Wet or dry: is one better than the other?

The short answer is no. When looking at wet and dry food, one is not better than the other. With any food you want to look for ingredients that are of a high quality, easily digested and suit your individual dog. The nutrients levels are also important as you don’t want to feed a high energy food to a couch potato!

How do I compare the nutrients in wet and dry foods?

There is often confusion when comparing the contents of a dried food to moist or wet foods. For example, a dry food diet can have a protein content of 18.5%, however a can of dog food may state a protein level of 8%, which obviously appears much less.

This protein level is not comparable with the dry food because it does not take into consideration the dry matter or moisture content of the food. To properly compare protein and fat levels in dry/wet food they must be calculated on a dry matter basis.

  • Wet Canned Food

    The canned food states a moisture (water) content of 75%. This means all the nutrients in the food are in the other 25%.

    % of protein: 8 ÷ 25 x 100 = 32% protein on a dry matter basis

    % of fat: 6 ÷ 25 x 100 = 24% fat on a dry matter basis

  • Dry Food

    In comparison, the dry food has 90% dry matter, so the calculations for protein and fat content are going to look different.

    % of protein: 20 ÷ 90 x 100 = 22.2% protein on a dry matter basis

    % of fat: 10 ÷ 90 x 100 = 11.1% fat on a dry matter basis

Can I mix wet and dry food together?

Yes! Many owners mix wet food and dry food together. This is completely fine as long as we adjust their feeding amounts accordingly. As a rough guide, 10g of the Burns dry food is the equivalent to 40g of the Burns wet food.

Shop our full range of wet and dry dog food here:

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