This is the second in our multi-part series on the best food for your Yorkie. We hope to give you enough information to make an informed choice for yourself, and we hope that the information we provide will lead you to look carefully at the choice you make when it comes to your Yorkie’s food.
As with our last review, we will be looking at 5 quality foods for your Yorkie. We will be reviewing each food in terms of kibble size, ingredients and nutrition, cost, recall information, manufacturing, and, of course, a taste test. In this review we are looking at (in alphabetical order):
- California Natural – Grain Free Kangaroo & Red Lentils Formula
- Canidae, All Life Stages – Lamb Meal and Rice Formula
- Fromm, Four Star- Game Bird Recipe
- The Honest Kitchen – Verve
- NutriSource – Adult Chicken and Rice Formula
Kibble Size
Each of these foods has a great kibble size for Yorkies. The Honest Kitchen has the smallest pieces, with the Froom having the smallest kibble. The NutriSource and California Natural have similar sized pieces and the Canidae has a small-ish, but thick piece. We are providing pictures for your reference, with a piece of kibble on a quarter so you can gauge the size of the pieces for your Yorkie.
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Ingredients & Nutrition
The best way to compare the ingredients and nutrition is with the chart provided below.
Here are a few highlights for you that we found the most interesting.
The Honest Kitchen’s food is made with all human-grade ingredients in a human-grade facility. Now that is impressive. Their website also lists where all their ingredients come from, including that their beef is from the Midwest U.S. and is hormone and antibiotic free. The Honest Kitchen’s food is not kibble but is dehydrated food that you rehydrate at home with warm water.
The California Natural kibble’s only protein source is kangaroo, which is an excellent option for dogs who don’t do well on other protein sources.
The California Natural Kangaroo and Fromm Game Bird are grain free.
Of these 5, the Fromm has the highest protein at 29% and the lowest is the Canidae at 21%. The highest calories comes from the Verve and the lowest from the California Natural.
| California Natural, Kangaroo |
Canidae, Lamb |
Fromm, Game Bird |
Honest Kitchen – Verve(dry) | NutriSource, Chicken |
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| First Ingredient | Kangaroo |
Lamb meal | Duck | Dehydrated beef | Chicken |
| Second Ingredient | Red Lentils |
Brown rice | Duck meal | Organic oats | Chicken meal |
| Crude Protein (Min) | 22.9% | 21% | 29% | 22.5% | 26% |
| Crude Fat (Min) | 13.4% | 12.5% | 17% | 8.5% | 16% |
| Calories kcal/kg | 3,487 | 4,022 | 4,047 | 4,199 | 3,968 |
| Serving size per day for smallest weight category | 1/2 – 3/4 cup |
1/2 – 3/4 cups | 1/2 – 1 cups | 1/4 – 1/2 cup | 1/4 – 3/4 cup |
Cost
Cost is always a consideration, especially if you have more than one Yorkie. For these foods, the prices do have a wide range – the cheapest being The NutriSource at $2.27 per pound and the most expensive being the Honest Kitchen at $3.95 per pound. To make things simple across our study, we are using current prices listed at K9cuisine.com for our comparisons. We divided the price into the pounds of the smallest bag available to get a cost per pound. Here are the per pound prices from lowest to highest for our current 5 foods.
- NutriSource – Adult Chicken and Rice Formula – $2.27 / lb
- Canidae, All Life Stages – Lamb Meal and Rice Formula – $2.42 / lb
- Fromm, Four Star- Game Bird Recipe – $3.51 / lb
- California Natural – Grain Free Kangaroo & Red Lentils Formula – $3.71 / lb
- The Honest Kitchen – Verve – $3.95 / lb when hydrated
Taste Test
Ingredients and cost are great, but will your Yorkie actually eat the food you choose? It’s hard to know until you actually get the food, which can get costly. So, if Catherine will eat a food, we give it a thumbs up! She isn’t too picky and is always hungry!
Just like in our last review, we set out all the food, 10 pieces of each (except the Honest Kitchen, we mixed up a few spoonfuls instead), and let her sniff around and make her choice. Here is Catherine’s ranking of the foods in this review, based on how quickly and in what order she ate the foods.
1. The Honest Kitchen -Verve
2. Fromm – Game Bird
3. NutriSource – Chicken and Rice
4. Canidae – Lamb and Rice
5. California Natural – Kangaroo and Red Lentils
Catherine sniffed each bowl and then commenced to gobble up the Honest Kitchen – Verve. She licked and licked until the bowl was absolutely clean. She sniffed around and then ate the Fromm – Game Bird. She sniffed the rest and didn’t seem to really want any of them, so we put the small bowls of food with her overnight and in the morning she had eaten all of the Nutrisource and some of the Canidae and none of the California Natural (I am thinking she just doesn’t have a taste for Kangaroo, lol).
Ownership
- California Natural is part of the Natura Pet Products family, owned by Proctor and Gamble, who have their own plant.
- Canidae outsources some of it’s production to Diamond Pet Foods, as far as I can tell.
- Fromm is family owned and they have their own plant.
- The Honest Kitchen is a family owned company who processes their food at a human-grade food facility.
- NutriSource is part of the Tuffy’s Pet Foods, Inc family and they have their own plant.
Recalls
The recall information I have reviewed goes back to 2009.
- California Natural – no recalls, ever.
- Canidae – voluntary recall 5/5/2012 of food made at Diamond South Carolina plant
- Fromm – no recalls, ever.
- The Honest Kitchen – no recalls, ever.
- NutriSource – no recalls, ever.
Our Choice
This time around, hands down our favorite is The Honest Kitchen’s Verve. I can’t imagine a Yorkie who wouldn’t love this food, or an owner who wouldn’t, with it’s amazing quality ingredients. We were more than pleasantly surprised at how much Catherine just loved this food.
Snickers loves The Honest Kitchen too! It seems to be a very palatable food. And I’m also impressed: He was a dog that suffered with chronic colitis his whole life. Sometimes it seemed like we were at the vet constantly. But, he has not had to go to the vet for a problem even once since starting this food, 10 months ago. It’s true it is expensive, but we have saved so much on vet bills and it is nice to not have to worry about having another episode of illness like we used to. It has been such a blessing that this food has worked well for him.
My only complaint is that it gets messy to have a long haired dog eating this type of diet. I would love to hear your thoughts on how to keep a Yorkie’s face cleaner with eating this food! Snickers has to get his face washed a lot…I don’t think he appreciates that very much. 🙂
Lindsey, same thing with Catherine on the hair, lol. I will probably be getting some dye-free baby wipes or some John Paul Pet: Ear & Eye Wipes.
I retired from working directly with the pet food industry. I have found that all the information you research be careful, you really have to understand how private label food processing as well as the types of testing on foods. I use Life’s Abundance(http://www.lifesabundance.com) and have found both of my yorkies have digested and solid stools. Good coats and silky sheen. I have bought Dick VanPatten’s Natural Balance tubes for breakfast (grind up a small amount less than a 1/4 cup as treat. Have never had any digestive, or bowel problems. I am aware of last years recall, watched the dogs for change non found relevant. If i need to purchase food locally, I buy Buffalo Blue Diamond. Can switch back and forth between Blue and Life Abundance with no problems in digestion.
Thanks, Richard! With our little “study” here we are hoping to open people’s minds about researching before they feed their furry family members. And, I just sent an email to Life’s Abundance. 🙂
I fed Honest Kitchen Force for 2 yrs. While we love Honest Kitchen, I made a huge mistake by NOT rotating proteins. My smaller yorkie developed a horrible allergy to chicken. Variety is important too!! Now I alternate with fish, beef and lamb. I alternate between Stella and Chewy’s safe raw and home cooking. They are very healthy now!
Where do we buy these dog foods, we would like to try The Honest Kitchen. Enjoyed reading the article on the food.
Debbie, all of the food brands and flavors mentioned in this review can be purchased at K9cuisine.com. the Honest Kitchen also has a store locator on their website: http://www.thehonestkitchen.com/find-a-store/
I feed my babies Halo Spots Stew…could you tell me how this rates? The first indregient in the one I buy is chicken
Cindy, I did contact Halo and am hoping for a sample from them to review soon. I can say from looking at the ingredients, it has no rendered animal parts (meat meal) and has a decent protein content at 28%. The calories are high at 4,410 kcal/kg. With the ingredients and nutrition, the Halo looks like a good food. Halo is partly owned by Ellen DeGeneres.
Also I would recommend Rachel Rays treats, inexpensive, free of substituted by-products, 6 ingredients. The soft Chicken flavored the Boys love um and not real expensive. I try to combine the ingredients of all the combined food to make a balanced necessary protein, fiber, and essential vitamins. You can do this very quickly, hint, write it down, lol.
Do you know if any of these food would be good if a Yorkie has to eat low residue?
Kathy, I believe a “low residue” diet basically consists of foods that are easily digestible – no fillers or extra junk – just protein and starch. Something with low fiber. You need a grain free food. 🙂 The food doesn’t have to say it’s a “low residue” food to be one. I would look at something like the Fromm Game Bird from this review or the Evo Small Bites from Part 1.
We lost our first Yorkie to Kidney Disease. It was caused by a too high protein diet, which shocked us, becaue the food was labeled specifically for Yorkshire Terriers.After joining a group for season Yorkie Breeders , we learned that it was the high protein which damaged her kidneys. So, now I am trying very hard with our new Yorkie to monitor her protein intake. I was told nothing higher than 24%…but we wanted to stay at 22%. Any thought on this? And what food ? I think we are giving her Iams Healthy Naturals…but I am not at peace about it. I cannot go through loosing another Yorkie like that…not that way.
Linda, studies show that high protein diets do not have any adverse affects in healthy dogs. It’s a misconception (even by some veterinarians) that kidney disease is caused by high protein diets. As protein is broken down in the body, nitrogen is released and processed through the kidneys. This is absolutely fine in a healthy dog. In a dog with kidney disease, protein needs to be restricted in order to lower the toll the nitrogen takes on the kidneys. So, a low-protein diet is lkely necessary in a dog with kidney disease, but a low-protein diet will not delay or prevent kidney disease in a healthy dog.
I would recommend you feed your Yorkie a balanced diet and a high quality food, without restricting protein intake. You can rest assured that a high protein diet will not increase your Yorkie’s chances of getting kidney disease.
Blue Buffalo pet food,,,,,the best there is!!
Steve, I actually just now posted Part 3 in our series that includes a Blue Buffalo food! 🙂
I had samples of the Honest Kitchen foods a while ago and my picky eater would not touch either one. I don’t remember now which kind it was. She is so picky and is now on a commercial raw diet.
My four dogs, do very well on Honest kitchen & Fromm’s. I’m very impressed with these foods.My dogs have had allergies, stomach problems. I have tried so many foods and now found exactly what keeps their skin, coat and stools in good form!