'Ol Roy brand dog food alert

I know a number of people on this forum use Ol Roy brand dog food from Wal-Mart to feed their rodents.
I used it mysel ffor several years and have recommended it many times.
However, the company who manufactures this dog food for Wal-Mart recently changed their formulation. The food now contains Red Dye #40.

For those who do not know, this color additive is a known carcinogen. Whether the dangerous properties can definitely be carried over to the snakes is debated by some, but feeding this to the rodents will definitely increase the rate of tumors and other health problems. That being the case it's not worth the risk to allow snakes to consume it.

I have contacted Wal-Mart about this issue, and have yet to hear anything back. This was a great food, good protein levels, reasonable cost, but it is no longer acceptable to use.

As of yet I haven't settled on a replacement brand, but I'll be going tomorrow to read some labels and try to find something satisfactory to feed the rodents.
In the mean time I just wanted to give a heads up to the others who use this food, since you are likely not aware of this change in the formulation.

Wow- thanks for the heads-up! It is unfortunate that they decided to change the formula to add what seems like a totally unneccesary ingredient!

Jamie

Ol Roy dog food is CRAP plain and simple and should not be fed to ANYTHING! If you did a nutrition analysis on old boots and motor oil you would come up with the same sort of protien content.

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Unless there's been a drastic reformulation, I'm going to disagree. Sam Walton was a huge dog lover, and Ol' Roy stood up to many of the higher end dog foods. I've even had vets recommend it.

FireDrake said:

Ol Roy dog food is CRAP plain and simple and should not be fed to ANYTHING! If you did a nutrition analysis on old boots and motor oil you would come up with the same sort of protien content.

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This just isn't true, at least concerning its suitability as a rodent food. The protein content is above 20%. The source of this protein may not be of a high enough quality that you'd want to feed it to your dog, but it is adequate to prevent mothers from cannibalizing their young.
I've fed lab diet to my rodents as well and between the two foods I found absolutely no difference in the health, reproductive rate, or growth rate of the rodents. In fact when offered the two foods together they always would eat the Ol Roy before even touching the lab blocks.
I used the brand for several years and have very high production rates. If it weren't for this addition of red dye, I wouldn't consider changing foods.

ms_terese said:

Unless there's been a drastic reformulation, I'm going to disagree. Sam Walton was a huge dog lover, and Ol' Roy stood up to many of the higher end dog foods. I've even had vets recommend it.

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Possibly some good ol' boy country vet would, but nobody with any credibility to me will recommend it. It's absolute rubbish, and I'd never let any of my dogs near it. You can always tell the Ol' Roy dogs, because they have enormous soft stools that smell like fermented, undigested grain. The product has a ton of fillers and very little usable content, compared to a high end food like Nutro, Eukanuba, or Science Diet. Dogs on a good diet have firm low-volume, low-oder stool...more digestible material means there is much less waste and you feed a lower volume.

I've worked for a ton of vets (by ton I mean more than a dozen) and they all laugh at Ol' Roy...when a client comes in feeding that junk, you can almost guarantee that they won't follow any medical recommendations that require them to spend money on their "beloved" pet.

Now...does this have anything to do with rodent feeders? I have no idea...never used it on them. I just found it totally laughable that somebody would claim a dog food was good simply because it was sold by the multi-billion dollar company that some dead guy founded years ago.

Thank you, I knew there would be someone on here who knows what I know. I have seen the same thing over and over! You know why it's so cheap? Because you have to feed a ton of it to give the dog the nutrients it needs.... so it POOPS A TON! It's digestibility is way low!

Now the kitty version, I think it's called Special Kitty, we have seen more urinary infections on that food than any other, in fact, I have heard many vets and tech say that as well. These are not good diets! No grocery store food is a good diet!

I work for a vet who is really up on nutrition, in fact, we do not even consider nutro, eukanuba and science diet high quality!! We prefer brands like california natural, natural balance, evo, innova...

I have seen TONS of people who "love their dogs so much" feed crap, wont get the neccesary medical attention, beat their dogs etc...you cannot tell me that just because Sam loved dogs...that automatically makes his dog food best in the country. NO WAY!

And no, I cannot speak for mouse nutrition except to say I have seen mice eat styrofoam/drywall etc when better food was around.... they eat what they want, maybe what they think tastes better. You can live off of a diet of McDonalds, but would that make you healthy? NO. The organization that regulates pet food only requires that a food KEEPS THE ANIMAL ALIVE, it DOES NOT require that it keeps the animal HEALTHY.

What it boils down to is the suitability of Ol Roy as a dog food has absolutely nothing to do with this thread. I honestly don't care what you feed your dogs, that's a topic for another forum.
I know a number of users of this forum have mentioned using Ol Roy to feed their rodents, now the food contains Red Dye #40 and is no longer suitable for that purpose.
I've never used it as a dog food and agree that it is seriously inferior for that purpose, but the fact remains that that has nothing at all to do with why I started this thread.

On the topic at hand though, I have decided to switch to a store brand dog food for the rodents. In my part of the country Ingles is a common grocery store. Their store brand is Laura Lynn, and their dog food has 21% protein and no red dye, at $11.50 for 50 pounds, so it suits the purpose for rodent feed.
For those of you who live in other parts of the country I would suggest you look for the same parameters in whatever brands are available in your area, at least 20% protein content and no red dye, when choosing a new food for the rodents.

I think its just some people angry with the Wal Mart "monopoly". Thanks for the info clay, let me know what you find out about other foods, I've begun looking into reaising my own rodents and am trying to find as much about this as possible before I invest in everything.

angry at the wallmart monopoly? LMAO, I shop there all the time. Just not for pet food.

lol