75% Moisture In Dog Foods = 25% Dry Matter?

When you select the best dry food for your dog, is it better to go with the chicken meal than the pure chicken?

Chicken meal, for sure, is a lot better than pure chicken. This is because chicken meal has already been processed and cooked to kill bacteria and other unwanted toxins. Chicken is just chicken.

Chicken consists mainly of water. If you take a look at the label on your dog food and it says 60% whole chicken, it is not really 60%. This is because this number is before the chicken was baked to kill bacteria. So be careful.

Different dog foods have different levels of moisture. Some dry foods have as little as 6% moisture level while other canned foods have as much as 80% moisture level. You need to know these things as they are important for two reasons.

First, the price of the dog food is determined by its weight. If you buy dog food that is 80% water, you get only 20% real food. So you would be paying quite a lot of money for only 20% real food.

Second, by knowing the different moisture levels in dog foods, you are able to compare crude protein and fats among different brands and also between canned dog foods and dry dog foods. You do this by converting the number to a dry matter basis.

Converting the number to a dry matter basis is simple. Let's say the label on a dog food says 25% moisture and 35% protein. To compute the percentage of protein on a dry matter basis, you just have to do these 2 simple steps. First, 25% moisture means 75% (100% - 25%) dry mater. Second, divide 35% protein by the 75% dry matter. 35/75 = 46.7% protein on a dry matter basis.

What about canned dog foods then? The same calculations apply. Let's say the dog food label says 70% moisture and 10% protein. What this actually means is 30% (100% - 70%) dry matter and 10/30 = 33.3% protein on a dry matter basis. We can use this same computing method for fibers and fats as well.

If you can do the calculations, you can then understand the whole nutrition of the dog food.

By: Joshua Hacken

Joshua Hacken Is A Natural Dog Lover Who Has Been Studying Dog Food For The Past Five Years. You Can Grab His Free Report On Best Dog Food Secrets That Most Dog Owners Will Never Know & What Different Moisture Level In The Best Dog Food means.

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