Best Puppy Food Brands (How to Feed a Growing Dog)

Looking for the best dog food for puppies can be scary. It’s tough to know what to feed a growing puppy, and it’s tough to know how much to feed them. In fact, feeding your pup a food designed for adult maintenance can be dangerous.

BEST Options for the Quick Choice

What Makes a Good Puppy Food?

Perhaps the best way to go about finding the best dog food for puppies is to start with the best dog foods overall. Or, rather, to understand what makes a good dog food.

Plenty of good sources of animal-based protein.

Our rule of thumb is that any dog food your feed your dog should get at least a quarter (25%) of its calories from protein. In fact, PetsMD (WebMD's veterinary science-backed publication on pet health) recommends that puppy food contain at least 30% protein. 

At bare minimum, protein should be the main ingredient, and it’s usually best if that protein comes from a good, recognizable (non-generic) meat source.

Most of the time, that’ll mean whole meats. But meat meal (basically meat concentrate) is okay, too.

Easy on the carbohydrates.

Dogs do need carbohydrates. But lots of big commercial companies tend to put in simple, low-quality carbohydrates, like sugar, corn and molasses.

We prefer foods that have lots of food, complex carbs in them, like sweet potatoes, brown rice, oats, and barley. And our favorite carb to see is sweet potatoes, since it’s a super-natural, grain-free way to get carbohydrates as well as a bunch of other nutrients.

High in good fats (except for large-breed puppies).

Unless you have a dog with pancreatitis, a sensitive stomach, or just a dog that needs to shed a few pounds, we like to see quite a bit of fat.

And we especially like to see good sources of omega fatty acids. In most dog foods, those will come from fish and flaxseed.

Having good fats with adequate omega fatty acids is essential for lots of stuff, but it mainly helps keep your puppy’s skin and coat healthy.

No weird stuff.

For whatever reason, some big commercial dog food companies put weird fillers in their food. Just take a look at the nutrition labels for some of them. It’s not uncommon at all to see a dog food in which corn is the first ingredient. How gross ins that?

We recommend foods that don’t have any corn, but we also like to avoid other stuff:

A robust nutritional profile.

Lastly, it’s important for a puppy to have all the essential vitamins and minerals to keep him healthy. Some foods include those as supplements.

We liked to recommend foods that include them in the form of fruits and vegetables.

Here's a great video guide on how to pick a good puppy food by Dr. Katie Nelson.

How Do I Know if a Particular Food is Safe for My Puppy?

You’re in luck! There’s a pretty easy way to tell.

And it’s a good thing, too, because if you had to check for everything yourself, you’d probably go insane. I know I would!

There’s actually a regulatory body set up to make sure a food’s safe for growing puppies: Association of American Feed Control Officials. They have an extremely detailed list of what has to be included for a food to meet their standards of safety for a puppy.

And it includes a lot of stuff—37 different nutrients, 10 amino acids, 12 minerals and 11 vitamins to be exact.

You don’t have to count that stuff yourself, though. Just look for this on your dog food’s label: “Product formulated to meet the nutritional levels established by the AAFCO dog food nutrient profiles for growth.”

You can also keep your eye out for other signs. Dog food companies will let you know their food is formulated for puppies by included words like “growth,” “growth and maintenance,” and “for all life stages.”

So just look for those phrases first, and then look for AAFCO’s seal of approval to double-check if a food is safe for a puppy.

How Often & How Much Should I feed My Puppy?

You should feed your puppy between three and four times per day. Puppies need smaller, more frequent meals (as opposed to the one or two meals a day an adult dog might eat), since their tiny little digestive systems are just starting to form and smaller meals are easier to digest.

You can move to two meals per day as early as six months old, but try to hold off a little longer if you have a larger breed, especially if that breed has a deep chest cavity (e.g. dobermans, labs), since they’re prone to gastric dilatation volvlulus.

Here's another great guide by Hearthstone Dogs:

Should I Keep an Eye on My Puppy’s Weight?

Yes! A chubby puppy is likely an unhealthy (or soon-to-be unhealthy) puppy.

There’s been a myth floating around forever that high-protein dog foods cause puppies to gain weight. That’s not true, of course, and it likely originated from people overfeeding their puppy foods that happened to be high in protein.

But it is something you want to watch out for. Obesity can lead to all kinds of problems, not the least of which are things like hip dysplasia and hypothyroidism.

When Should I Switch from Puppy Food to Adult Food?

There’s no magic age. Some dogs mature faster than others. For example, smaller dogs tend to mature more quickly than bigger dogs, so you can make the switch a bit sooner with a Maltese than you can with a lab.

Tiny dogs tend to reach maturity at around the one-year mark. Medium dogs reach maturity at around 12-16 months. And bigger dogs become adults at around two years.

So, if you’re unsure, the golden rule applies: ask your vet! Or just watch this awesome video from Expert Villiage.

Quick Note of Caution...

We wanted to point out that we’re assuming your puppy is older than 8 weeks old. For the first 6 to 8 weeks of a dog’s life, they should be with their mother, and they should nurse pretty much when they feel like it. Then, they should be weaned off their mom’s milk and onto solid food.

If you’re getting your puppy from a breeder, they’ll almost certainly do this for you (in fact, they will do this for you unless they’re a super shady operation).

Here Are some Quick Reviews of some of the Best Puppy Foods

Blue Buffalo Dry Food for Puppies, Chicken and Rice Recipe

Blue Buffalo is one of our go-to brands, and their puppy food is about as good as any. The ingredients are all very good, and it’s got lot of the stuff we’re looking for a good puppy food.

The main ingredient in their puppy recipe is deboned chicken, and the second ingredient is chicken meal, both of which contain glucosamine, which helps keep joints healthy. It also makes it a good choice for bigger puppy breeds that are prone to hip problems.

The carbohydrates here all come from good, complex sources, like oatmeal, brown rice, and barley.

There’s also a lot of great produce in this formula, including peas, potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, blueberries, cranberries, apples and a few others.

Overall, this is a great one, and we recommend it.

This is another strong contender. It’s a good recipe with plenty of protein and lots of good veggies.

The main ingredients here are chicken and chicken meal, and the carbohydrates come mostly from brown rice.

We really like that there are a few sources of omega fatty acids: flaxseed and fish oil. These should help your puppy’s coat come in nice and shiny.

Plus, there’s a big ol’ basket of produce. This food includes pomegranate, blueberries, cranberries, pumpkin, spinach and carrots. So it’s a pretty good nutritional profile.

We honestly didn’t have much experience with this brad before reviewing it for this article, but it performed pretty well, and it has a pretty good (if rather standard) list of ingredients.

What we really like about this particular dog food is the quality of the ingredients. The main ingredient, for example, is whole, farm-raised chicken.

However, there aren’t as many vegetables as we typically like to see, although there are some. And that means that there are lots of vitamin supplements.

It’s not as good as some of the others on the list, but it’s good if you need a puppy food in a pinch.

We included this puppy food on our list because—well, first, it’s just a good food—but also, it’s formulated specifically for large breed pups.

That more or less means that they were careful to include a lot of glucosamine to help keep a large puppy’s joints and bones healthy.

The other stuff is good, too, though. The main ingredient in this one is lamb, which is a nice, fatty meat. Most of the carbs here come from oatmeal, although there are a few other sources as well.

We also like that this particular formula contains plenty of fiber, which can help your puppy digest all that food he’s taking in!

We've got a couple articles you might like, by the way. Check out our article dog foods to help your dog lose weight. Or, if you have a large breed puppy, you can prepare for the crazy amount of food he'll eat in adulthood here. We've also got a nice post on grain-free doggy diets and a guide to dog bones.  Lastly, we wrote a good guide on the best dog food for French bulldogs.

More Food for Puppies

**Disclaimer: Our dog food reviews are based mostly on (1) our expertise and that of the experts with whom we consult and (2) the information provided by the manufacturers. We do test many dog foods (with our dog's help), but we can't test them all. As such, please remember the above recommendations are our opinions, and you should consult your vet before making changes to your dog's diet.

Images credits: Amazon.com , Chewy.com, Photo Stocks.