here is this grain free food-there is a small amount of alfalfa meal, and some ck fat, but none of the other allergins you listed

http://www.naturesvariety.com/content.la...234AEyTL1099E00

this one has nothing you listed-and it's pretty good, i have fed it
http://www.tasteofthewildpetfood.com/products/dogs/pacific_stream_canine_formula/

i'll look for some more....

plus, i have to wonder-what exactly is taking people so long to prepare raw diets??

was it the kind of raw(i.e. barf diet vs. prey model?)just curious.

It takes me less time to feed all the dogs raw them to feed even some of them kibble.


ADD:

Oh yeah-the DVP Natural Balance foods are good-they have 3 varities you might want to consider....
Duck and Potato
Venison and Sweet Potato
and Salmon and Sweet Potato...

all 3 have flaxseed-but if none of the other allergins are there, maybe his reaction to that won't be bad.
Sometimes, like with the few allergies i have, they are only a problem when combined with other ingredients, or if it is really poor qualities(impure).

It's worth a shot-get a small bag of each..and see what happens.

 Quote: Rich Pallechio

Mallory,

He is allergic to:

Chicken
Turkey
Eggs
Corn
Rice
Flax (flax is in a LOT of the commercial foods)
Barley
Alfalfa
Carrots
Soybean (borderline)

He has a prescription for Hills z/d. That's what we feed him.

He also has a number of environmental allergies. He takes shots for those. The shots appear to be very effective, he doesn't break out anymore.

I'll also include this in a PM to you.

Is your dog allergic to the foods on your list or the dog foods that says it has those foods in it?
I just read the ingredients of the Hills Z/D you feed and I wouldn’t eat anything on that list, I can’t even pronounce half of the stuff. If it works for you forgive me, but in an earlier post you said you spoke to your vet about raw and now you feed Hills?
Have you tried Honest Kitchen or the like?
I just went thru a similar issue when my SO’s pup was diagnosed with dysplasia and her vet said the prescription Hills J/D would help. My question was help with what? And I gave her a bottle of Synflex.
Sorry, like my SO I am sure you mean the best for your dog but if the ingredients on this list were feed in schools there would be lawsuits.
I will get off of my soap box now.

Derek

Starch, Hydrolyzed Chicken Liver, Soybean Oil (preserved with BHA, propyl gallate and citric acid), Hydrolyzed Chicken, Powdered Cellulose, Dicalcium Phosphate, Calcium Carbonate, Glyceryl Monostearate, Potassium Chloride, Iodized Salt, Choline Chloride, vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin A Supplement, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), DL-Methionine, minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Taurine, Ethoxyquin (a preservative), Beta-Carotene.

this food has chicken listed in 2 places.
BHA has been proven to cause cancer, so has Ethoxyquin

just me, but i would rather my dog itch and have bad skin than eat cancer.

i would HEAVILY consider feeding one of the foods i listed, even if it has a small amount of one of his allergins. The hills is just plain dangerous.

Rich, I have been there but fortunately not as bad as you. I too have a dog who simply will not tolerate CHICKEN or FLAX. Fortunatley those are my only biggies based on on elimation diet after a feeding trial with Z/D so I can find a very limited selection of kibbles from which to feed.

Before I go out and buy canned or fresh fish or lamb for my dogs, I will be buying organic meats and vegetables for myself and my family.

Having fed Z/D briefly (for the sake of an elimination diet) I know that if you could find an alternate you would. That is indeed an expensive diet and we had to feed a lot of it to keep weight on my dog.

Guys, the reason this stuff works (and it does) is the proteins are hydrolized, ie chemically broken down into segments too small to elicit an immune response. Many of the ingredients are not the greatest

Unless you have had a dog with a true chicken allergy I do not think you can appreciate how ubiquitous it is in dog foods and how hard it is to avoid. Now that combined list of ingredients would be atrocious.

I have a dog allergic to chicken. I agree it is the worst as chicken is a cheap good protein and used in almost everything.

My dog can eat Wellness Fish and Sweet Potato and also the Lamb formula. The Fish one has minimal ingredients and is designed specifically for dogs with food allergies.

The Hill's diet may not be elliciting an immune response, but it's not providing that much nutrition either.

Go to a pet health food store and read labels. You can find some good kibble that your dog can eat. I've even seen duck and venison based foods.

I am curious why you stopped raw in favor of Hill's. A raw diet would be so easy to control the food allergies as you simply wouldn't put the allergens in his bowl. If you had a source for your raw, you could probably feed beef, duck, and rabbit, as well as their organs, and leave out the flax and barley and corn and whatnot.

Derek, Mallory, and Nancy,

I searched the FDA web site and I couldn't find any indication that the FDA had taken action to eliminate BHA in human foods. I can remember a time when it was listed as an ingredient on almost every breakfast cereal. It isn't used as much these days, but as far as I can tell it is still permitted. As for the other ingredients, well, they don't look any scarier to me than the list of ingredients on my son's favorite breakfast cereal or the vitamins my wife buys. I majored in chemistry in college, the big words don't bother me too much.

Be that as it may, Nancy hits the nail on the head when she talks about how expensive z/d is and how hard it is to find foods that don't contain ingredients Hans is allergic to. However, the Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream food Mallory recommended is available at a feed store less than a mile away from where I live, and I'm going to try it. A 30 lb. bag costs $15 less than a 30 lb. bag of z/d.

I truly do appreciate the help guys. My wife and I have searched a number of pet specialty stores looking for alternatives to z/d that do not contain Han's allergens. It so happens that the three stores in our area that carry Taste of the Wild are stores we either had never heard of, or never been in and didn't know they carry dog food. If you have any other suggestions please don't hesitate to send them my way.

Again, than, you.

 Quote: Mallory Kwiatkowski

BHA has been proven to cause cancer, so has Ethoxyquin

just me, but i would rather my dog itch and have bad skin than eat cancer.

That is an interesting claim can you post or PM me the studies that prove Ethoxyquin causes cancer?
I have not heard that

Can a dog who is allergic to chicken, eat turkey?

Angela,

We had been feeding commercially available raw foods. The food we were feeding before he had the allergy tests was Nature's Variety. Their raw has the allergens.

Before Nature's Variety we fed Common Sense. Some of that has the allergens, but my wife objected to the way it was packaged and didn't want to use it.

Before that we fed AFS. No allergens, and we really liked it, but there isn't a distributor in our area. So we ordered it through Hans breeder, but he stopped doing that for us because he needed the freezer space for his own dogs (he orders about 2,000 lbs every two months or so). If there was an AFS distributor in our area we would go back to it in an instant.

Between AFS and Common Sense we tried Honest Kitchen, which my wife didn't care for, mainly because of the prep time.

I suppose the question you are really asking is why don't we prepare our own raw formula. And the answer is, we want something easy that doesn't involve preparation time. I work full time, my wife works 3/4 time, and my son ... is a teenager. But soon my wife will be quitting her job, maybe the attitude about food acquisition and prep will change.

But if you read above, you will see that we are going to try one of the foods Mallory recommends.

On Hans allergy test results, it says he is allergic to "poultry mix" and defines poultry mix as chicken and turkey.