm only halfway through. So until it finishes I'll try a probiotic and maybe some canned pumpkin and see if that makes an improvement. I didn't know that about Lamb formulas so I will stick to chicken with whatever I end up going with. If I recall Fromm was recommended to me as well as Wellness. I'll have to check calcium labels on all of that. My pet store can check online for me and if the website doesn't have it (Orijen's didn't) they call for me and then send me an email.

I heard it's 1.2% max for a puppy, right?

It's also important that the calcium ot phosphorous ratio be right.

See this article

Could there be other things going on?

Responding to Black GSD's comment about if you need pumpkin that much to firm up or soften stool maybe it is time for different food... I would agree with that unless there is something else going on internally in his gut that you need to figure out.

It took us almost 2 years to figure out Havoc is intolerant of many foods. He had poo problems since the day he came home from the breeders. We went through the Coccidia, Giardia mess too as well as SIBO (yes) and testing for EPI (no, thank goodness!). And the poo does reek! His feces still smell stronger than Kayos'but he is consistent as loong as we stay away from certain ingredients. We use the pumpkin mainly now because he loves it. It sure is not going to hurt.

Hmmm, so far I'm not sure if anything else is going on. We started him on a digestive enzyme yesterday and his poo was a LOT firmer this morning. I got canned pumpkin to add into his diet tonight so we'll see if that also makes a difference. I kind of want to try a LID diet. I looked into feeding puppy food from CalNat but there's still 2% calcium. One thing that confuses me is that this site I'm reading says puppies need a max of 1.8% but adult dogs need less (.5%).

I don't know of any foods that have that low an amount of calcium...

By the way, I'm feeding the adult California Natural Chicken and Rice:
Calcium 1.51 %
Phosphorus 1.03 %
http://www.californianaturalpet.com/products/1191

Kaos's poop bounced today

Umm...do you have an actual video of bouncing poop? And from what height - the height of a dogs' bottom to the ground? Or a specified distance you yourself tested?

I know this is gross, but you started it.

Any bounce visible to the eye is a good thing, even if it's a quarter of an inch

I had a picture on my now dead phone of Luka's first bouncing and sent it to people! Did not think to videotape.

Does anyone know how much calcium is in the TOTW puppy?

I go with just the calcium level now, not the ratio. ??? I posted some links in shepnterrier's thread about puppy food (I think that's who started it).

One of the formulas is 1.3%, the other formula is 1.4%. (Can't remember which is which, I THINK it's the HP puppy that is 1.4)

Both are on an "as fed" basis rather than a "min" or "max".

Puppy also has poop that is not as consistantly good as I'd like. It improved when my trainer suggested to cup back from 3.5 to 2.5 or 3 cups of Orijen LBP. Reduced feeding would be the first thing I try.

How much do you guys feed your puppies at 6 months? I ended up switching to CalNat's puppy formula when the calcium dropped to 1.36%. Thought about switching to TotW (what the breeder feeds her dogs) but I just don't want to shake things up again. His poos are MUCH firmer than they were with Nature's Variety, though they still have soft days.

Ciara is raw fed and gets about 24 - 28 ounces of food per day. That's based on 2.5 % of an adult body weight of 60 pounds. That's what my vet is thinking she will end up at as an adult.

She's a petite girl, just under 50 pounds as of last weekend and is still what looks like 1.5-2 inches shorter than Caleb at the shoulder

Kaos gets 4 cups of Cal Nat Chicken and Rice (Adult formula)split into 2 feedings, so about 2000 calories a day