Muenster Milling Food (for kibble and freeze dried)
I’ve done hundreds of hours worth of research on kibble and raw food. I’m looking for high quality ingredients in my kibble, without massive amounts of useless fillers, for the best value. It is incredibly important to me to raise adult dogs on the right food, so that their puppies grow to be healthy. My reputation as a breeder is riding on that, and nutrition matters.
The biggest problem and health risk to our canine friends in my opinion is carbohydrates. Ordinary kibble is FULL of it. They are cheap fillers that canines aren’t supposed to digest regularly. There is a way to calculate carbs in kibble. I used the formula on this page. https://simplefoodproject.com/what-others-arent-telling…/ (This will take you down a whole other rabbit hole, believe me.) But the best way to combat high carbs is to supplement with raw kibble 
Because I raise breeding dogs, I also have to find foods that are not filled with phytoestrogens (peas, legumes, etc., because those make my dogs sterile–and YES, I have found this to be the case; and YES, there is also evidence of this in humans).
Unfortunately, there are many, many well known large brands of dog food companies that are scamming unknowing customers into thinking they have good quality kibble. I don’t want to get sued by them, so I won’t point them out, but I can say that I’ve done the research, and it only takes a day or two of your own good, solid research to figure out what’s going on. Most pet owners don’t have the time to do that sort of work, and that’s what the major dog food companies are counting on.
After considerable research and experience with dog food, both raw and kibble, I’ve settled on the Muenster Milling kibble, which is the best quality kibble I can find for the value, and raw blends.
Use code CHICORA55 at checkout for a huge discount on your first order.
Are they the best when it comes to carbs? No. They are close, but not the best. When you get into the keto world of dog kibble, you’ll be paying nearly a couple hundred dollars per 50lbs of food. If you can afford that, then I can recommend some great stuff, but I frankly can’t afford that with five dogs. The best alternative is to supplement with raw dog food, and that’s what I do. No carbs!
Before I ever knew about Muenster, I was using Sport Dog food because that’s where my research got me to at that point, but I have it on good authority that Muenster makes their kibble; when I found that out, I went down the rabbit hole even further because I previously thought I had found gold in the dog food world–then I found out I could just go to the source. I still buy Sport Dog if/when Muenster is out of stock on something.
I used to feed mostly raw (pre-covid) making my own complete, correctly proportioned grinds/mixes with kibble as the supplemental, but within the past few years it has been so hard to reliably find all the ingredients to do this to feed five dogs. I also burnt up a few electric grinders trying to do this on my own. I did the best I could with all of my pregnant and breeding dogs (some raw is better than no raw). I supplemented with wild, local game; grocery store finds; growing my own chicken and rabbits, and so on.
It’s very important to me that my to-be moms are eating raw at the very least a month or more before being bred and throughout their gestation. I try to always keep my stud on raw, but that varies as the supply has varied.
A proper raw diet is when all the correct ingredients are mixed together to make a grind (grind is just literally everything ground together) that mimics a raw diet in the wild. To do this, the grind must be in the proper ratio, which is roughly 60% raw meaty bones, and 40% vegetables and other food (eggs, organs, fur, feathers, and so on)–that is the Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods model (BARF). There are others which are equally appropriate, such as the Prey Model Raw (PMR) or species appropriate, which is 80–85% muscle meat, 10–15% raw meaty bones, 5-10% organs and offal, with half of this amount being liver. If you feed any combo of these with good quality kibble, then your dog will be enormously better off than the typical dog.
So I went down yet another VERY DEEP rabbit hole to see if I could find a company already premixing a raw grind that isn’t gouging customers (there are TONS of companies that are!). I factored in taxes and shipping fees. Out of the top six or seven most populars, I came out with the least expensive being Raw Pet Food Delivery & Market out of Tennessee. https://www.rawpetfooddeliverymarket.com/
My first order was several hundreds of dollars, and we are still working through it, but the dogs go WILD over it. It was Beef Mix w/ TRIPE 80/10/10 Prey Model Raw, and Chicken Mix Meat, Organ & Bone ground 85/5/10. I brought it home, thawed it into smaller portions, and feed as necessary.
Their delivery fee is $39 for me. It’s slightly complicated to figure out the total and delivery method once you add what you want to the cart on their website, and you have to find a spot on their delivery route that is near you (mine is Spartanburg, SC), but even including this fee and my taxes, it is significantly cheaper than most other options, IF you are figuring it by the pound. You can find all kinds of good raw treats and additions on their website, but I specifically look for COMPLETE raw grinds. I did add several other goodies to the order, and that didn’t change the delivery fee. I bought a LOT of products from them and the meetup was seamless.
I recommend freeze dried anything because it holds the nutrients of foods without degrading it. Muenster sells some really great freeze dried toppers and treats. I believe in this process of preserving food so much that I bought a several thousand dollar machine to freeze dry my own foods. The science is there!
Disclosure: I earn a very, very small percentage from Muenster based on the folks I refer to their dog kibble. That being said, I don’t recommend their kibble or products because of that; instead, I used the kibble exclusively for my own dogs (in addition to raw), and did for years and years, before I learned about their affiliate program. Even if I didn’t have a partnership with Muenster, I would still buy from them. I believe in their process and quality.