When it comes to looking after your Great Dane, one of the most important choices you need to make is what to feed your pet. Ensuring they get a well-balanced and nutritious diet is central to them living a long, healthy, and happy life.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of good and premium quality dog foods available, and it is relatively easy to ensure that your dog gets all the nutrients they require. The difficulty, though, is deciding on which dog food, out of all the available brands and products, is best for your dog.
We’ve done the hard work and prepared a list of reviews of six of the best dog foods for Great Danes and put together a comprehensive buyer’s guide to help you narrow down your choices.
A Quick Comparison of Our Favorites (Updated in 2022)
| Rating | Image | Product | Details | |
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Best Overall
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Royal Canin Great Dane Adult Dry Dog Food |
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Best Value
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Gentle Giants Canine Nutrition Chicken Dry Dog Food |
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Premium Choice
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Wellness Complete Health Just for Puppy Canned Dog Food |
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Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream Grain-Free Canned Dog Food |
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Eukanuba Large Breed Adult Dry Dog Food |
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The 6 Best Dog Foods for Great Danes
1. Royal Canin Great Dane Adult Dog Food — Best Overall
Royal Canin is the gold standard when it comes to dog foods. It has an outstanding reputation and provides a wide variety of dog foods that are specifically formulated for the needs of individual dog breeds. So, when it comes to finding the best dog food for your Great Dane, you must try Great Dane Adult Dry Dog Food.
This product has been formulated to provide a complete and balanced diet for Great Danes. Even the size and shape of the kibble has been designed with the needs of such a large dog in mind.
- Breed-specific product
- Provides a complete balanced diet
- High-quality, premium product
- Expensive
2. Gentle Giants Canine Nutrition Dry Dog Food — Best Value
Available in a range of bag sizes and reasonably priced, this quality large breed dog food is easily the best dog food for Great Danes for the money.
We particularly like the simple range of ingredients, the inclusion of both brown rice and oats, and the variety of fruits and vegetables along with the chicken, which all add up to ensure that your Great Dane has all the energy they need to go about their active lifestyle.
- Value for money
- Available in a variety of packet sizes
- Good quality product
- Balanced nutritional product
- Non-breed specific
3. Wellness Complete Health Puppy Canned Dog Food — Best for Puppies
When it comes to raising a Great Dane puppy, you need to ensure that your dog food can provide a good mix of meats, fruits, and vegetables in a formula that is both easy to digest and tastes great. That’s where wellness Just For Puppy canned dog food comes into its own.
A well-known and highly regarded brand, Wellness has developed a puppy food that will entice even the fussiest of little eaters, while also ensuring that your new Great Dane puppy receives all the nutrients they require to grow into a healthy and highly active adult dog.
- Great taste
- Excellent mix of ingredients
- Highly nutritional
- Price
- Not specific to Great Danes
4. Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream Grain-Free Dog Food
If your Great Dane has a sensitivity to foods containing grain, you should consider this grain-free dog food from Taste of the Wild. It has been specifically formulated to provide dogs with a well balanced and nutritional diet without containing any grains.
Importantly for grain-free dog foods, this product includes vegetables that are high in carbohydrates, such as potato and sweet potato. This ensures that your Great Dane will still receive the benefit of a high-energy dog food without having any grains in their diet.
The only real downside to this product is that because it is canned food, it will become quite expensive, as an adult Great Dane will need many cans each month.
- Grain-free
- Well balanced and nutritious
- Expensive
- Non-breed specific
5. Eukanuba Large Breed Adult Dry Dog Food
Eukanuba, like Royal Canin, is generally considered to be a premium dog food brand. They have an extensive range of products available, and their Large Breed Adult Dry Dog Food is exceeding popular and well regarded.
This product is chicken-based but contains a wide variety of grains and vegetables and has been specifically formulated with the needs of large active dogs like the Great Dane in mind. It is available in two different sizes, which is handy because it is a little more expensive than many other products, and this will allow you to spread the cost over a longer period rather than having to buy a 33-pound bag.
- Provides a complete, well-balanced diet
- High-quality, premium product
- Available in two sizes
- Formulated for large breeds
- Price
- Not specific to Great Danes
6. Dr Gary’s Best Breed Holistic Dry Dog Food
Dr Gary’s Holistic Large Breed Dog food is another premium product that has been specifically formulated with the needs of large energetic dogs in mind. It contains a range of nutritious ingredients and will provide your Great Dane with all the nutrients they need.
This dog food is quite expensive; in fact, it is the most expensive on our list, but we particularly like that it has been formulated to be highly digestible and doesn’t contain any wheat, corn, or soy. This product may be a good choice for owners of fussy dogs or dogs that suffer from digestion problems.
- High-quality, premium product
- Formulated for large breeds
- Suitable for dogs with sensitive stomachs
- Expensive
- Non-breed specific
Buyer’s Guide: Choosing the Best Food for Great Danes
When it comes to finding the best dog food for your Great Dane, there is no shortage of choice. With hundreds of different brands and thousands of different products available, it can be difficult to work out which dog food is best for your pet and which food is best left sitting on the shelf at the store.
As a responsible dog owner, it is still a good idea to know how to make this choice. Firstly, we know that everybody has a budget. Some premium dog foods are considerably more expensive than others, so financial considerations may limit your options. Figurately, there are good, quality dog foods available at most price points.
When it comes to choosing a top-quality Great Dane dog food, here are the things you need to consider.
Dogs are not strict carnivores
Unlike cats, domestic dogs don’t do so well on a strict meat-only diet. Sure, meat is a large part of their diet, but to be at their best, they also need a range of nutrients in their diet that are most easily derived from grains, fruits, and vegetables.
So, when you see that particular dog foods contain these non-meat foods, you should keep in mind that these are not simply fillers, but they can be a valuable source of minerals, essential vitamins, and fiber.
Read the Label
All commercially manufactured dog foods in the United States are required by law to contain certain information, including the product name, the quantity by weight, a list of ingredients, guaranteed analysis, nutritional adequacy statement, and feeding directions.
The label is the best tool you have available to use when choosing a dog food, but they can be hard to understand. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has a comprehensive guide to understanding pet food labels on their website, but here’s a quick guide to deciphering a pet food label.
Product name
When it comes to dog food, there is more to a product name than clever marketing. In the United States, the Association of American Feed Control Officials has four labeling rules.
- The 95% Rule means that any dog food that calls itself a specific product, e.g., “Beef for Dogs” or “Chicken Dog Food,” must contain at least 95% of the product, i.e., beef or chicken, respectively.
- The 25% Rule requires any product that uses a specific product in its name with a qualifying term, e.g., “Beef Dinner” or “Chicken palter,” must contain at least 25% of the product, i.e., beef or chicken, respectively.
- The With Rule requires any product that uses a specific product in its name and labels it like, “Dog Food with Beef,” needs to contain at least 3% of that named product.
- The Flavor Rule requires a dog food that lists a product as having a certain flavor, e.g., “Chicken Flavored Dog Food,” needs only to contain trace amounts of the product, sufficient to such a level that they can be detected if the product is tested.
Quantity by Weight
The quantity by weight refers to how much dog food is in the packaging. It needs to be measured and displayed by weight, and it is useful comparing the process of different brands, as this allows you to do a direct cost-per-ounce or cost-per-pound comparison.
Ingredients
All the ingredients contained in a dog food must be listed on the packaging and displayed by order or total weight. What this means in practice is that the heaviest ingredients will be listed first, and some of the more important and nutritious ingredients, which weigh less, will be listed further down. Thus, it is important to read the whole list, not just the first few ingredients.
Guaranteed Analysis
This requirement can be quite technical and a little difficult to understand. Still, it simply means that all dog foods must contain factual information about the percentage of protein, fat, fiber, and water contained in the product. Many products will also have information such as the minimum amount of other nutrients, like calcium, magnesium, or sodium, contained in the product; however, they don’t need to do this.
Nutritional Adequacy Statement
This requirement means that products that make claims like, “a complete and balanced diet” or “100% nutritious,” must have had their products tested, and these tests must have shown the statement to be correct. These statements show that the products meet the government’s standards and do contain the proper amount and ratio of essential ingredients to meet their claims.
Feeding Directions
This requirement means that you are given the correct information about how much you need to feed your dog, and ensures that pet food companies can’t simply tell you to feed your dog more than what’s necessary, in order to sell more product. Whenever you are looking to change brands of food, it is important to read and follow the feeding directions, as different foods have different nutritional values, and you may need to change the amount of food that you need to give your dog based on these differences.
Conclusion
ConclusionIn developed countries like the United States, it is rare to see nutritional diseases in dogs, particularly those that are fed high-quality commercial dog food. Most nutritional problems occur in dogs that are fed imbalanced homemade diets.
There is no shortage of different dog foods that you can buy for your Great Dane, and many of them will be perfectly fine. However, when it comes to choosing the best dog food for your pet, it pays to do your homework. Hopefully, our reviews and buyers guide has provided you with some help in this regard.
To recap, our top choices for the best dog food for Great Danes are Royal Canin Great Dane Adult Dry Dog Food, because it has an outstanding reputation and provides a wide variety of dog foods that are specifically formulated for the needs of Great Danes; Gentle Giants Canine Nutrition Dry Dog Food, for being the best dog food for Great Danes for the money; and Wellness Complete Health Puppy Canned Dog Food, because it’s the best food for Great Dane puppies.
Featured Image Credit: Susan Schmitz, Shutterstock
Contents
- A Quick Comparison of Our Favorites (Updated in 2022)
- The 6 Best Dog Foods for Great Danes
- 1. Royal Canin Great Dane Adult Dog Food — Best Overall
- 2. Gentle Giants Canine Nutrition Dry Dog Food — Best Value
- 3. Wellness Complete Health Puppy Canned Dog Food — Best for Puppies
- 4. Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream Grain-Free Dog Food
- 5. Eukanuba Large Breed Adult Dry Dog Food
- 6. Dr Gary’s Best Breed Holistic Dry Dog Food
- Buyer’s Guide: Choosing the Best Food for Great Danes
- Conclusion
