Hello all,

I am picking up my new husky puppy from my breeder this week and have my foods down to these three brands, is there any near consensus on this forum as to wich brand/type would be best suited for a 9 week old pup?

Welcome to the forum Mountain Man......I would not buy Timberwolf at all, they manipulate their numbers some, and say on their website that they can change a formula at any time. I also believe that their blends are way too low in meat, protein %'s are at the bare minimums and their fiber content, especially for puppies is abysmal. I have never been impressed with their food, although for some bizarre reason dog food advisor ranks it 5 out of 5 stars, despite their very dismal amount of meat in their foods.

Orijen is excellent, but they are on the other extreme, very high protein, which imho, should be for full grown working dogs.

Acana is sister product to Orijen, excellent food as well, and if you can get the puppy formula great, I am not positive with the transition if they will have the puppy available in the US, or if they will how easy it will be to get. Their puppy line is a little high in protein, but they have a fair amount of fiber, so it will be a matter of will a higher protein diet work for your puppy, that will be of course you feeding it and see how his poops will be.

So with that said I would choose out of the three Acana.

First, I would make sure you have plenty of whatever the breeder is feeding so that you can make your new pups transition to his/her new life a little less stressful. Once pup is settled in then would be a good time to start transitioning to a food of your choosing. I personally always buy a small 4 or 6 lb bag of whatever the breeder is feeding and then start transitioning to my food of choice once we get halfway through the bag of the food the breeder had them on. I find it just makes all the stress of transitioning so much easier on both of us, but that's just me.

You really cannot go wrong with Orijen or Acana. Both are highly recommended foods. As we all have to do, you'll just have to pick one and try it out and see how your pup does on it. After all, the food that is best for your pup is the one that agrees with him/her best. There is no one size fits all and we all have to do a little trial and error. Most of us are not lucky enough to have a dog that can eat any and everything we offer with nothing but success.

Thankfully Champion offers a nice variety of formulas throughout their Orijen and Acana lines so you should be able to find something that works for your pup and be able to rotate the formulas around for variety.

I'm an Orijen convert It has done wonders for my pup. When we got her, she barely ate at all. When we switched to Orijen Six Fish, she devoured it and her coat improved by leap and bounds.

Now the silly thing won't touch anything else. We tried to give her Acana and Merrick, and she refused to eat it.  The dork.

One thing that was really helpful; a lot of these good brands offer trial sized bags so you can give your dog just a few meals at a fraction of the price of a good bag to see how our dog likes it and how it affects his digestive system. When we tried Orijen, I got my dog that trial-sized Six Fishfor less than $15--way better than wasting $80 only to find she didnt like it!