CopRice dog food has a surprisingly loyal following, especially in rural areas. I often hear the company being credited simply from being Australian, but Australia doesn’t have the same standard of regulation of pet food as other countries (including USA, UK, and Europe). In fact standards in Australia are vague and voluntary, and despite an investigation by the Senate in 2018 are still awaiting proper regulation.
For our CopRice dog food review we’ll assess the Family Dog recipe, take a look at what the marketing says, then take a look at what the ingredients really say.
CopRice dog food review – Family Dog
What the marketing says
The first thing you see on a bag of CopRice Family Dog is a red badge stating “Meat No.1 Ingredient”.
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the pet food marketing handbook, and an important thing to note is this – it doesn’t mean meat is the main ingredient.
Keep that fallacy in mind, and I’ll explain more later.
The formula is alleged on the bag to be “Chicken, Vegetables & Brown Rice”, with a further decorative badge to highlight brown rice as what is considered a nutritious grain.
I’ll also explain why this is misleading, so sit tight, and read on…
What the ingredients really say
Right, so the first listed ingredient is chicken meat with by-products. The next three are grains. It gets confusing as the second and fourth ingredients state rice, and the third and fourth state wheat. None of the ingredients state brown rice like we find on the front of the bag, which potentially means mostly white rice with perhaps a token sprinkling of brown rice?
It’s ominous two of the main ingredients are possibly wheat, which we consider one of the most problematic grains for sensitivities, intolerance, and long term ill health.
We can assume the first four ingredients are in equal proportions given they need to be listed in order of percentage (i.e. they can all feasibly be 20%). This would make the composition of the main ingredients potentially as follows:
It’s not looking good, is it? I thought the formula name was “Chicken, Vegetables & Brown Rice”, not “Mostly Cereals, Chicken & By-Products”.
The chicken ingredient will also be wet-weight, approx 70% moisture, so when baked into a kibble becomes far less significant compared to grains which have a far lower moisture content.
CopRice dog food doesn’t even give a guaranteed analysis, instead offering a “typical analysis” which may vary. We find a typical analysis of 24% protein (nothing to rave about), and a low 10% fat. That’s one of the lowest fat contents of any dry dog foods sold in Australia, and it’s not even guaranteed 🤔
Fat, especially animal fat, is essential for canine health, energy, and well-being, so this really isn’t good. Protein (from meat not cereals) is also fundamental to canine nutrition.
It also really highlights the emphasis of cereal grains in this product, and makes the “Meat No.1 Ingredient” somewhat laughable.
Vegetables, listed in big bold letters on the front of the bag, are actually the 11th ingredient on the recipe, 3 places down from salt at approx 1% of the formula! In other words you could say they’ve sprinkled on some carrot dust in order to use it on the recipe name 🤦♂️
Vitamins and minerals aren’t listed specifically, so likely a basic premix powder sourced from whichever country is cheapest. They state natural antioxidants but ominously don’t tell you what (what does “natural” mean anyhow?).
There’s no decent oil or omega fatty acid inclusions. No fish oil, coconut oil, flaxseed, or even sunflower oil. Way down the ingredients list of CopRice Family Dog we find “DHAgold®” which appears to be some form of omega 3 inclusion, and also glucosamine in a very small amount. It feels like CopRice are trying to tick the minimal requirement boxes for their dog foods in the cheapest (and debatably unhealthiest) way possible.
Should you feed CopRice to your dog?
I find very little positive about this “dog food” (or “dog feed”?). The marketing and formula name bare very little relation to what’s actually in the product, which appears to be mostly cereal grains.
They can’t even offer a composition analysis which is guaranteed.
When you consider your dog, an animal from the Order Carnivora, do you think you should feed them a product made significantly of cereal grains?
Not recommended.
Don’t blindly trust CopRice because they’re Australian either. Without proper regulation Australia sadly falls foul of poor pet food standards, and an ability to market a dog food in brazen ways which don’t ring true.
Where to buy CopRice dog food?
Ingredients
Ingredients of CopRice dog food (Family Dog Recipe) source from here are as follows:
Chicken meat with by-products, rice, cereals (wheat and/or barley or sorghum), bran (rice and wheat), animal fat (including mixed tocopherols and rosemary extract), vitamins, minerals and amino acids, salt, choline chloride, yucca schidigera extract, vegetables (field peas and carrots), calcium propionate, DHAgold®, glucosamine, taurine, natural antioxidants, spearmint, green tea.
Typical analysis (not guaranteed)
CopRice dog food uses a typical analysis which means the figures are not guaranteed. This can mean the amount of protein and fat is lower than listed, and the carbohydrates higher.
| Protein | 24% |
| Fat | 10% |
| Crude Fibre | (max) 4.5% |
| Carbohydrates * | (estimated) 48% |
Has our CopRice dog food review (for Family Dog) been of use? If so please tell others about this review and website. Thank you!
Very informative review, thanks. Australia is really useless on regulation but its still tempting to trust the slick marketing – which is obviously cheaper than ingredients. I was about to buy some of this but will now look for the food the vet recommends, which is expensive!
Not misleading at all Have fed /reared pups on it and they have went on to race till they are 5 yrs old not many problems as for grain new of a trainer that was the top trainer in brisbane 4 yrs in a row that only fed meat and wheat bix I have been trainer for 50 years and tried most Kibbles.
We have had dogs for many many years now and have tried the super “all that” food to the cheapest crap food out! And I can tell you Coprice comes out as one of the best many times over. We have had poor health and the runs on so called high end food. At the end of the day if your dog is happy then that’s all that counts. We do rotate food and our dogs are happy. I judge the food by how it affects their stomachs and if they get things like hotspots or other allergies.
With coprice We know of one dog which had to be put down due to vitamin d poisoning and our guy was deficient in vitamin d also dogs getting the runs from this product this time cop rice were no help and just pushed it to the side ! The time before we had an issue there were great even saying it was too much wheat added in the batch which caused 4 of our dogs to bloat and get various other digestive issues ! After speaking to alot of people who feed this product they will no longer touch it . Be very carefull feeding dogs and know the issues which could come about
Sorry to hear your dogs got sick but we never had an issues and it’s one of our go to foods. We had issues with so called high end food. No 1 product is perfect and what works for 1 dog doesn’t work for another.
Wow, you are impressively bad at reading an ingredients list and impressively good at deliberately misleading people on what it says. Read this one to see if your opinions were worth paying attention to. Yikes. Get some qualifications ffs
The fact you provide no evidence, there is no fact in your claims, and you yourself say you disagree with medical science? ‘If grain is bad’ i love how even you know you cant make the assertion factually so use rhetorical device to seem like you did.
We could start with a rudimentary experiment – put two plates in front of your dog, one with meat, the other with grains such as wheat, barley, and sorghum.
Which will your dog, from the Order Carnivora, eat?
You can argue nature knows best, couldn’t you?
Interesting to see you didn’t provide a legitimate email, which makes me question the authenticity of your comment.
My fussy puppies like this dog food. Finally! I also tried all the more expensive foods to have the dogs look at me with evil eye and hunger strike. They happily eat this one. The review seems biased any anyway it is wrong. Chicken is the no. 1 ingredient and the rice is brown rice. Maybe the recipe has changed? It’s Australian made and owned which is good too because I’ve recently discovered how unethical Nestle is and they own so many brands of dog food.
Also look at this food. First means nothing really.
You’ll take note here in this picture for a food called Scratch. Unfortunately we don’t have many foods with percentages here unlike the UK and a few other countries as well.
We see that although meat is first and that it is listed as a meal, we automatically think it’s going to be the biggest contributor to the food. Unfortunately no it isn’t and simply placing it in first place is marketing. People like to see meat first, even Purina said so themselves in one article.
The problem with any meat ingredient is if it just lists chicken/beef/pork it will be 70-80% water and since it is weighed before cooking. It’s real number on the list might end up falling quiet far down from the supposed first place it’s at.
After cooking the water weight will disappear and that 1st chicken will most likely become 5th on the ingredient list. Meal doesn’t follow this as meal is drained of water, however as I saw on a Costco owned food one time. Meal can be as little as 9%, we think it means a lot, but it can be a real small number as well.
On this food in the picture we see 26% meat meal, but than we see veggies at 50%, so the meat in the food is actually a really small number compared to the combined veggies. It is honestly really weird that they call the entire section veggies but oh well.
Only a few foods are considered meat first and it’ll be evident in their protein amount. 34% and up will usually have more meat than carbs, but since we don’t have percentages here, they could artificially inflate this number using veggies.
I have after all seen a cat food with zero meat and 40% protein. So it is very possible to do.
Dogs also utilise fats better than carbs, so you want a food with at least 30% protein and 12-14% fat.
I feed 6 different foods at once so no issues here for mine. I’ll show you that picture now.
Hi Sunny, I’ve updated the review as it was actually very old. I’ve added some key points in the review – meat as the first ingredient doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the main ingredient, and by the looks of it CopRice Family Dog is significantly more cereals. You’ll also see “brown rice” so heavily touted on the front of the bag doesn’t seem to feature on the actual ingredients! The reason being is they probably use a combination of white and brown, and it’s uncertain how much emphasis there is on brown. As for being Australian – we don’t have proper standards or regulation unfortunately, so that doesn’t hold much weight either (I explain more in the review). As for Nestle being unethical….. yup.
Do you have any experience in nutrition? Are you a vet? Producer of pet food?What is your background? I found reading the review came across biased for some reason?.
Furthermore using words like “allege” “assume” certainly gives me a redflag as to the legitimacy of the content to the review.
In fact the review is full of assumptions in my opinion. To clear things up I was looking for reviews from people with experiences with the product.
From what I have found so far no one has had any issues with the product.I feed my dog a variety of foods also: fruit and veggies, chicken frames, crocadile bones, lamb neck, mince and change up his produced food..etc etc
PS: You mention nothing about the benefit of the meat being meat and not meat meal either.
Hi Joh, there’s a lot of questions here so I’ll summarise as best I can.
Firstly, it’s worth mentioning the review mostly highlights the ingredients and composition in terms of AS-5812 as the Australian Standard for Manufactured Pet Food. This is neither studied by a vet nor a pet nutritionist (although I am qualified in pet food nutrition if you believe that offers credibility). If you need more information on the background of Pet Food Reviews then here you go.
The question the review should leave you with is whether you consider the formula appropriate for an animal which I class as a facultative carnivore, or whether you consider them omnivore or carnivore and what a species-appropriate diet may be.
The trouble I find with diets which aren’t species appropriate are it may take years for symptoms of ill health to develop. In terms of cereal grains and wheat I often find them the #1 cause of food sensitivities such as itchy skin – this comes from experience of dealing with many affected dogs over many years.
An active or working dog may fair better on a high-carbohydrate diet because they burn off the calories before they turn to sugar. It’s fair to say there’s a great deal of information on the effects of this on human health, and you can easily translate this to canine health.
You mention meat vs meat meal which is a valid point, but there are other factors surrounding pet grade meat and by-products which may also be discussed (which apply to many commercial brands of Australian dog foods).
I would consider the chicken frames, crocodile bones, lamb necks, mince, and fruits and veggies as the most beneficial food stuffs you’re currently feeding. This sits better in my view of canines as carnivores than a processed dog food made significantly of grains.
What are your thoughts?
Even though you ‘bag’ Coprice so badly I have to say my six rehomed greyhounds do fantastically well on it. I couldn’t be more pleased with it. I have used other brands but always come back to Coprice. I don’t feed it exclusively, I do also feed meat, bones, veg & fruit. My only complaint is the kibble is too small, no crunch & it goes to pap when fed with liquid.
Coprice have updated their dry dog food, now there is two working dog adult varieties or ”flavours”, a working dog puppy formula and a senior working dog formula. they have also updated their family dog formula.
The Ingredients are better but still not a high rating food. Interested in an updated review.
I have been using Coprice for several years for my Ridgeback with a very sensitive digestive system.
We tried every kibble on the market, starting at the most expensive and working our way down. EVERY product we tried, including cooking him meat & rice daily, upset his stomach and we were picking up cowpats from the backyard. Some high quality, expensive, foods upset his stomach so much he was defecating up to 15 times A DAY, and left him looking like a skeleton. We spent a fortune on visits to the vet, blood tests, and special diets.
Then we tried Coprice. Honestly we had basically given up and decided that at least if we bought a cheap brand we could feed him 4 times as much and might get him to put on some weight. Imagine our surprise when his digestive issues stopped, there was no more big sloppy cow pats, he left 2-3 normal dog droppings a day, and started to gain weight! He now has 5 cups of Coprice Working dog food a day, and is a little on the heavy side.
I honestly can’t recommend this food enough.
Expensive isn’t always best, and it doesn’t suit every dog.
Hi Deeds was your dog tested for EPI?? when a dog poos cow patty poos it’s their large bowel that may have bacteria infection…
Buy a small bag of “Taste Of The Wild” Sierra Mountain, Roasted Lamb kibble it just has lamb as the protein, there’s no other meat proteins, very slowly add under 1/4 cup TOTW with the CopRice kibble for the first 3-4 days everyday look at his poos are they the same?? then increase & add just over 1/4 cup of the TOTW for 2 days again check out his poo then if poos are still firm add under 1/2 cup of the TOTW formula taking away 1/2 cup of the CopRice kibble do this over a 3 week period until he can eat 1 of his meals just TOTW & do firm poo’s & still feed him the other meal CopRice kibble, if he’s doing very well on the TOTW formula, start rotating between both brands in his diet TOTW Sierra Mountain Roasted Lamb has only 338Kcals per cup, TOTW is lower in carbs at 37% carbs…
Sometimes the dog gets a bacterial infection in the large bowel & needs time to heal, maybe by the time you had tried a few different brands his bowel started to heal…
Just watch his weight as the CopRice formula is high in carbs 48%… bigger dogs can end up having bad back & joint problems especially when a bit over weight.. If you do decide to try the TOTW please tell us how he went…a lot of dogs with EPI, IBD, IBS do really well on the TOTW Pacific Stream, Smoked Salmon & the Sierra Mountain, Roasted Lamb formula’s, the fiber is lower.. .. My Pet Warehouse gives the 11th bag free with TOTW & some other brands but only as long as you buy the same size & brand formula when you’ve been buying the kibble 10 times..
It’s likely what you kept feeding him he was allergic to, I’ve noticed most of the kibbles have at least 1 of the same ingredient across all formulas and across all the companies, this food has a very limited ingredient list and that’s probably why it works, that an genetics play an important part.
Personally I feel better eating better foods and I see my dogs bouncing around on better foods as opposed to just “living” on cheaper foods.
I’m also of those people who are frankly sick and tired at this point of these big shot companies taking charge of everything everywhere I turn, if I had to feed my dog this food I’d have to seriously consider adoption for him, as there would be no way in hell I could ever feed him this food or any other trash by Purina, Mars and all those shitty a** companies making fools of people who believe these foods are the best s**t ever.
I am literally at my wits end with the world, I hate it!
I have used Coprice working dog for years for bullmastiff/boxer mix he is now 12 and half yrs and vets have always commentedon how healthy he looks,will keep him on this dry dog food until his final days, he does have wet foods mixed in, yes agree price is good
Genetics play a major part when it comes down to both us and dogs, if your dog looks, feels and does well on a food that’s 1 star that’s genetics because loads of people’s dogs don’t do well on 1 star foods and neither do I personally, I’ve had to completely change my diet so I’m not at the bathroom sink 7 days a week like I once was.
I have five dogs of various breed and size. They are active and live a farm life. The coprice working dog has improved their weights, teeth and general health so I am happy. Cost effective too. We are in NZ.
A lot of greyhounds are racing on this product wining group races and have good blood counts and are living to a ripe old age so ??
This is a bit misleading.
Yes Coprice is used by greyhound breeder/racers but only in combination with other high quality meat ingredients, such a ground beef or chicken wings & frames.
Typically a greyhound (in training) will receive a min of 300 grams of meat (Up to 500 grams) with maybe only 1 to 2 cups of Coprice.
Bought in quantity I understand the costs are about $2.50 per Kg for Coprice, & $4 per Kg for quality ground beef (human grade).
That’s economical but necessary if you happen to have a “stable” of maybe 6 to 12 greyhounds.
I began feeding Coprice after the return of a 7yo male (American Staffordshire Terrier) was returned to me about 3mths ago. He looked in great condition & I asked what he had been fed. Other than a small amount of meat, he had been on Coprice for about a year. I have since changed all my dogs (ranging from puppies – 10yo) onto Coprice, along with various meats. They are all looking fabulous. I show & breed in the conformation ring & so far Im very happy how all 8 of my AST are looking. So far, so good.
Can you imagine if you feed a 4-5 star kibble what your dogs would feel like?? They may look good but how do they feel, you should rotate kibbles, start rotating with other brands & proteins, look at kibble like “Taste Of The Wild” High Prairie Canine Formula, first 4 ingredients are Buffalo, Lamb Meal, Chicken Meal, Sweet Potatoes or “Canidae” Life Stages, All Life Stages kibble, the first 4 ingredients are Chicken Meal, Turkey Meal & Lamb Meal then Brown rice, a 20kg bag on special sells for $89 that works out cheaper then what your paying & has human grade ingredients that are healthy & your dogs will feel heaps better…
Where abouts are you buying Canidae for $89 if you dont mind me asking?
When the 20kg Canidae Life Stages formula is on “Special” Pet Circle sell it at the price of the 12kg bags $89 but at the moment the 12kg bags are $89 & the 20kg bags are $106, the 12kg $89 Canidae Life Stages works out $7.50 a kilo, the 20kg $106 Canidae kibble works out at $5.30 a kilo.. that’s pretty good price & free delivery to your door and a healthier dog…..
I was about to start feeding Canidae until I read the consumer reviews. I’m going back to Coprice.
Hi Gail, which consumer reviews were they, what did they say?
Hi Glenn, have a look at SniffOut for pet food price comparisons – http://www.sniffout.com.au/Search?q=canidae
Have been using the Cop Rice working dog for a number of years now, and all my dogs are looking good. The only other food i feed, are chicken frames, which my dogs get for their teatime snack. 1/4 frame each.
I have medium breed gundogs