
General Mills to buy pet food maker Blue Buffalo for $8B - fiveFeet
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blue-buffalo-pet-m-a-general-mills/general-mills-to-buy-pet-food-maker-blue-buffalo-for-8-billion-idUSKCN1G7185
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neogodless
We give our large breed dog Limited Ingredient (by Blue Buffalo) specifically
because it doesn't contain grains and other irritants. Maybe I'm being overly
cynical, but I'm concerned that General Mills ownership will decrease the
quality of the ingredients, and we'll have to find another brand, which has
always proved to be a tricky, extended process of trial and error, where the
"error" leads to your dog losing weight and having diarrhea.

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Erik816
Try Taste of the Wild, may be what you are looking for.

~~~
Shivetya
Victor is another very good brand. The site
[https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/](https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/) does
provide a good breakdown of what it is in many dog foods

~~~
kprybol
Not sure how easy it is to find outside of boutique pets stores (just happen
to live near a fantastic one that delivers for free) but I highly recommend
the Orijen brand. Have tried numerous other “premium” brands with my dogs over
the years but no matter which brand I was using, I always managed to run into
at least one vet than had less than stellar things to say about brand x, y, or
z. Maybe it’s just coincidence but in the 7+ years I’ve been feeding my dogs
Orijen I’ve yet to encounter a vet that anything other than positive things to
say about the brand.

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wonder_bread
I wonder how long it's going to be until we hear about a direct-to-consumer
online pet food store that gives a bag of food to a dog in need for every bag
purchased

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Nelson69
Why not? It seems like a pretty solid option for a subscription model and they
already ask you for money donations when you pay at Petsmart and Petco...

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linsomniac
I've been using the Amazon "subscribe and save" to get Blue Buffalo dog and
cat food for a while. A subscription model seems solid, especially as I can't
get Blue Buffalo in the grocery store so I have to make a special trip for it.
But, maybe with this deal it'll get into more grocery stores?

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awakeasleep
A lot of those amazon reviews make it look like counterfeit Blue Buffalo is
being commingled with the real stuff. Pretty fascinating reviews.

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el_benhameen
Yeah, given my experience with Amazon purchases over the past year or so, I'm
really hesitant to buy any food or dietary products from them, for me or for
my dog.

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giarc
Many food companies will have their own "store" on Amazon and you can purchase
from them as a supplier. I assume they have quality control to ensure the food
they ship to Amazon is from their warehouses, and I assume that Amazon only
ships you that food. I guess it's a lot of assumptions.

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crasco
My understanding is that Amazon tags similar products with the same SKU
despite their source. This allows someone to ship fake inventory in, have
amazon fulfill it, and then those products make their way to customers
purchasing direct from Amazon. There are cases of this reported by authors and
other products

~~~
giarc
You might be right. I was just looking at some listings to see if I could find
any disclaimer but didn't see any. I did find some various suppliers, all
similar names but not exact.

If you search for Van Houtte coffees, you get products supplied by "Van Houtte
Coffees", "Van Houtte" and "VAN HOUTTE". Clicking on the supplier link two
bring you to the same page, the 3rd to a different supplier page. They all
look legitimate but there's no way to tell. I'd actually like to see a
"Verified" listing by Amazon. I'd much rather buy from a verified supplier to
make sure I'm not getting some "off the back of the truck" coffee pods or
whatever.

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oldcynic
The big food conglomerates have been buying up pet food makers for decades.
Gives a convenient place to dump all the leftovers from their human food
production.

Best option is to find a maker that still only makes pet food, or take the old
fashioned approach and feed the dog raw bones and leftovers.

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cobalt
(you generally should not feed your dog bones, they can splinter and lodge in
the dog's throat)

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oldcynic
Only if cooked first, as they become brittle. So cooked chicken bones would be
especially risky. Raw bones are generally fine - they break into small pieces.
Larger marrow bones they can only gnaw at of course.

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philfrasty
curious: if the bones aren't cooked, isn't the pet spreading bacteria with
(possible) resistance to antibiotics throughout the entire house?

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oldcynic
Generally we encourage the dogs to keep the bones outside, or in the kitchen,
and mop the floor after. Not that it needs much - they usually munch wherever
it lands!

The sound of a couple of German Shepherds crunching up their bones means you
probably don't want them doing this right by the sofa during a movie. After an
hour or so all that's left of a big marrow bone is entirely cleaned, and the
smaller stuff is gone completely. So we've never found it an issue.

I imagine we and the children, especially when they were younger, spread as
much as any salmonella loaded paw prints. :)

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sergers
I feed my purebred English bulldog:

He started off on royal cabin puppy bulldog blend.

Then I was a little smarter, and fed Origin.

Origin I found was true protein rich. Switched to Acanna, which is actuallyade
by same people as origin, just less protein.

Tried fromms, taste of the wild.

Then nutrience grain free with freeze dried meat.

I have used this a few times inbetween, but now back on it. Zignature Kangaroo
formula.

[https://www.zignature.com/?portfolio=kangaroo-formula-
dry&la...](https://www.zignature.com/?portfolio=kangaroo-formula-dry&lang=en)

With my dogs allergies and gastro issues, this has been the best.

Hypoallergenic meat first recipe, with no Corn, grains, Wheat, Soy, Dairy, or
Chicken, Chicken Eggs, or Chicken By-Products.

My Dog is allergic to chicken, suprised how much chicken meal is in alot of
dog foods.

They pet store basically said: "has your dog ever had kangaroo? unlikely, and
its only meat in it.)

So I tried it, maybe not the absolute most favorite of my dog, but he still
enjoys it and it's been the best for him.

Never tried blue origin, likely won't now, my wife' heart always dropped
watching the commercials telling the history of blue the dog and the resulting
company in memory

~~~
toomuchtodo
You might try Nature's Select. My great dane is allergic to almost every
traditional protein except fish, so he's on a diet of wild salmon and sweet
potatoes.

[http://naturalpetfooddelivery.com/select-cold-water-
recipe/](http://naturalpetfooddelivery.com/select-cold-water-recipe/)

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hinkley
I still find it disturbing how much breakfast cereal is made by dog food
companies.

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monocasa
I, for one, love Crackling Oat Bran.

~~~
spthorn60
As do we. True story - our kids always called C.O.B. "cat food".

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PhasmaFelis
I don't wanna be the "why is this on HN" guy, and I certainly don't _mind_
that it's here, but I really don't see any possible hacker angle here. I'm not
complaining, I'm just puzzled.

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slantyyz
People interested in this topic might want to check out the Skept Vet's web
site:

[http://skeptvet.com/Blog/](http://skeptvet.com/Blog/)

The site is run by a veterinarian who "takes a skeptical and science-based
look at veterinary medicine". There's a strong bias towards evidence based
research over junk/pseudo-science (which should appeal to a lot of HN'ers),
and I've learned a lot from reading his blog.

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judahjr88
My dogs pooped blood when we tried giving them Blue Buffalo

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stronglikedan
That typically means you gave them too much too fast. It's best for their
digestive system to _very_ slowly ease them into the new food. A few kibbles
(or partial teaspoons if wet) mixed into their old food at first, and then
gradually increase over two weeks, until the new food completely offsets the
old food.

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matt2000
"Hacker News" this is not. I hate to be the guy saying "why is this article on
here" but I do miss the stuff that used to be on this site :(

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danso
It must be of some interest to the entrepreneurial-minded folks on HN. An East
Coast company that started in 2012 [0] gets a $8B buyout -- and unless I'm
missing something, it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. Reminds me of
stories about all the tech startups started by non-teenagers/non-dropouts
whose big exits (some near unicorn-level) don't get much attention because
their origin stories or their business plan don't sound as sexy as the
archetypical Silicon Valley startup myth.

[0]
[https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=49372845)

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matt2000
Yeah I hear you, I’m just missing the stuff I used to find here - little cool
libraries, new ways of doing things, stuff people made.

So much of what’s upvoted now are just the contents of the business section of
any major newspaper.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I can’t speak for everyone, but I find the business, political, and social
posts far more valuable than any technical post about a library, framework, or
new abstraction.

Very few people change the world with code. It’s either soft skills or
business acumen.

