Novel Proteins, Explained: Kangaroo, Croc, Camel, and Goat

Crocodile is not a flavour

Somewhere in the last decade the treat aisle got strange. Crocodile. Camel. Goat. Things that look less like a snack and more like a dare.

There is a real reason for it. A lot of dogs have run out of ordinary options, and the animals nobody was feeding twenty years ago are the ones that still work.

Here is the part most brands skip, and it matters more than the species list: "novel" is a fact about your dog, not about the animal. A protein is novel if your dog has never eaten it. That is the whole definition. Crocodile is not inherently novel; it is novel to a dog that has never had crocodile, and completely ordinary to one that has been eating it for a year. 

Why is beef the villain and chicken the runner-up?

A critically appraised review by Mueller, Olivry and Prélaud pooled the reported offending allergens across 297 dogs with confirmed cutaneous adverse food reactions. Beef came first, then dairy, then chicken, then wheat, with lamb behind them. Soy, corn, egg, pork, fish and rice appeared far less often. 

Read that list again and notice what it is: the ingredient deck of the average supermarket dog food. 

Beef is not chemically more provocative than kangaroo. It sits at the top because it has been in more bowls, for more years, than anything else. Sensitisation requires exposure, and a protein your dog has never encountered cannot have sensitised your dog. 

You are not buying an exotic protein because exotic is better. You are buying it because it is unfamiliar, and unfamiliar is the only thing that helps. 

Does "different animal" always mean "different protein"? 

No, and this is where marketing gets ahead of the science. 

Proteins from related species can be similar enough that the immune system does not reliably tell them apart. Work published in Veterinary Dermatology notes cross-reactivity between evolutionarily close species, such as beef, lamb and cow's milk, and also found cross-reactive allergens between chicken and two distant fish species. 

So it is a hierarchy, not a rule. The further an animal sits from the thing your dog reacts to, the lower the theoretical risk. That is a reasonable way to choose, not a guarantee. 

The four, honestly

Kangaroo. A macropod marsupial, a very long way from cattle, sheep and poultry, and exceptionally lean; Food Standards Australia New Zealand measured kangaroo tail at 1.1% fat. Lean and distant is a rare combination, which is why it does the heavy lifting for so many dogs.

Crocodile. A reptile. No closer relative exists anywhere in a normal dog's diet, and it is lean.

Camel. Family Camelidae, separate from the cattle and sheep family, the deer family and both poultry families. Almost no history in Australian pet food, so for most dogs it is genuinely unfamiliar.

Goat. Here is the honest caveat, and it is inconvenient for us. Goat is a bovid: the same family as cattle and sheep. It is unfamiliar to most Australian dogs, which is real and useful, but it is not taxonomically distant from beef and lamb the way the other three are. If your dog's problem is beef, goat is a less conservative pick. We would rather tell you that than sell you goat.

Don't burn your novel proteins

Every protein your dog eats stops being novel. Work through kangaroo, crocodile, camel, goat, venison and rabbit over two years because variety is fun, and if your dog later needs a diagnostic diet, the list available for that trial is considerably shorter.

Rotate freely if your dog is well. But if your dog has ongoing skin or gut signs and has not been through a workup, talk to your vet first, so the useful proteins are still there when you need them.

Where we come in

We make single-ingredient treats in our own Bendigo kitchen from Australian-sourced proteins, and our novel protein range covers kangaroo, crocodile, camel and goat. One animal per bag, nothing added, and an ingredient list you can read in a second. Owners running vet-supervised diets buy these because a single-ingredient treat is the only kind you can actually verify. Whether a given protein suits your dog is your vet's call.

Novel is not an ingredient. It is everything your dog has not eaten yet, which makes it a resource worth spending carefully.

General information, not veterinary advice. If your dog is being investigated for a suspected food allergy, talk to your vet before introducing any new protein.

Explore our novel protein collection here.