Chicken-Free Dog Foods

Chicken causes around 15% of reported food allergies in dogs, putting it third behind beef and dairy. It is also the most difficult of the three to eliminate, because chicken is the default protein in an enormous share of dog food — including many marketed as sensitive or limited-ingredient.

The usual trap is the small print. A food whose headline protein is salmon or lamb very often still contains chicken fat or chicken meal further down the list, and chicken-derived ingredients run to more than thirty names in our database. The foods below are filtered to exclude all of them, not just the word "chicken" on the front of the bag.

Worth knowing: chicken fat is highly rendered and contains very little protein, so some dogs allergic to chicken tolerate it. During a diagnostic trial, though, it is cleaner to exclude it entirely and reintroduce later if you want to.