[MarieLovesChis]

I’ve been researching about dog foods for quite a few years (not professionally or anything, just personally for the nutrition of my dog) but the subject of ash is still a little new to me.

Based on things I’ve learned, I made the decision not to feed any kibble that has higher than 9% ash as the sole part of my dog’s diet. Now for the question. What would be considered high ash for a canned food? I haven’t found too much info on this. The only thing I have heard is that ash is usually significantly less in wet food.

I’ve been topping my girl’s kibble with Wysong Au Jus cans, great food and she loves it. Just noticed the ash percentage for some formulas. One is as low as 0.7% while some go as high as 8.7% !! This seems extremely high to me for a canned dog food but I wanted to ask some other knowledgeable dog food folks before I judged.

[theBCnut]

Since canned food is close to 80% water, the values are significantly different. That’s why we like to convert the numbers to dry matter to compare them. A canned food with 0.7% ash is definitely with the water, while a canned food with 8.7% ash should be in dry matter or else the food would have to be more than half bone. If you are going to tolerate 9% ash in a dry food, you could divide that by 5 and have an approximate percentage that would be comparable for wet food. It’s not quite the same if your 9% isn’t dry matter, but it’s close enough.

[MarieLovesChis]

That’s the thing that confuses me with the huge differences in their formulas, supposedly these are the dry matter values http://www.wysong.net/pet-health-and-nutrition/dry-matter-analysis-of-wysong-pet-foods.php

So am I right in saying that 8.7% on a dry matter basis is extremely high for a canned food? I try not to feed kibbles that hit 9% but it’s definitely my limit. Her current food is 8.3%

[theBCnut]

8.7% on a dry matter basis is less than 9%. Canned food does often have a high ash content, just by nature of the ingredients, more animal products usually means higher ash. I guess if you have a kibble that is high on the scale that making sure you use a canned that is low would be better, and if you want to use a canned that is high, you could pair it with a kibble that’s lower.

[MarieLovesChis]

Thanks for the help. I just wasn’t sure if you should expect the numbers/percentages to be significantly different in wet food. I had a read on another forum that 3% was the norm for canned food.

[theBCnut]

That’s true, if it isn’t converted to dry matter, but converted they should be similar, unless it is a specific low ash food or something like that. BTW, 3% in canned converted to dry matter would be 12-15%, that just illustrates how canned can be higher ash that dry, because of the higher animal content.

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