Short version: dog treat ingredients are listed on the back of the bag in descending order by weight, so the first few items are most of what your dog is eating. If the list is long, vague, or leads with starches and sweeteners instead of meat, that tells you something. If it is one word, that tells you something too. Below is how to read any label in about a minute, followed by the actual ingredient list for everything we make, printed exactly as it appears on our bags.
How to read a dog treat ingredient list
Four things do most of the work when you are reading dog treat ingredients.
- Order matters. Ingredients are listed heaviest first. A treat that opens with a named meat is built differently than one that opens with flour.
- Named beats generic. "Beef" and "turkey tendon" name an animal. "Meat" and "poultry" do not.
- Length is a signal. A short list is easy to check. A longer one can still be fine, as long as every item on it has a reason the company can explain.
- Look for the preservative line. Most shelf stable treats have one. The question is what it is, and whether the bag tells you.
Plenty of bags go quiet on that last point. We would rather write ours out.
Thin Chips: one ingredient, and that is the whole list
Our Thin Chips are dehydrated meat and nothing else. The ingredient panel on each bag is one word:
| Thin Chip | Ingredients |
|---|---|
| Beef Thin Chips | Beef |
| Chicken Thin Chips | Chicken |
| Elk Thin Chips | Elk |
| Pork Thin Chips | Pork |
| Turkey Thin Chips | Turkey |
| Turkey Tendon Thin Chips | Turkey Tendon |
No binder, no coating, no preservative, no added salt. The meat is dried slowly at low heat until it is crisp, which is what makes it keep. That is also why the protein numbers on the panel run high: with the water gone, what is left is mostly the meat.
If your dog is on an elimination diet, or you are trying to work out which protein is causing a problem, a list this short is the practical reason to reach for it. You know exactly what you gave them.
Prime Chews: the full list, and what each part is doing
Our Prime Chews are a longer lasting chew built around a real jerky center, so the list is longer than one word. Here is the Beef Jerky Prime Chew panel in full:
Rice Flour, Potato Starch, Vegetable Glycerin, Gelatin, Sugar, Pea Protein Concentrate, Beef, Natural Liquid Smoke Flavor, Salt, Preservatives: Potassium Sorbate and Natural Tocopherols.
What those are doing:
- Rice flour and potato starch form the body of the chew. They are what give it the density a dog has to work at instead of swallowing in two bites.
- Vegetable glycerin holds moisture so the chew stays pliable rather than shattering.
- Gelatin binds the whole thing together.
- Sugar is on the list, in a small amount, and we would rather say so than bury it.
- Pea protein concentrate adds protein content.
- Beef is the jerky center, the part your dog is after.
- Natural liquid smoke flavor and salt are for taste.
- Potassium sorbate and natural tocopherols are the preservatives. Tocopherols are a form of vitamin E. Both are named on the bag rather than tucked behind the word "preserved."
The other five follow the same structure with a different center. Salmon adds salmon, chicken, and red beet color. Pork adds pork, chicken, and turkey. Venison swaps in venison. Peanut Butter swaps in peanut butter and drops the smoke flavor. Dental is built on chicken and turkey and adds sodium hexametaphosphate, chlorophyll, and peppermint, which is what makes it the dental one.
What is not on any of our labels
- No rawhide. Not in the Prime Chews, not anywhere else we make. We have never used it.
- No collagen. The Prime Chew gets its structure from the recipe above, not from a collagen sheet.
- No wheat, corn, or soy. That is what grain free means on our bags.
- No mystery meat. Every animal protein we use is named by species.
Where the treats are made
Both lines are made at our family plant in Lenoir, North Carolina, which is a narrower claim than packaged here or distributed from here. If the difference between those words is new to you, we wrote a whole piece on it: what "made in the USA" really means for dog treats.
So which one should you buy?
It depends on what the treat is for. A chew that occupies a dog for a while and a chip you hand over during training are answering different questions, and the ingredient list follows from that. We broke the decision down here: chew or chip, and how to pick the right treat.
Read the bag, then read ours
Flip over whatever is in your cupboard right now and read the first three ingredients. If they are not what you expected, that is useful to know. Ours sit on every product page before you buy, in type you can read.
Browse Prime Chews or browse Thin Chips and read the panel yourself.
