Puppy food? Diet

How important is it to actually feed puppy food? My current two eat Simpsons Premium grain free, and I plan on having the puppy on the same diet. However I'm not really impressed with the puppy variety food they have available ( a bit to grain heavy for my liking ) and I'm not interested in their other higher priced 80/20 range. So my question is, would it be ok to feed the pup the same grain free range they're on from the get go? Protein level is 25%.

l personally have never used a puppy formulated feed, nor do i put my oldies on senior feeds.

Well, I got Pepe the puppy version of Naturediet when he was a puppy, but I've had many dogs in the past who didn't get puppy food because either it wasn't available then or if it was I didn't know about it!

Witty is nearly fourteen, and I feed him the same as the others.

I am absolutely certain that if I'd fed Pepe the adult version instead of the puppy, it would have made no difference at all.

Thanks Vee and Janet. I don't feed either of my two a senior diet ( 11 years and 8 years ) and see no need to. But I wasn't sure how important it is for a pup to be fed a puppy formulated diet. I mean, is there a recommended level of protein a pup should be fed? I notice the puppy foods are usually higher in protein. Would 25% in the adult version be suitable?

Shar-Pei puppies should never be fed puppy food because they grow so quickly. Georgina at 9 weeks old was given "home cooked" the same as Chloe. She only gets grain free dried food when I'm in a hurry, which used to be Acana Grasslands until I switched to Farmina N&D (Nice and Delicious) which is identical in content but a lot less expensive as its imported from Italy not Canada like Acana.

I have fed all my hooligans from when they were 4 weeks old to 1 year on on puppy food, then from 1 to 3 on junior food now all my dogs except K9 are on adult food.
I fed the hooligans puppy food as its smaller pieces & have always brought complete food specially designed for small dogs.

i fed phoebe puppy food for about 3 months as they need so much more food as a puppy and puppy food seamed to be more expensive. i stopped when my vet told me he had never used puppy food he just fed a larger amount of normal untill they were fully grown then put them down to amount for their size. as a pup phoebe was on 1kg of food a day! nearly bankrupted me

There has been much debate on protein levels whether they can cause problems or not in larger breeds some claim it causes a too-rapid growth rate and that causes ‘Pano’ and other problems but to my knowledge there is no scientific evidence either way, a lot also depends on the quality of the protein,ie: if its made from either plant or meat sources, with a better quality protein there will be less waste than a poorer quality one which is harder for the dogs to digest

I use puppy food for all my dogs but that is simply because that is the only way to keep some weight on them. Destiny is a year old, Bailie is 4 and Leo will be 5 in september. I also mix it with raw. My rule is big breeds stay on puppy food till they are about 18 months and smaller untill they are a year old. And than I have always had to use performance food. I am no expert on dog food though and here we don´t have to much varity to choose from although it is getting better.

Thanks everyone. What I'm thinking of doing then, is having the pup start on the same food as my current two. I also mix in a little tinned meat to make things more interesting, so I'm thinking of maybe adding the puppy variety of that into pups diet, so he's getting at least some recommended puppy formulated food.

When I fed complete I did feed puppy food and the pups thrived.
Since feeding raw the pups had the same as the adults and they too thrived.
I always added stuff such as tuna, pilchards, yoghurt, raw egg etc to the puppy complete anyway so no doubt b*ggered up their careful calculations regarding protein levels. As long as you're happy and the pup thrives I wouldn't worry.

I would recommend puppy dry food for small breed puppies as its as small tiny pieces which are easier for small puppies to digest.