Katherine Heigl is getting into the pet food game. She’s launched a new dog food called Badlands Ranch, named after her family’s ranch in Utah. But it isn’t Fido’s usual dog food, Katherine worked with an animal nutritionist on finding the best gut-health option for your pups. And they turned to the latest in human food trends to do so, including herbal supplements and adaptogens to help Fido on his path to wellness. Now the public has a selection of air-dried food for $60 a bag and single ingredient treats for $20. However, every bag you buy helps animals in need.
When it comes to doggie dinnertime, Katherine Heigl maintains that different dogs require different nutrients. And she should know: she has several mouths to feed and needs to consider.
“I’m actually fostering two Rottweiler puppies right now. So I have nine at the house,” she tells PEOPLE of her growing pet brood. Heigl’s is a diverse pack, from her large shepherd mixes who need nutritional boosts for poor hips to her smaller, older dogs who can only eat wet food due to missing teeth.
In an effort to meet her dogs’ various needs, the Firefly Lane star, 43, expended her time, energy and money hoping to meet her pets’ various health demands. She tried cooking their food herself and buying “human-grade” fancy food plans. But Heigl needed a catch-all solution that was convenient without sacrificing “as much healthy healing nutrition as possible,” she says.
Taking matters into her own hands, the actress created Badlands Ranch, a premium dog food brand named after her family ranch in Utah. In designing the air-dried food and single-ingredient treats, she approached canine health with the same holistic perspective from which she views her own wellness.
Heigl, who shares three children with husband Josh Kelley, says that over the years, she’s become “more and more aware of gut healing and nutrition, and the connection between our guts and our brains … and I thought, ‘Well, why is it different? How different is it for our animals?’ ”
Partnering with an animal nutritionist, Heigl was able to safely add wholesome ingredients to her Badlands Ranch food. The formula includes chia seeds and flax seeds for gut health, and it even uses some of the more popular, “trendy” herbal supplements, like lion’s mane mushrooms, which aid the brain and the immune system, she shares.
“People are adding it to their coffee, adding it to their smoothies,” she explains of the plant-based adaptogens included in the food. “We can give the dog some of that added help as well.”
Heigl emphasizes the importance of following her brand’s feeding instructions in order to get the most practical, nourishing benefits.
“It’s just really rich food and very full of protein. So you don’t want to overfeed it because you don’t need to,” she explains. “And that’s the beauty of it, too. A bag should last you a good bit.”
FYI, this is not an affiliate post, we have nothing to do with Badlands, it’s just an excuse to talk about dogs. I read a few reviews of Badlands foods and they were good. The downside is the cost. You can pay (a lot) less if you create a Badlands account, which looks free of charge, but I don’t know all it entails. However, as I mentioned above, any money spent at Badlands goes to Katharine’s charity, the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation, named after her late brother. They pull dogs out of kill shelters and use funds to stop animal overpopulations in areas. So you can feel doubly good about the purchase. And I love the poetry of making a better dog food to sustain the foundation that saves dogs lives.
As for the ingredients, adaptogens are very popular right now. Katy Perry loves dropping that word when talking about her new beverages. And Katherine’s correct, I use them in my smoothies and even gave them in gift packs to friends this year. Part of me thinks sure, why not let a pet eat them? Animals roam around outside and eat God knows what. But I go back to comments in the article about the importance of following the brand’s feeding instructions. Katherine said the reason is because it’s “very rich food,” but I know the herbal company I bought from suggested I take an online dosing class to dose properly. These aren’t drugs per se, but some adaptogens are considered natural alternatives so if you’re thinking about giving Fido lions man mushrooms, yes, please read all the instructions. And maybe a quick chat with your vet isn’t a bad idea. I’m sure nothing bad will happen, but if they are issuing warnings in the promo, that’s advice you want to follow. However, if you have the money for holistic dog food, this sounds like a great way to spend it.
Photo credit: Instagram
It’s actually refreshing that a famous person decided to start a business not related to dermathology, parfums or clothes… That’s all I have to say.
She looks great and I’m for the love of animals and all the fostering she is doing. But man, that food is expensive. I do buy hard dog food but I just make soft food – it’s easy and inexpensive (I freeze in muffin tins and defrost a couple a day) and I run the recipes by the vet.
I appreciate her thoughtful approach but like with human alternative medicine/nutrition I am a bit skeptical of one-size-fits-all solutions. It is hard to imagine a single source being right for the wide range of dogs she has. That said, I am sure it’s far superior to so much junk that is out there. Cleaning up our diets, humans and pets, is a good thing.
Too expensive. My kids have 3 rescues between them and all have sensitive stomachs. They’ve found already diets that help after trial and error periods. Would have been nice to start this but they can’t afford that kind of money.
So … plant extracts. Adaptogens are plant extracts. Which means this is nothing new, it’s in fact a very very old thing. I can’t with these food trends anymore.
But good for her, I hear there’s usually quite a bit of crap in a lot of pet food.
so, she worked with an animal nutritionist but did that animal nutritionist ensure there was legit clinical data on some long term use of these adaptogens and are they manufactured at a facility that complies with Good Manufacturing Practices so that there is consistency between the batches of adaptogens added to the food and quality? The fact they they are plant extracts & therefor natural doesn’t mean they’re good food dogs in the long run. I’ll remind people of the issues with IDCM in dogs that were initially attributed to a grain-free diet but, since dogs don’t need grain in their diet, were more likely to be due to chick peas & lentils as proteins (also natural ingredients/plants) in some of the formulas when there was actually no research on dogs eating these on a regular basis.
I should also note that most people who cook for their dogs & cats use recipes they find by doing a web search and those recipes are unlikely to be nutritionally balanced for their pet. If you want to make sure that any home made foods you make for your healthy dog or cat, you should use a tool specifically created to ensure nutritional balance like balanceIT. If your dog or cat has health issues or other specific needs, you can create an account for your vet to provide details about you dog/cat for a specific nutritional profile so you can create recipes tailored to your dog/cat. It was a godsend dealing with trying to get my dog to eat when she was in renal failure
Just what we need ! Said no one.