| Website | Instinctive Bite |
| Country of origin | Australia |
| Available from | Pet Circle |
In 2024 we have dog foods of all shapes and sizes, ranging from nuggets of cardboard to gourmet fit for a king.
But what if all you want is a decent run-of-the-mill dry dog food which won’t require a home loan extension?
Instinctive Bite could well be your answer.
The ingredients are good, reliability is good, and the price is competitive compared to similar brands.
If you want to feed one of those gourmet foods as well I see no reason why you can’t. Instinctive Bite could be a good base diet for your dog, and you can swank it up with some dried or fresh raw.
Top tip: Also check out the rather excellent Instinctive Bite Bone Broth as an excellent way to boost your dog’s health.
In this review we’ll take a look at the grain free Instinctive Bite Chicken & Sweet Potato recipe as a benchmark, but all recipes including the grain-based options are decent.
Just note most recipes are Adult-only, so opt for the Puppy formula if your dog is less than 1 or 2 years (depending on breed).
What the marketing says
Most dog foods won’t tell you how much meat there is, and it’s usually much less than you think.
A few years ago one of the most trusted brands endorsed by many Australian breeders was almost entirely corn with barely any meat at all, and when I mentioned this fact I often received backlash and accusations. That was until a number of dogs fell ill from a condition caused by mycotoxins in corn.
It’s for reasons such as this I really appreciate when a brand is transparent about meat content, and you’ll find on the front of the Instinctive Bite bags exactly that. For this formula it states 52% meat & oils and 48% veggies, vitamins, minerals & antioxidants.
Yes, you can get dog foods with a higher meat content, but for a much higher price.
Instinctive Bite is made in Australia, using locally sourced ingredients, and I know how much we appreciate Australian Made brands.
Let’s take a look at those ingredients so we can understand what we’re feeding our dogs…
What the ingredients really say
In the Chicken & Sweet Potato recipe we find the first ingredients are Australian Poultry Meal, a dried form of poultry, combined with sweet potato as a better low-GI alternative to regular spuds.
It looks like the next two ingredients are also significant, being chickpeas and peas. After the fat content (poultry oil) we also find a range of fruits and veggies.
It’s nice to see a mixture, and although we have a combo of animal ingredients and plant-based ingredients, all should offer your dog something nutritionally.
When you consider most dry dog foods (even in this day and age) are some meat and a lot of one type of grain, it’s easy to understand how beneficial a mixture such as this can be for your dog.
For those of you who think a dog should have more meat in the diet, why not feed your dog some fresh meat, organs, and raw meaty bones as well?
That’s exactly what I do, and I find it very cost effective.
We shouldn’t put too much emphasis on the small ingredients as these are often less than 1% of the formula, but it’s nice to see inclusions such as glucosamine and chondroitin for joint health, chia seeds as a wonderfully nutritious addition (I discuss chia at length here), DHA to support brain function and immune system, and so forth.
We also find a combination of oils to benefit your dog’s health and well-being, and these are canola oil, coconut oil, and fish oil.
When it comes to Australian dog foods, there are formulas such as this which are held in high regard, but they cost a fair bit more for no apparent reason.
I find the range of Instinctive Bite dog foods a great affordable option, and would therefore recommend if you’re looking for this kind of dry food.
Where to buy?
Instinctive Bite is available in in 3 x bag sizes (4kg/8kg/15kg) solely at Pet Circle.
Protein options include Grain Free Salmon & Potato, Grain Free Kangaroo & Sweet Potato, Lamb & Brown Rice, and Chicken & Brown Rice.
Top tip: You will receive 20% ongoing discount if you use their Auto Delivery!
Ingredients
The ingredients of Instinctive Bite Grain Free Chicken and Sweet Potato dog food formula:
Australian Poultry Meal, Sweet Potato, Chickpeas, Peas, Poultry Oil (with mixed Tocopherols & Rosemary Extract), Vegetables & Fruits (Spinach, Carrot, Pumpkin, Turmeric, Tomato, Cranberry, Blueberry), Poultry Digest, Vitamins & Minerals (Including Calcium, Phosphorus, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, Magnesium, Iron, Copper, Manganese, Zinc, Iodine, Selenium, Vitamins A, C, D3, E, K, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, B12, Biotin, Choline), Canola Oil, Beet Pulp, Coconut Oil, Fish Oil, Sodium Tripolyphosphate, Amino Acids (Methionine, Taurine), Chia Seed, Chicory Extract (FOS), Yucca Schidigera, D-Glucosamine, DHA Gold, Chondroitin Sulphate.
Guaranteed analysis
The guaranteed analysis of Instinctive Bite Grain Free Chicken and Sweet Potato dog food formula:
| Protein | (min) 26% |
| Fat | (min) 10% |
| Carbohydrates * | (max) 44% (listed on label) |
I chose this as part of a rotation of food for my older, but very active, Labrador as it seemed not only to be a healthy alternative but to provide bone and joint support.
Within a few weeks she was having difficulty making it through the night and there were a number of unfortunate accidents as a result. I have since changed her back to Eukanuba and the problem is improving considerably.
She has never had any previous difficulty with any food so a warning to be wary of using this food.
Hi Adrienne,
I assume by accidents you mean diarrhea?
Generally if a dog has been fed a single brand of food for a long period of time then reactions to a new food can be common. The cause may not necessarily be the new food, but the result of an intolerance which has built up from a generally unvaried diet. The same applies to us – if we restrict our diets for a long period of time, such as cutting out milk or dairy, then if we reintroduce such foods we suffer an upset stomach. So it’s worth considering if your dog has become intolerant to ingredients in Instinctive Bite which aren’t found in Eukanuba.
All that said, we should also keep in mind a dog food may be the cause of problems, so I won’t discount Instinctive Bite as the cause.
Pet Circle has recently revived the Instinctive Bite range – thoughts on how it holds up?
Hi Jenny, I’ve updated the review. For the price, as a more budget-friendly option than similar brands, I find it fairly decent.
Nearly everything gone from this brand. Lamb is gone, salmon is gone (good)(loads of bad reviews) and the 5kg bags are gone too. It seems to be on it’s last legs, I wonder if it’ll float for much longer or ultimately sink.
Yes I’ve been chasing this for weeks! Pet circle and have been less than helpful with letting me know what’s going on! I keep getting the response “I’m not sure what’s going on”… I changed over to Hypro premium lamb and brown rice in the meantime but my dog doesn’t seem as keen on it.. it’s very dry and has a strange texture
I’m not sure why they are out of stock but I can still order it from past auto deliveries…
Tried it and still got my order even though they have been out of stock for awhile now.
I’m concerned that SALT is listed in the ingredients. I’ve never seen salt included in an ingredients list for premium pet food before-only cheap brands. It doesn’t seem to be a small amount either considering it’s 9th on the list.
Hi Vet, salt in most dry dog food formulations sits around the 1% mark. The position salt is on the ingredients list is more a matter of how many “main” ingredients there are. For example, a dog food might have main ingredients of “chicken, potato, chicken fat”, or a whole host of ingredients in lesser amounts.
I’ve been feeding this brand to my 2 GSP’s since they released this brand to the market and am one of their biggest fans. We’ve fed all life stages and flavours (except seafood due to an allergy) and they’ve all been phenomenal.
My dogs actually do better on the grain based ones, so that’s what we feed now (and it’s cheaper).
Good food and Aussie.
We also feed their bone broth too.
LOVE INSTINCTIVE BITE
Changed to Instinctive bite original lamb 3 years ago after vet advice to avoid grain free and my G Dane loves it. We supplement with a cup home cooked meat and veg casserole/eggs/sardines in rotation. Good food at a great price, grain free varieties if you want them. Poop is usually neat and well formed
My 2 year old groodle who never has issues with his tummy (or eating) did not enjoy this product. After reading some of the reviews I avoided the salmon variety.
At the start he LOVED it, couldn’t eat it quick enough. But he was waking up in the night and liquid pooping on the carpet which he has never done, even as a puppy. He was terribly farty, which is VERY unlike him. He stopped wanting to eat his food when he has always been a binge eater.
I noticed he had to start walking to generate his bowel movements in the morning and would think he was done but then more would come out. We tried to see if it was anything else, as we had bought a 15kg bag but had to eventually concede that the food was causing it.
We went back to his old food and within a day he was back to normal.
I think it’s just too fatty for him. You can smell how rich it is and there is almost an oily sheen on the biscuits.
Interested to know, was the change over to the new food done over a week or two?
I think the issue with the salmon does indeed pertain to “fat”, I think they’ve made it too rich, added too much salmon frames and oil and that’s the cause of the many bad reviews.
Let me explain, this won’t be a pleasant read haha.
I buy jerky sausages from the Biltong Man, I don’t buy them online, but from a butcher shop. They cost $9.50 for 100g and are the most awesome things ever.
Now they say lean meat but their actually quiet fatty, this fat adds a nice flavour, but too much of it causes me wicked foul smelling gas. Sound familiar to the reviews?
So yeah I reckon that the issue with the salmon pertains to it being too oily and rich and like me with my sausages, dogs get the same symptoms.
I know they wanted to bring people to their foods with meat/fish percentages, cause you know 70% salmon, sounds amazing. But I think for a fish so rich in oil, they should’ve just done a 40% one. Especially since they still add coconut oil to the food.
I feel 40% would’ve been the fine line, the best line in fact. But I guess since bad reviews keep piling up and they still haven’t changed anything about it. But bought out new foods instead. That they are not going to change anything about it, not any time soon anyways.