VitaPet has been around a while, and I expect you’ve seen their range of treats in the supermarkets.
The brand is most notably known for the VitaPet Jerhigh chicken tenders and milky sticks, but also stuff like “cookies and cream sticks” or “strawberries and cream sticks” – how appropriate do they sound for your meat-loving dog?
This review is for VitaPet dry dog foods added to the range in 2024, but a final word on many of the VitaPet treats is the use of sugar, glycerin, wheat flour/gluten, colours, and ambiguous flavours.
Does that sound good for your dog?
The chicken tenders are, thankfully, mostly chicken, but you may wonder why you don’t buy fresh human-grade chicken from the supermarket instead?
The formula for the VitaPet dog food range isn’t too bad as far as dog food formulas go, but I find it tricky to recommend a dog food from a company which sells so many questionable “treats”.
VitaPet Review
What the marketing says
There’s quite a few marketing claims on the packaging of VitaPet Adult Thrive for dogs of 2+ years, which may hook you in if you want your dog to… well… thrive.
I was initially drawn to the term “Food 4 Life”, which looks to be a meaningless trademarked term – something we shouldn’t fool for. I expect they want you to keep buying the food for the entirety of your dog’s life, which would be great for their profits.
VitaPet is made from “premium ingredients”, as if you can class pet grade ingredients as “premium”. Apparently it’s “formulated with vets”, but did you know canine nutrition isn’t covered to any real extent on a veterinary degree?
We’re told VitaPet is made from “real chicken”.
As opposed to, what, rubber chicken?
“Australian Made with Responsibly Sourced Ingredients” – well, lets hope the ingredients truly are responsible.
Let’s take a look…
What the ingredients really say
For the purpose of the VitaPet review we’ll focus on the Adult Chicken formula, but the Puppy Development and Junior Growth formulas aren’t much different.
27% protein is a good start considering the supermarket brand average is around 22%.
Fat of 14% isn’t too bad, and we can guesstimate around 41% carbohydrates which I tend to argue aren’t ideal for a dog but this is slightly better than many “household name” dog food brands.
Chicken meal is the first ingredient, but expect the top four to be the real main ingredients. These include oats, peas, and barley.
It’s worth noting there are much worse ingredients in many dog foods, with oats and barley being two of the better grains. Just keep in mind the “real chicken” is less significant than you may think, so you may want to consider supplementing such a dog food with some real meats, organs, and raw meaty bones.
After chicken fat as the 5th ingredient, which you can expect to amount to the 16% fat content, we also have chickpeas and faba beans. Again, these aren’t the worst ingredient, but these also suggest a smaller percentage of chicken.
If you love maths, which you probably don’t, you may wonder if the first five ingredients are all 16%, totaling 80%, with the chickpeas and faba beans amounting to almost the remaining 20%. If you don’t love maths, all you need to know is that could mean chicken is only 16%, and chicken fat at 16%, which would make animal ingredients around a third of the formula.
Sorry if the maths bored you!
Personally I like to feed my dog more meat, so if you do too then keep that in mind when feeding a dog food such as VitaPet.
Yes, the VitaPet dry dog foods may meet the minimum nutritional needs of your dog as specified by the American standard AAFCO, and it may well suit your budget, but hopefully now you will buy VitaPet dog food with a more realistic understanding of what it’s made from.
I expect I’ve been a little harsh in writing this review, but the plethora of marketing terms has made it easy pickings.
The main positive is the protein percentage is better than average, and although less meat than you may think the ingredients could be much worse. If it suits your budget you may find VitaPet better than similarly-priced dog foods on the surrounding shelves.
I hope that’s a fair assessment.
Have you fed VitaPet dog food?
What are your thoughts?
Where to buy
VitaPet dog food, cat food, chicken tenders, and other treats are available at numerous retailers including Petbarn.
Ingredients
Ingredients of VitaPet dog food (Adult Chicken):
Chicken meal, oats, field peas, barley, chicken fat, chickpeas, faba beans, natural chicken flavour, essential vitamins, minerals & amino acids, fish oil, sweet potato, beet pulp, natural antioxidants, Yucca schidigera extract.
Guaranteed Analysis
Guaranteed analysis of VitaPet dog food (Adult Chicken):
| Protein | (min) 27% |
| Fat | (min) 14% |
| Fiber | (max) 6% |
| Carbohydrates * | (max) 41% (estimated) |
