# Evo vs Wellness Core experience



## Ayanla (Jun 11, 2009)

I recently rotated in Wellness Core to give the pups a little variety. I started them on Evo Red Meat Small Bites when they were wee little things and they were both doing well but I found myself questioning whether they needed variety in their diet so I tried Wellness Core.

Our first issue with Wellness Core was entirely my fault. I didn't realize it was lower KCal/cup and Kira lost a bit of weight before I caught it and corrected the portion size.

Our second issue was poop. Both the pups went from two small poops a day to three larger ones and remained at three larger poops the entire seven weeks. My theory on this is that the kibble in Wellness Core is bigger, so they have to eat more of them to get their nutritional requirements, which means they also get a larger volume of the things that turn into waste, resulting in larger poops. This might not be as noticeable in larger dogs, but it was pretty significantly noticeable in both of mine.

Our third issue was dandruff. Kira developed flaky dandruff about three weeks into eating Wellness and kept it the entire time. I'm not sure if she has some sort of fish allergy or if she was reacting to something else in the Wellness (she's had fish based treats without issue in the past).

The pups just returned to Evo Red Meat Small Bites on Friday. Five days after resuming Evo we're back to two, smaller, firmer, poops a day and Kira's dandruff is completley gone, much to my disbelief.

I think the next time I rotate in a different food it'll be a non-fish based one and a smaller kibble one.


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## Michiyo-Fir (Jul 25, 2009)

Actually I think the poop is related to the beet pulp and high fiber content in Wellness Core. I'm not a huge fan of wellness kibble. Perhaps you could try the othre flavors of EVO if you want variety?


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## StellaLucyDesi (Jun 19, 2008)

Wellness CORE (at least the Ocean and RF) do contain a pretty high fiber content, but they do not have beet pulp in them. I'm pretty sure, not certain, that regular Wellness does not use beet pulp either. The poop issue was likely due to a higher fiber content. I actually have a couple of dogs that need this higher fiber content and it helps them. That is why there is no one perfect dog food for every dog lol.


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## Michiyo-Fir (Jul 25, 2009)

StellaLucyDesi said:


> Wellness CORE (at least the Ocean and RF) do contain a pretty high fiber content, but they do not have beet pulp in them. I'm pretty sure, not certain, that regular Wellness does not use beet pulp either. The poop issue was likely due to a higher fiber content. I actually have a couple of dogs that need this higher fiber content and it helps them. That is why there is no one perfect dog food for every dog lol.


Oops you're right. I meant it contains tomato pomace. The tomato pomace made my friends dogs poop veryvery hard like rocks. I don't feed foods with tomato pomace but a lot of sogs finsit no problem at all.


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## Ayanla (Jun 11, 2009)

I hadn't thought about the higher fiber content, but that makes sense. I'm still not sure what caused the dandruff. Boston's are pretty prone to allergies so it may be something as simple as a mild reaction to some minor ingredient. So far she's still dandruff free since the return to Evo.

I will say, though, that returning to Evo has caused a noticeable increase in water intake. Evo is definitely a food that makes them thirsty. We haven't experienced a marked increase in urination to coincide with the extra water, so I'm guessing they need the extra fluid to process the food properly and are utilizing the extra they're taking in. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or an indicator of a potential problem. 

I haven't seen any indication of trouble from the kidney side of things, no darker urine, no difficulty/discomfort when urinating, so I'm just kind of keeping an eye on the extra water intake for now.


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## Jordan S (Nov 21, 2009)

Ayanla said:


> I recently rotated in Wellness Core to give the pups a little variety. I started them on Evo Red Meat Small Bites when they were wee little things and they were both doing well but I found myself questioning whether they needed variety in their diet so I tried Wellness Core.
> 
> Our first issue with Wellness Core was entirely my fault. I didn't realize it was lower KCal/cup and Kira lost a bit of weight before I caught it and corrected the portion size.
> 
> ...




I prefer CORE. Evo made his weight fluctuate all over the place lol. Good food but too many calories for my dog.


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## StellaLucyDesi (Jun 19, 2008)

I love Natura. But, my dogs don't seem to handle some brands of their food. I think the reason why, for us, is that they include dairy (cottage cheese) and my dogs don't handle dairy well. Only Innova and EVO include dairy, the other brands do not. My dogs don't do well on regular Innova or EVO. I would love to use it tho'. I have used Cal. Nat. and liked it okay. I wouldn't mind using Healthwise at all! Karma would be a good food to use for a dog that needed lower calcium/phosphorus percentages. Right now, as I said before, I'm using CORE. But I may try Healthwise in the future.


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## kenRC51 (Mar 7, 2008)

My dogs eat EVO and does great on it. I would love to give Core a try. Maybe I will rotate them.


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