It may come intuitively to you that particular foods may benefit certain dog breeds more than others. Take corgis, for example. It would stand to reason that their unusual conformation and other characteristics would require special nutritional considerations.
If you have a corgi and struggle with feeding decisions, we can help. We have carefully researched several dog food choices and came up with five of the best dog foods for corgis.
Quick Picks: The 5 Best Corgy Dog Food
Last update on 2024-04-12 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
The 5 Best Dog Food for Corgis – Reviews
First and foremost, we chose the best dog food for corgis from premium diets that satisfied or exceeded the AAFCO (The Association of American Feed Control Officials) standard for pet food. All the diets we selected provide an appropriate macronutrient balance for herding dogs: proteins 25% to 30%, 10% to 15% fats, and under 30% carbohydrates. Finally, we picked foods that addressed potential issues like a sensitive stomach or sensitive skin and orthopedic problems.
1. Wellness Core Natural Grain Free Dry Dog Food Ocean Whitefish, Herring & Salmon
Pros:
- Whitefish, herring, and salmon constitute novelty protein sources and are good for food allergies and food intolerance.
- Plentiful omega 3s and 6s make it a good anti-inflammatory for skin allergies and possibly a preventative measure to supplement an osteoarthritis program.
- This food is great for corgis that perform better with a grain-free diet.
- Morsels are larger than for small or toy breeds, making it ideal for the larger bites of corgis.
- This diet incorporates fresh fruits as sources of antioxidants and healthy carbohydrates.
Cons:
- The fat source is canola oil instead of animal fat.
- The food may contain more Menhaden fish than salmon.
2. Rachael Ray Nutrish Just 6 Natural Recipe Limited Ingredient Lamb Meal & Rice
Rachael Ray Nutrish Natural recipes have several different flavors. The Just 6 formulation features lamb as the first ingredient.
Pros:
- Limited ingredients both helps food intolerance and/or allergies and helps rule out specific sources of hypersensitivity.
- Lamb is the first ingredient. It is another novelty high-quality protein source and easy to digest.
- Rice as the carbohydrate provides a bland and easily digestible carbohydrate.
- The kibble is medium in size, which is more suitable than the larger morsels for big breeds.
- Many people report their dog’s skin problems resolved within several days of beginning this dog food.
Cons:
- Despite your best intentions, a few dogs simply do not like the taste of lamb or quickly become weary of it.
- The kibbles may be too hard to chew for dogs with poor dental health.
3. Hill’s Science Diet Small & Toy Breed Dry Dog Food
Pros:
- Excellent palatability. The most finicky dogs have no problem eating this food.
- Small-sized kibbles are good for corgis with dental problems or dogs who are missing teeth.
- Effective diet for maintaining an appropriate weight, whether you have overweight or underweight corgi.
- Dogs generally thrive on the food, exhibiting higher than average vitality and lack of skin or digestive issues.
- Hills performs extensive research on their foods, and this diet is no exception. It is clinically proven to impart antioxidant benefits to dogs.
Cons:
- If you desire your corgi to have a grain-free diet, this dog food has corn and wheat in it.
- This dog food is not suitable for dogs over six years of age. Considering corgis can live 11 or 12 years, this is quite a limitation.
4. Canidae All Life Stages Multi-Protein Formula
Pros:
- Multiple sources of high-quality protein.
- The carbohydrate sources are rice and barley.
- This diet is formulated for all life stages and all breeds. It is ideal for households with a mix of puppies and adult dogs or with multiple different breeds.
- Canidae features no corn, wheat, or soy.
- This food provides 700mg/kg of naturally-occurring glucosamine which is well-known for its benefits on the joints. The formula also has probiotics to enhance the health of gut flora.
- Seems to infuse many dogs with more energy.
Cons:
- It may not be the best choice for senior corgis or dogs prone to gain weight easily.
5. Purina One Smartblend Natural Formula Dry Dog Food Chicken & Rice
Pros:
- Chicken is the first ingredient.
- The protein content in this food is high. This is a plus for highly active corgis that are working in the field or perhaps are competing in agility trials.
- Purina foods always provide dogs with varying textures and high palatability.
- Many clients report excellent benefits to digestive health with stools normalizing and sensitive stomachs resolving.
- The dog food features an antioxidant blend and glucosamine to support joint health.
Cons:
- Chicken by-products meal features in the top five ingredients.
- This product has soy in it.
The Best Food for Corgis – Buying Guide
What Stand-out Features do Corgis Have?
A healthy corgi is active, affectionate and engaged with members of its family. There are two separate breeds of corgi (the Pembroke Welsh from French ancestry and the Cardigan Welsh from the Celtics). They both have herding backgrounds. Other than their tails (Pembrokes have docked tails) they have very similar conformations.
Short legs and relatively long backs are inherent traits of both corgi breeds. As such, corgis are predisposed to hip dysplasia even though they are small to medium-sized dogs.
Corgis are also prone to overeat. They were bred as herding dogs, so their work required long hours of activity and focus at a time. Modern corgis are not quite so active but they have retained their healthy appetites. Like many of you probably do, I take my dog for long walks every day. However, this does not come close to providing the exercise a corgi’s ancestors received.
A video of a working corgi best illustrates its dwarfed physical attributes and how athletic it is despite this. It also portrays how much energy a herding dog expends and why a corgi whose job is companionship needs someone to monitor his calories.
Do You Need Breed-Specific Dog Food?
When we made our final cut of the top dog foods for corgis, we did not choose any breed-specific diets. While these foods are based on an excellent premise, the reality is that most of them do not stand up to a close inspection of their contents. First, we found a better quality of fat and protein sources in our picks.
Also, the supposed huge differences between nutritional requirements of over 200 dog breeds have not yet been established with any precision. Hence, you will find similar content and identical ingredients in breed-specific foods as you would in other commercial diets.
However, you can find foods that effectively contrast a small dog’s metabolism to a larger dog’s caloric needs, for example. Dog foods can also successfully address orthopedic, endocrine, digestive, and other disorders that affect certain breeds more than others. With due diligence, we can choose foods that satisfy particular conditions we know corgis may be predisposed.
How do You Select the Best Dog Food for Corgis?
- Narrow your search to those foods that use high-quality ingredients. Dogs are mostly carnivorous, and ideally, an animal protein should be the top-listed ingredient. Avoid fillers and make sure to eliminate foods that you know your corgi is allergic to.
- Look for a food that supplies an appropriate balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.
- Make sure fats are named. For examples, an acceptable ingredient listing should say, “fat from whole chicken” or “lamb fat” not just make a generic reference.
- Check for a list of minerals, especially calcium and phosphorus.
- Decide if your corgi should eat a grain-free diet. Many dogs with digestive disorders, food allergies, or skin problems, benefit from foods with no soy, wheat, or corn. Your veterinarian can also help with this decision. Sometimes you may decide only to feed your corgi specific types of grain like barley.
- Research which foods may address issues that could apply to your corgi. These could be arthritis, hip or elbow dysplasia, sensitive skin or stomach, allergies, disc disease, and weight issues.
How to Judge a Protein Meal in Dog Food?
When you look at a bag of dog food and read the sometimes overwhelming list of ingredients, what goes through your mind? I remember when I used to dismiss everything that had the words “meal” in the label. I have since learned what it actually means to feed my dog something like a chicken meal.
Meal is simply food that has been put through a grinder and dehydrated. Chicken meal must satisfy the exact same standards as a whole chicken. Absolutely no beaks or feathers go into chicken or turkey meal, and no hair goes into a beef meal. And to get real technical, when they process dog food, everything becomes a sort of mixed dry meal anyway.
The truth is, meal allows manufacturers to put more of the particular ingredient into their final products during processing. Whole animal-source foods have high moisture content and large bulk. Putting them in dog food is a great concept, but animal and vegetable meals enable greater nutritional content to enter the kibble.
By-product meal is an entirely different matter. Animal by-products, freed of bacteria and disease through rendering, are considered of poor nutritional value containing highly variable amounts of protein.
Final Thoughts
Many people who own corgis have the same refrain: ” I could not imagine my life complete without my corgi in it.” Well, maybe we all say that about our dogs. Corgis do occupy a special niche in the herding group as the smallest representatives. Their nutritional demands reflect the blend of a working heritage and an engaging personality.
Our final decision was that Wellness Core Natural Grain Free Dry Dog Food Ocean Whitefish is the best dog food for corgis. We like the grain-free formulation for the breed and feel fish makes an excellent protein source for dogs. The dog food provides heavy support for skin and digestive upsets that corgis may experience and addresses potential joint concerns.
Purina Smartblend would have been a better choice if it did not utilize any by-products. Dogs do well on it, nevertheless. Canidae utilizes excellent quality in its ingredients, but the grain-free formula combined with fish in Wellness finalized our choice.