10. Convenience
In their early days, ‘complete foods’ were treated with some scepticism by ‘old school’ greyhound trainers and probably rightly so. (Unfortunately, many complete feeds are still produced to the same specifications from which they were first designed decades ago!)
However, we believe that science and greater knowledge of complex nutrition closed the gap on traditional feeding and overtook it, many years ago.
During this period, time demands on kennels have continued to escalate with increased racing and the ratio of kennelstaff hours : greyhounds in their care, has continued to fall.
Despite results to the contrary a small minority of trainers still refuse to believe that a top of the range complete feed can compete with ‘bread, meat, vegetables and handful or tablets’.
Maybe some are simply trying to justify all their hard labour? Or could they spend more of those precious man hours actually training their greyhounds?
9. Palatability
No matter how potentially good a food might be – it is of no use whatsoever if the dogs won’t eat it!
We spent vast resources experimenting with different formulas until we found the perfect taste blend. Greyhounds just love the taste of Australian Formula.
Interestingly – we do it by using natural tasty ingredients and have NOT resorted to artificial flavours to win the taste race!
Greyhounds are usually quite good eaters as a breed. It is the occasional fussy one that really shows the quality of our food.
As the tale of a recent Greyhound of the Year so notably demonstrated, the taste really can make a huge difference!
8. Reduced Stool Output
In order to maintain optimum racing weight, many cheap feeds have to be fed in such volume that the inevitable outcome is three or four motions a day. Additionally, these are rarely firm in consistency and easy to clean up.
The questions for trainers are – why are the dogs excreting so much? What is going on inside their digestive systems that so much bulk is excreted?
Australian Formula, when correctly fed, can drastically reduce the levels of feed required and waste produced.
Human nutrition experts use fecal data in their assessment of health and well-being. The same principles hold true for racing greyhounds.
7. Race Recovery
In numerous articles we have explained that it is not exercise – but recovering from exercise – that gets a dog really fit.
The stresses and strains of hard exercise – even a fast straight gallop, cause significant damage to the dogs muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments etc.
Thousands of ‘micro tears’ to the muscle fibres need to be repaired. Many nutrients are needed for this repair process and effective antioxidants need to be instantly available to counteract damage on the cellular level.
Electrolytes are needed to counteract dehydration. Joint conditioners are needed to help speed up the repair of damaged cartilage and other tissues.
Bone building nutrients such as calcium, vitamin D and silicon are needed to strengthen areas of bone that are stressed.
An athlete that takes too long to recover cannot achieve peak fitness.
6. Consistency
Properly prepared, every greyhound meal should maintain a uniform standard in terms of taste, smell, consistency and content. Yet some manufacturers deliberately change their formulations as a result of the fluctuating costs and availability of ingredients.
(You can imagine the security implications when contaminated cheap re-cycled ingredients are used!)
Some manufacturers allow different levels of cooking to occur, some allow big ingredient variations. All these changes are very bad news if you are trying to coax every last millisecond of speed out of a dog. When it comes to diet, dogs thrive on consistency. With Australian you get what you pay for – every time.
5. Avoidance of meat contamination
One of the most important reasons for using Australian Formula is something we don’t include!
It is a fact that the food is so nutritionally well balanced that there is no need to add vitamins, minerals – or meat.
Simply by cutting meat out of the equation there is a huge reduction in the risk of bacterial contamination and everything associated with it. Kennel sickness, with all the clinical signs of sickness is bad enough.
But what about the times when the dog is just feeling ‘under the weather’ and falls short of his best performance?
Of course we can’t stop trainers adding meat to ‘Aussie’. Will it do any harm? One day it might!
4. Joint Conditioning
This is one of the most exciting areas in nutritional science (in human geriatric studies as well as greyhounds!)
Joint conditioning supplements such as glucosamine and chondroitin sulphates need to be fed to the dog throughout its life.
Adding these compounds when a dog is showing signs of joint soreness is way too late – the damage has already been done. Joint conditioners are the silent workers whose benefits are only really noticable when they are missing.
Joint surfaces are constantly repairing at a much greater rate than they would otherwise and this hopefully helps the dog to stay ahead of the point where joint problems really are an issue.
It is a popular myth that such ingredients are ‘not part of the diet of dogs in the wild so they obviously don’t need them’ Wrong!
When a wild canine catches its prey, it eats most of the carcass including the smooth white ends of the joints. These are nature’s way of providing some of these compounds. Nature knows best!
3. Skeletal Health (Silicon)
When we were asked if Australian Formula (original) would suit pups, we were confident that it was the best feed available on the market.
But was it the best product that we could possibly create? After all, the dietary requirements of a racing greyhound and a pup might be similar, but they are not identical.
It was while researching the latest ground breaking scientific advances that we discovered the work being done with choline stabilised Orthosilicic acid.
This incredible biotechnology involves the production of substances that are found in very small quantities in nature and are incredibly difficult and expensive to manufacture – we are talking of costs of tens of thousands of Euros per kilo.
Thankfully – these amazing substances are 100% effective in minute quantities!
The big bucks in Orthosilicic acid research are not, unsurprisingly, in racing greyhounds, but in cosmetics. It is expected to be the new ‘wonder additive’ for the next generation of locations and skins creams of the future because of it’s ability to enhance the elasticity of collagen.
Our interest was pricked by the coincidental findings which showed incredible improvements in the bone strength of a wide range of laboratory animals and had proven injury reducing benefits in racehorses.
Australian Formula puppy contains a superb skeletal development package including bio-available silicon, vitamins A, D, B6, B12, Iron, Manganese and a balanced ratio of Calcium and Phosphorous. This food is simply light years ahead of the opposition.
2. Performance
Above all that is what we are famous for. Australian Formula is a feed designed to provide the nutrition needed by a greyhound in serious race training. We combine high quality ingredients such as chicken, rice, vegetables and selected oils providing readily available protein and energy and all the minor nutrients needed such as creatine, vitamins, joint conditioners, glutamine, antioxidants, trace elements
The net result is a product that is the automatic first choice feed of many of the leading greyhound trainers in Britain and Ireland.
1. Confidence
Greyhound trainers are not nutritionists, they simply want a feed in which they can have complete confidence.
Australian Formula is now accepted as the industry leader in advanced nutrition. It has become a by word for quality and consistency and is now the feed by which all others are judged.
If you really need convincing just try feeding it for a few weeks. The dogs will convince you that you have made the right choice.
