Kinetic Dog Food

Brief Overview

Kinetic makes performance foods for dogs. The company notes on their web site, “Kinetic is a line of performance dog food products specifically formulated for high energy working and sporting dogs.” The foods are generally nutrient-dense, high calorie, and high in protein, making them suitable for very active dogs that use a lot of energy . However, Kinetic suggests that their 26K formula food can be fed to moderately active companion dogs as long as they are not overfed. Kinetic was originally developed by 3 Amigos Nutrition Group, a limited liability company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, that develops and markets animal health and nutrition products. 3 Amigos reached agreement with Hubbard Feeds in 2014 to distribute Kinetic. Kinetic currently has four dry dog foods. The foods are made without corn, wheat, or soy and only use natural preservatives.

You can read more about the origin of Kinetic and one of its founders here. The company has ties to Kent Feeds and their Native brand of dog food. The article provides a good look at the Kinetic’s thoughts on nutrition.

Who Manufactures Kinetic Dog Food?

Kinetic is made by Hubbard Feeds. Hubbard Feeds makes an extensive range of animal feeds – some of them very well-known in agricultural circles. They produce feeds for virtually every kind of farm animal, as well as cats, dogs, game birds, and other animals. Their corporate office is in Mankato, Minnesota but they have plants located throughout the upper Midwest and in a few other states. The company has already upgraded to meet the requirements of the Food Safety Modernization Act.

Kinetic Dog Food Recalls

We did not find any recalls related to Kinetic in the FDA database or online.

Kinetic Dog Food Coupons

Check Kinetic’s Facebook page for any discounts and information about their newsletter.

Kinetic Dog Food Overview

Kinetic’s foods were primarily developed for working and sporting dogs that expend a lot of energy. As explained in the article that interviews John Howard, one of Kinetic’s founders, many times bird dogs should only be fed once a day when they are doing hard work. Food needs to be packed with nutrients and energy. The company also uses a very high quality vitamin and trace mineral package in their foods. The company does not follow the popular trend toward using pet food ingredients that are supposed to be good for people. Instead, they use ingredients that have proven to be scientifically healthy for dogs. Kinetic sticks with core principles of canine nutrition. If you like cage-free, organic, and kale, you are probably not going to like Kinetic. However, if you have a dog that uses lots of energy and needs a good performance food with good quality nutrition based on science, then you might be interested in Kinetic.

From the article:

To elaborate on this further, Howard explains,

“We basically ignored the give-people-food-to-dogs trend and stuck to core nutrition principles. This is why our formulas contain multiple animal protein sources, plenty of digestive fibers, and good fat sources. Of those, the protein sources are extremely important to understand, especially when you start dealing with meat by-products. By-products get a bad reputation because we don’t want them in our food, but a lot of by-products are highly digestible and contain essential amino acids. Wild dogs or wolves don’t eat deer backstraps and leave the intestines for the crows, they eat it all and they start in the guts first because it’s what they need. Our dogs need a wider variety of animal proteins than we do, which is why we have put so much into our formulas.”

Kinetic’s four kibbles include Kinetic Active 26K Formula which has 26 percent crude protein, 16 percent crude fat, 3 percent crude fiber, and 10 percent moisture. It has 444 kcals/cup. This is an all life stage food. The first five ingredients in the food are: Chicken Meal, Chicken By-Product Meal (natural source of glucosamine), Brewers Rice, Ground Sorghum, and Brown Rice. According to Kinetic, this formula is also suitable for adult dogs that tend to maintain weight under normal conditions and medium or large breed puppies on fixed feeding programs.

They also have Kinetic Puppy 28K Formula. This puppy formula is intended to support healthy and controlled growth for medium or large breed puppies. It has elevated levels of DHA for healthy heart, and brain development. This formula is also suitable for pregnant or lactating females. The food has 28 percent crude protein, 15 percent crude fat, 3 percent crude fiber, and 10 percent moisture. It has 435 kcals/cup. This is also an all life stage formula. The first five ingredients in the food are: Chicken Meal, Chicken By-Product Meal (natural source of glucosamine), Brewers Rice, Ground Sorghum, and Chicken Fat (mixed tocopherol preservative).

Kinetic also makes Kinetic Power 30K Formula. This food is a nutrient dense performance dog formula. It’s made for dogs with frequent high activity levels that include periods of intense activity in 1-2 hour increments. Kinetic also says the formula is suitable for adult dogs that have difficulty maintaining weight under normal conditions and small or medium breed puppies on fixed feeding programs. The food has 30 percent crude protein, 20 percent crude fat, 3 percent crude fiber, and 10 percent moisture. The first five ingredients in the food are: Chicken Meal, Chicken By-Product Meal (natural source of glucosamine), Chicken Fat (mixed tocopherol preservative), Brewers Rice, and Ground Sorghum. The food has 462 kcals/cup. This is also an all life stage food.

Finally, Kinetic makes Kinetic Ultra 32K Formula. This food is another nutrient dense performance dog food that is designed for dogs with frequent high activity levels that include long periods of intense activity in 3-4 hour increments. The food is also considered suitable for adult dogs that frequently struggle to maintain weight even under normal conditions and small or medium breed puppies on fixed feeding programs. (Small breed puppies burn more calories than their larger counterparts.) This food has 32 percent crude protein, 24 percent crude fat, 3 percent crude fiber, and 10 percent moisture. It has 477 kcals/cup. The first five ingredients in the food are: Chicken Meal, Chicken By-Product Meal (natural source of glucosamine), Chicken Fat (mixed tocopherol preservative), Brewers Rice, and Ground Sorghum. This food is also an all life stage formula.

If you enjoy nice, logical dog foods, you will love Kinetic’s foods. As Kinetic points out on their site, all of the foods have the same ingredients which makes switching among the formulas very easy. You don’t have to worry about upsetting your dog’s stomach if you want to change from the puppy formula to one of the adult formulas; or if your hunting dog is ready to change to the lower calorie 26K during the off-season.

Kinetic also notes in the FAQ section (we love companies that take the trouble to explain things in these sections) that they use prebiotics in their foods but not probiotics because active culture probiotics do not generally survive the manufacturing process. We think this is probably true with a lot of dog foods that use them. They also answer a question about chicken by-product meal:

Why did you put chicken by-product meal in Kinetic? Aren’t by-products bad?

Chicken by-product meal is one of four animal protein sources we put in Kinetic. The reason we put it in is, quite simply, we tested formulas both with and without chicken by-product meal and dogs did better on the formulas that included chicken by-product meal. While some by-products can be poor quality, our chicken by-product meal is an excellent source of protein for dogs and a natural source of glucosamine.

Kinetic also notes somewhere on their site that their foods have omega-6 and omega-3 in their foods in a 4 to 1 ratio. This is an excellent ratio for these fatty acids – much better than you usually find in most dog foods today. It’s not unusual to see lots of omega-6 and a small amount of omega-3, but a healthy ratio of the fatty acids is important for your dog’s good health.

We could go on but we’ll save some comments for the individual review below. Overall it looks like Kinetic’s foods are exactly as advertised: nutrient-dense performance dog foods. They appear to have good quality ingredients as long as you are not expecting ingredients for humans in your dog’s food. If you have an active working or sporting dog, or a moderately active house dog (and you don’t overfeed him), you may like these foods.

Kinetic Active 26K Formula Dog Food Review

We’ve chosen Kinetic Active 26K Formula for our review since it can be fed to working dogs or moderately active pets. We thought that more people might be interested in the review.

According to Kinetic the food is suitable for dogs that will have high activity levels that include periods of intense activity in 1-2 hour increments. It’s also a good choice for adult dogs who maintain their regular weight under normal conditions. And, Kinetic says that it can be fed to medium or large breed puppies. The food has 26 percent crude protein and 16 percent crude fat which does place the food in the same realm as many large breed puppy foods. However, calcium and phosphorus information is not provided on the web site so we can’t say with certainty that the food is a good choice for large breed puppies. This is true for Kinetic’s other foods which state that they can be fed to puppies. They do not provide calcium and phosphorus information so it makes it harder for owners/breeders to evaluate them. All of the Kinetic foods are AAFCO-approved for all life stages and they may be perfectly fine for puppies, but it would be good to see the calcium and phosphorus info.

The first five ingredients in this food are: Chicken Meal, Chicken By-Product Meal (natural source of glucosamine), Brewers Rice, Ground Sorghum, and Brown Rice. When evaluating this food it’s important to keep in mind that it’s designed for working and sporting dogs. It’s a performance dog food. There are plenty of holistic dog foods if you prefer them. That doesn’t make this a “bad” food. Kinetic simply uses a different nutritional model for feeding dogs – one that works for lots of healthy, active dogs, by the way. There are a number of brands that use this approach to formulating dog food with good results.

First, Kinetic uses no corn, no wheat, and no soy. And they only use natural preservatives.

The first ingredient is chicken meal which is a good meat protein for dogs. Chicken is a good source of vitamin B6 and niacin, as well as phosphorus. Chicken meal has had most of the moisture removed so it’s a concentrated form of chicken protein. As explained above, Kinetic uses chicken by-product meal because they found that dogs did better when they included it in their formulas. According to the company, the chicken by-product meal they use is a good source of protein and a natural source of glucosamine, though we agree that a lot depends on the source of the chicken by-products. This could be a cause of concern for some dog lovers but we are okay with it as long as there are no complaints about the quality of the food. That means that the first two ingredients in the food are meat proteins.

The third ingredient in the food is brewers rice. On the bright side, brewers rice is highly digestible and a gluten-free source of carbohydrates. Technically, brewers rice is the small milled fragments of rice kernels that have been separated from the larger kernels of milled rice (AAFCO). They are small and they don’t look good so they get rejected from the rice that goes into our human food supply. According to Royal Canin, however, it’s the same rice and the same nutrition, just less attractive. White rice is 90 percent carbs, 8 percent protein, and 2 percent fat so brewers rice would be somewhere in the same ballpark. We won’t speculate about its vitamins and minerals, however.

The fourth ingredient in the food is ground sorghum. If you are unfamiliar with sorghum, it’s a gluten-free grain. It’s also called milo. It’s one of the world’s most important crops. Sorghum grain is often used as a livestock feed in some places and sorghum is a wheat-substitute in some wheat-free recipes. Nutritionally, sorghum is low in protein with just 3 percent, and it has 8 percent fat, and 89 percent carbs. For a performance dog, this is energy that is easy to access. Sorghum is high in omega-6, iron, phosphorus, several B vitamins, and dietary fiber.

The fifth ingredient in the food is brown rice. Brown rice is said to be a little harder to digest than white rice (or brewers rice) but it retains more of the vitamins and minerals in rice because it is not milled as much as white rice is. The outer hull is removed but it keeps the bran layer and the germ. Brown rice 8 percent protein, 7 percent fat, and 85 percent carbohydrates. It’s a very good source of manganese.

The food has chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols) as a source of fat. This is a good named source of fat in dog food.

Other ingredients of interest in the food include: Menhaden fish meal, dried egg product – a good source of animal protein with nutrients that are easy for dogs to digest and absorb. Dried beet pulp which is a good prebiotic insoluble fiber that draws moisture to the gut to the colon. Dried chicory root which is another good prebiotic. Chicory root is a source of inulin.

The food also contains L-Lysine Hydrochloride and L-Carnitine. L-Lysine Hydrochloride is an essential amino acid found in animal proteins. It is commonly added to animal feeds though not always added to dog foods. It has some possible health benefits such as increasing muscle mass, among other things. L-Carnitine is an amino acid that is involved in energy metabolism. It is sometimes used to help with endurance or performance and to help dogs maintain lean muscle mass.

The food also contains minerals in the form of amino acid chelates. Kinetic says that they use a very expensive proprietary formula for their chelated minerals and electrolytes. This is not surprising for a company that makes performance dog foods. These minerals would need to be easily and thoroughly absorbed by active, hard-working dogs.

Kinetic Active 26K Formula Calorie Content – Metabolizable Energy (calculated):  3,910 kCals per kg, 444 kCals per cup

Nutrition Statement
Kinetic performance dog food is formulated to meet the nutritional levels established by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) Dog Food Nutrient Profiles for all life stages.

GUARANTEED ANALYSIS 

The dry matter basis (DMB) figures for this food are: 28.9 percent protein; 17.8 percent fat; 3.33 percent fiber; and 42.2 percent carbohydrates.

This food has moderately high protein and above average fat compared to many super premium dog foods. The fiber content is average for a kibble; and the carb percentage slightly above average compared to many premium dog foods.

Where can you buy Kinetic Dog Food?

You can purchase Kinetic dog foods on Chewy.com or other online pet food retailers. You can also check the Kinetic site to use their store locator. Feed dealers that sell Hubbard feeds should also carry Kinetic dog foods.

Final Thoughts

Kinetic has only recently gone into national distribution and we wish them well. We think their foods – all four of them at this point – look good. If you are looking for human ingredients in your dog’s food, this isn’t the food for you. However, if you are interested in good nutrition for a very active, hard-working dog, we think these foods look good. It’s obvious that a lot of thought has gone into the formulations. The foods have high protein and a balance of fat and carbs to provide energy for dogs while they work. We really like some of the small touches like the omega 6 and 3 ratios. These foods are high in calories compared to many dog foods so if you decide to buy one and feed it to a dog that isn’t very active, please be careful about how much you feed.

Below is a list of Products reviewed in this article

1. Kinetic Active 26K Formula Dog Food