Is Your Dogs Diet Bugging You? Try Insect Kibble!

Don’t be squeamish! Check out our new insect-based kibble options from Jiminy's and Open Farm at the Essex County Co-Op.

This spring, we’ve added two exciting new options for alternative protein dog kibble: Jiminy’s Cravin’ Cricket, and Open Farm’s Kind Earth Insect Recipe. These foods use cricket, mealworm, and soldier fly larvae as the primary protein sources in their recipes.

No matter how you might feel about eating bugs yourself, studies show that insect protein is healthy and beneficial for dogs, supports environmental farming practices, and is apparently pretty delicious, too.

Read on for more information about insect protein dog food, and why you should consider it a healthy, sustainable alternative to conventional dog food.

Nutritious

Insects are naturally low in fat but high in protein, making it a great choice for your dog's health. The most important thing to consider when choosing a type of protein for your dog is whether it’s a complete protein. This means it contains all the amino acids needed to maintain a healthy balance in your dog’s diet. Just like beef and chicken, crickets and grubs are complete proteins.

It’s highly digestible, scoring above 80 percent as per AAFCO requirements, and supports a healthy gut biome, boosting intestinal bacteria activity and health. Insect protein contains all the minerals essential to a dog’s diet, a rarity when looking at other alternative meat sources for dogs.

Delicious

Your mileage may vary on this one, but the fact remains that animals (and humans!) have been eating insects since pretty much the dawn of history. Insects remain a vital food source for most wild animals, including obligate carnivores like wolves, wild dogs, and foxes. So, it makes sense that companies would turn to insects as a protein option for our domestic friends.

According to Jiminy and Open Farm’s websites, reviews have been spectacular from pet owners trying insect protein for the first time. You can visit their websites for some promising feedback. Even if your dog is notoriously picky, it’s worth a try. You never know if crickets or mealworms are the magic ingredient to make your dog excited for their meal.

As for what they taste like? Based on some human anecdotes we’ve seen, they seem to have a mild shellfish-like flavor, nothing super distinct. Seems like cricket and grub flour are a great addition to many foods with other, more standout flavors.

Food Sensitivities

a 2018 study showed that insect based proteins are an effective alternative for dogs with many food allergies or intolerances.

If your dog has skin or gut issues and you aren’t sure what they're allergic to, insect protein can be a great way to eliminate common allergens from their diet or environment to help improve their symptoms.

Crickets are not a known allergen for dogs, so it's very rare for animals or humans to have an adverse response to them. The one exception is if you’re extremely allergic to shellfish, in which case most arthropods (anything with an exoskeleton) may cause an allergic response.

Sustainable

While the word "farm" might make you think of cows, pigs, and chickens more than crickets, insects are becoming a part of agriculture now more than ever. Insect farming is at the forefront of environmentally conscious agriculture, and for many good reasons.

When you think about how many resources large animals like cows, pigs, even chickens use up throughout their lifetime, the environmental impact adds up quickly. Crickets and mealworms can be raised in an enclosed barn, a tiny fraction of the space a pasture would take up; saving valuable farmland.

What’s more, they can be raised on vegetable scraps and food industry by-products like wheat and corn scraps, and need much less water than mammals or poultry. They use less resources, produce less waste, and help reduce farm by-products! They really earn their keep.

Humane

You're probably familiar with free-range, ethical farming when choosing beef or poultry to eat. This method of farming tries to ensure a better quality of life for livestock before they're processed for food, and comes at a higher ecological cost (and often a higher price point, too). Ethically-farmed animals require more space and better living conditions, a standard which is much easier to meet when farming insects.

Crickets and mealworms are much better suited to living in a dense enclosure with other bugs. No need to “free-range” an animal that is biologically suited to living in a crowded colony. The conditions they thrive in would obviously not be as comfortable for animals with higher levels of perception and sociability. Think about the amount of space that a cow or a chicken needs to itself in order to be humanely raised. You could raise exponentially more crickets in an equivalent space, yielding more protein than larger animals would.

They also reach maturation in much less time than it takes for other animals to grow to full-size, meaning they live out more of their lives before they become food. A cricket's lifespan is only a few months long, as opposed to months of raising poultry to maturity, or years of raising cattle.

Insect Protein at the Co-Op

If you’d like to try out our options of insect protein dog food, you can find them on the right-hand wall of our Pet Barn area in the Co-Op building, or on our online store. Jiminy’s Cravin’ Cricket has many resources on their website if you’d like to learn more, and Open Farm’s Kind Earth brand has some useful information as well about the insect protein they include in their food line.