Question about limited ingredient foods

[Kamela & Beckett]

Beckett was seen by the vet today for some ear issues. In talking with the vet, he thinks food allergies are a possibility. He tried to talk me into Hills or Royal Canin but I declined. He was fine with that, but said other manufacturers don't clean their equipment between runs so the limited ingredient formulas can get contaminated with ingredients from other formulas. Anyone know anything about that? I'd also be interested in recommendations- we need something with no chicken, beef, or fish as he's had all of those in one form or another. Prefer a food that comes in both dry and canned so we'll have something to stuff his Kongs with. Vet recommended a venison formula but I didn't find a whole lot of those in the recommended brands. Duck seemed like a more common option.

[Deborah Brown]

I can't vouch for equipment cleaning but I like Zignature.  I have two dogs with sensitivities and this is working well for them.  We buy the lamb formula.  They also have duck and kangaroo.  I'm saving kangaroo for an emergency.

[Kamela & Beckett]

I saw that they had kangaroo. That's a pretty out there protein source! (Plus, it's expensive!!)

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Okay, first, as you yourself know and I think have said before in another discussion, food allergies are actually fairly rare in dogs. It's likely that Beckett's symptoms are due to his inhalant allergies. 

Next, vets do not study nutrition in vet school, and all of their information about pet foods comes courtesy of the marketing people at Hill's and Purina. That's where that story about cleaning the equipment comes from. It's hogwash, a marketing invention. Don't give it another thought.

If you want to try an LID food with a novel protein, there's no reason it needs to be venison. Anything he hasn't eaten before is no more likely to cause an allergic response than venison. You can use bison, turkey, duck, lamb, pork, rabbit, kangaroo, and probably several types of fish, because it's unlikely that he's eaten every kind. 

Wellness Simple Solutions makes turkey, duck and lamb formulas and have canned as well as dry food. Zignature, as mentioned, has turkey, lamb, duck and kangaroo in both canned and dry foods. Nature's Variety limited ingredient formulas are available in turkey, lamb, duck, rabbit, and pork, in both canned and dry foods. Those should give you some options. Keep in mind that it takes 8-12 weeks on a food trial to see any results, if you're going to see them at all. And you cannot give one bite of any animal protein other than the one you choose for the food.

[Kamela & Beckett]

Karen, I agree about the relative rarity of food allergies, but the incidence rate is 10% so some dogs do have them. I've never considered food allergies before, but his symptoms are different than I've seen in our older dog, other dogs I've known, etc. We'll give it a try (we know you have to commit 12 weeks), if there's no difference in his symptoms, I'll go back to assuming it's environmental.
Interesting about cleaning the lines. It wasn't reason enough for me to buy the food they were offering and he was ok with it. Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take a look and go with one of those. I think the venison suggestion may have just been because he could be fairly certain that would be a novel protein.

[Lucy & AnnaBelle's Mom]

we are using the Wellness Simple Solutions Turkey and Potato for our Lucy and she is doing well on it.  We use the dry and canned.  I started putting like a Tsp of the canned on it just to get them to eat when I want them to rather than when they wanted to.