Grains are the small hard seeds, especially of grasses. Rice is a grass: http://www.gramene.org/species/oryza/rice_taxonomy.html My own concerns with Wild Buffalo are that advertising on tv is extremely costly so the difference in expenditures has to be made up somewhere. In the past (currently?) that was done by buying low cost ingredients from Mainland China which is why it was one of the companies included in the Melamine recall. <http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/petfoodrecall/brand_list.cfm?brand=Blue%20Buffalo%20(RICE%20GLUTEN)&pet=Dog> and then it originally recalled the food types one at a time -- like pulling teeth. Example of the one-at-a-time compliance: http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ArchiveRecalls/2007/ucm112171.htm I do not know how much of the content is from where now, but my second concern also involves a recall. Blue Buffalo fought tooth and nail when vets on VIN found out that animals were getting kidney problems on their foods from hypercalcemia due to too much Vitamin D3 (which can cause calcium deposits on organs like the kidneys and heart that can be fatal if not caught in time) which resolved in the animals caught early enough when the Blue Mountain foods were no longer given. It turned out that besides adding D3 they also were adding a second ingredient that bodies alter into D3 and that can causing the problem. Ferrets, BTW, share this vulnerability with dogs. (Ferrets are more prone to easily getting too much D3 than people and less prone to getting too much A than people. It makes sense if you think about it since their ancestors were not diurnal but did regularly wind up eating livers.) Blue Buffalo just kept denying that its foods were involved until the nutrition branch of a vet school did an analysis of the foods. Then it did not originally pull all of its involved foods though it finally did under public pressure. Notice that in the original statement they actually even said that high levels of D3 are not known to cause any serious health problems in dogs, when actually that is well documented to cause kidney failure if it goes on long enough: http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-recall/blue-buffalo-dog-food-recall/ So, each will make up his or her own mind, but we have chosen to avoid that brand mostly because the ingredient source did not match the advertised claims (high quality claim doesn't really mesh with a melamine laced Mainland Chinese ingredient created to falsely up nitrogen content and look like there is more protein than there really is) and because the company repeatedly fought tooth and nail to not recall foods that needed to be recalled and then then complied only partially and grudgingly until pressed when one looks at their recall timings and statements. Personally, those corporate choices combined w expensive tv advertising remind me far more of the highly profitable grocery store brands, not of high grade brands. The opinions for some based upon the history will be the same as ours but of others will be different. These just are the bases for our own choice. Sukie (not a vet) Ferrets make the world a game. Recommended ferret health links: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/ http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ http://www.miamiferret.org/ http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/ all ferret topics: http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html "All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow." (2010, Steve Crandall) A nation is as free as the least within it. [Posted in FML 7772]