Open a bag of Australian Formula and the contents are always the same. 
They look, smell and feed the same. They were the same last year and they will be the same in a year’s time. Dogs will produce the same stools next year as they did last year. It will always take exactly the same amount of our food to keep the correct weight on a particular dog. Our consistency is the benchmark against which all other foods are now judged.
WHY DO FOODS VARY SO MUCH?
WE have recently been made aware of a large number of trainers changing onto Australian Formula as a result of their previous feeds showing great variation between deliveries, and indeed even within a single delivery of feed. So what’s gone wrong? We can’t speak for other manufacturers but by explaining why our food does not change you might be able to understand why others do.
THE AUSTRALIAN FORMULA GUIDE TO CONSISTENT FOOD:
1) We always make our food to the same fixed recipe. This never changes to take advantage of ingredients that are good value or in such plentiful amounts that we would want to store them long term.
2) We never recycle out of date or failed batches of food
3) We never buy bargain batches of waste meats, oils or other ingredients
4) We buy from very high quality, trusted ingredient suppliers and we analyse the ingredients before we use them. Our suppliers are given a very tight set of quality parameters that cannot be broken.
5) Our machine operators are highly trained and trusted experts. The extruder cooker is a very complex piece of equipment and novice operators will inevitably lead to undercooked (raw) product or burnt unpalatable food.
6) Tempting as it may be from a financial point of view, we would never consider using waste ingredi
ents from the human food industry. These products frequently have substances in them that will cause dogs to fail chromatography tests. Examples would include waste bread including poppy seeds and waste breakfast cereals including chocolate / cocoa extracts.
7) We never use meat or fat sources that require strong stabilisation with antioxidants. This is very hard to get right and stabilisers can cause very real harm to dogs and kennel staff.
8) At no stage in development did we ever consider any ingredients that by their very nature may vary considerably and prove difficult to control.
9) We use independent laboratory analysis to verify our in house tests. Ingredients are tested as they enter the factory and the food is tested at several stages in the production process.
10) We employ a full time quality control expert who’s sole job is to make sure that every batch that leaves the factory is as good – and more importantly – exactly the same – as the last batch to leave.
Our manufacturer, Gilbertson and Page Ltd. have been making pet foods since 1873 and running extruders since they became an essential part of the manufacturing process.
We asked operations director Alex Dale to explain his strategy to produce ultra consistent food:
“Firstly, we work to fixed formulations, these just don’t change. Currently, certain ingredients such as proteins and oils are going up in price a lot. We pay no attention to this and continue manufacturing to exact agreed formulas. We have a fully equipped quality control laboratory and very highly trained staff. Our machine operators have been with us for a long time and we have massive technical support from Extru-Tech, the company who manufactured and service our machines.
“Combine that with a totally world class factory in all other ways such as grinding and cleanliness, add in attention to detail and of course start with expertly buying the raw materials. It is not an accident that all our foods are so good all of the time.”
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
FOODS VARY GREATLY?
Signs that you are suffering from a lack of consistency vary according to the changes involved but we can outline some key signs that you might be suffering from this:
◆ Dogs start producing very poorly formed stools, possibly even diahorea. This often indicates extruder cookers that are over- due a service and are not cooking correctly. Raw or partially raw cereals will inevitably cause loose stools. This can also be due to poor quality ingredients especially fat. If you put extruded nuggets of dog food in a glass of cold water overnight, they should swell up but be completely held together in the morning. A pile of dust in the bottom of the glass means you have non-gelatinisation of cereal starch. In other words you have raw cereals!
◆ Dogs lose weight or start to race way below expectations. Again this can be caused by a number of factors but suspect cheap meat by- products or poor quality fats. Also large amounts of recycled ingredients.
◆ Dogs have poor coats and are running below par. This is often due to bad quality fats, which need to be stabilised by inclusion of strong preservatives. We have heard recent stories about kennel staff getting skin reactions to such foods.
◆ Dogs won’t eat the food or only eat it poorly. Remember that dogs are very sensitive to smells and are probably picking up on rancid fats or very poor quality waste meat ingredients.
WHAT ELSE COULD BE WRONG?
So often we hear trainers making excuses for the food and blaming viruses etc. for their dogs poor appearance / race performance. We say, give them 2 weeks on Australian Formula and then make your decision.
The point to remember is that if a food is bad enough to make a dog have diahorea or bad enough to give a dog a dry or irritated coat then there is no way that the food is good enough to allow the dog to express 100% of its athletic potential.
If a food is so bad that the dog actually becomes unwell then you can’t race anyway or if you did you simply won’t win.
With Australian Formula you are buying a level of quality and consistency that means food is no longer a variable to be concerned with. Good food is a vital part of training a greyhound. It really is not something you can afford to gamble with.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
1. Because feeding has a primary affect on the health and welfare of your greyhounds.
2. Because you don’t get paid out on losers!
* Features glutamine: essential for cell growth and a critical source of energy for the immune system.
* Produced with a balanced anion/cation ratio. This feed is an effective electrolyte.
* Contains fructose oligosaccharides and dietary fibre balancers to aid gut health, faecal quality, immunity and digestive function.
* Contains boron, green lipped mussel extract, glucosamines and chrondroitin sulphates to aid the maintenance and health of joints & cartilages.
* Contains antioxidant nutrients including selenium rich yeast, chelated zinc, vitamins C & E and beta-carotene.
* Contains protected creatine proven to increase performance.
* Controlled omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio to minimise inflammatory response & improve skin and coat condition.
* Protein sources are top grade chicken and Norwegian fish.
* Uses chelated trace minerals for improved bioavailability and biochemical effectiveness.
* Formulated from the premium quality of every ingredient; wherever possible of human grade.
* Contains B group vitamins, manganese, carnitine & taurine to aid muscle function.
* Contains the correct calcium / phosphorous ratio vital for skeletal health.
