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Dog food prices on the rise


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If anyone else feed the diamond naturals...just an FYI that Tractor Supply (supposedly all of the stores per the sales women where I went last night) has the Diamond Naturals chicken and rice 40 lbs bags on sale for 25/bag...through the fist of Feb.

Every little bit helps!

 

that is good to know, thank you!!!

 

I havent seen my food (diamond nat both lamb and chicken) go up..yet..but I wouldnt be surprised if it was. with now four dogs, I am going through food quicker..I just decided this past weekend I was going to keep track of how long a 40 pound bag lasts me.

 

We went to buying our horse feed and alfalfa pellets(for sheep and cows) in bulk..we have to drive almost 1 1/2 hours one way to get it..but even factoring in the fuel, it STILL works out to be at least $3 cheaper per pound then buying the same quality food in bags at the local feed stores..

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I get the Chickenleg q-ters at my local Walmart a 10 pound bag for 5.80

Since I live in the mainly hispanic part of town my neighborhood supermarket carries all the "good" stuff like heart. kidney, salmon heads even whole cow, pic and lambheads.

I can feed my crew for between 5-6 bucks a day on RAW

Okay, maybe I'm just being a cranky editor, and I don't normally do this, but are you shouting raw from the rooftops (hence the all caps)? Raw isn't an acronym for anything, so it doesn't need to be capped.

 

Interestingly, the two dogs I feed raw turn their noses up (literally) at the chicken leg quarters you can get by the 10-lb bag. Since dogs are known to eat all sorts of crap, it has always made me wonder what it was about those cheap leg quarters that turned them off. Around here, the "good stuff" has actually gone up in price as the ethnic demand has increased. So although in the past you could get cuts like beef tongue for pretty cheap, now it goes for more than $5/lb. My butcher sells sheep heads for $7.99/lb. No great bargains there.

 

Even so, not knowing how many dogs you have, you're paying essentially double what I'm paying to feed my dogs (10 of them) kibble. This is why I always am astounded by the claims that people make that they can feed their dogs much cheaper on raw than they can on kibble. The math just doesn't add up. I rarely find meat on sale for $1/lb or less. And what I have butchered even costs closer to $2-3/lb (I could save there if I butchered myself). And even if I could find all meat at an average of $1/lb, that would be somewhere close to $10/day, assuming that I averaged 10 lbs of meat among all of them.

 

At least one long-time member and long-time raw feeder on this list has stated on more than one occasion that it's not cheaper for her to feed raw.

 

Anyway, my point has been made. I feed two of my dogs raw, largely because both tend to be picky eaters and I can't get enough in them. Ranger eats 1 lb of raw a day, and Lark gets 8 oz. RMBs for chewing are given to all dogs (except Phoebe, who has fractured a tooth chewing bones) for dental health. So I can certainly gain *that* benefit without feeding raw full time to all of them.

 

I suppose if those two were the only dogs I was feeding and I wasn't trying to make a living as a freelancer I'd be willing to pay double to feed my dogs, but honestly IMO what you feed depends on your circumstances: what you can afford, what your dogs do well on, and so on. Obviously since I feed raw, I do see a benefit to it. But I do try to refrain from making claims about what I feed or to make others feel bad for what they feed.

 

I just get tired of the proselytizing for which there is no sound data supporting the claims. I'm not intending to pick on you specifically--the whole "raw is so much cheaper" claim is made so often--and generally unsupported, except by those who buy in bulk or from co-ops--that it just gets ridiculous.

 

J.

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Julie, our price for Diamond Naturals Chicken & rice went from $27-28 for 40# to just over $30.

How much raw do you feed a dog a day?

New Holland prices are so good right now I would not be surprised if it would be more economical to sell our lambs and cull ewes and buy less espensive meat if we were feeding raw.

Mark,

(Sorry to be so late with my answer--I've been moving and didn't have Internet access for a few days.)

 

How much raw you feed depends on the size of the dog. I generally aim for 2-3% of the ultimate/desired body weight. So for Ranger, at 42 lbs, the low end of the range would be 0.8 lbs and the upper end would be 1.26 lbs. Lark weighs around 30 lbs, so she would get between 0.6 and 0.9 pounds. I give Ranger roughly 1 lb, and Lark 1/2 lb per day. They also get kibble for one meal. I do offer them a wide variety of raw foods, but I don't worry about nutrients so much since I think the kibble meal would cover any vitamins/minerals that might be lacking/out of balance in the raw foods I can get for a reasonable price.

 

J.

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Kibble-fed dogs don't eat a pound of kibble a day, do they?

No. My 10 dogs (this includes the LGD) eat a total of about 4 lbs of kibble a day among them (lark eats the least, 1 c./day, and right now Pip is eating the most at ~4 c./day; everyone else averages 1.5 c./day). I do add toppers and fish oil/vit E, etc., which adds to the cost of what I feed, but the added cost is minimal.

 

J.

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I have been feeding a RAW diet for 10 years now ... here are my approx. food costs and comparison.

 

Kibble = $28 per dog

Raw = $44.60 per dog ( using some of my own animals and butchering myself )

 

============= Here is the math and reasoning behind it...

 

Kibble –

 

Taste of the Wild - $40 for 30 lbs – 1 lb = 4 cups

 

So rough math is 120 cups for $40 …. Which is .33 cents per cup

 

My BCs eat 2 – 3 cups per day depending on workload = .66 to $1 per day

 

 

Raw –

 

My BCs eat 1 to 1 ½ lbs per day depending on workload.

 

Average prices in Oklahoma:

 

Whole chicken - $1/lb = $1 to $1.50 per day

Leg quarters - $.65/lb = .65 to $1 per day

Beef – I buy a whole steer for $1/lb and pay processor .. total is approx. $2.25/lb = $2.25 to $3.40/lb

Sheep and Goats – I butcher my own cull but feed prices, vax, meds is approx. $50 per animal so let’s use the figure of $.50/lb = .50 to .75 per day.

 

Organ meat and green tripe = $2/lb if I use some of the organs form the sheep and goat and only buy tripe and some other organs. = $2 per week ( organs are only about 10% of their diet ).

 

That being said … you have to feed different meat sources to keep their diet balanced … even if you feed a lot of chicken raw feeding will still cost you more.

 

Feed chicken 4 days a week = $5

Feed Beef twice a week = $3.40

Feed Sheep or goat once = $.75

Organs per week = $2

============ TOTAL --- $11.15 per week

 

So if we estimate on heavy work days for 4 weeks ( 28 days ) =

 

Kibble = $28 per dog

Raw = $44.60 per dog

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I once sat down and calculated the cost of feeding a good kibble that had a standard ratio of omega 3:6 fatty acids with added fish oil capsules to bring that ratio into the therapeutic range used to treat arthritis and other conditions (cost of kibble + cost of fish oil). Next I calculated the cost of instead feeding a high quality fish based kibble that already had the ratio I wanted to achieve. In the long run it would cost me about $5 less per month per dog to feed the more expensive kibble.

 

Something to think about if you have a dog that needs fish oil for joint health, heart disease, etc.

 

I don't think many go so far as to do the math. When you take the time to crunch the actual numbers the results might surprise you. For my own situation that means finding a balance between the price and the volume of food required to keep my dogs at a good weight. To date I've not found any shortcuts to feeding a quality kibble.

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And I think the ability to feed raw cheaply depends on your geographic location, your access to things like co-ops and your storage capacity.

 

When I switched I did the math simply by keeping recipts for the kibble for 6 months and then keeping the recipts from the raw for 6 month, and for me the raw was only about 10-15% more. Partly because I had a dog with skin issues so the only food he did well on was expensive, and partly because I can get and prep a lot of stuff pretty cheap and what I can't I can buy through a co-op which helps.

 

That said, I do spend a fair amount of time prepping cheap food (last week I cut up 15 69 cent a pound whole chickens into dog food size packages, my DH and I each stopped on the way home several times to buy the "3 per customer" allowed and now I have no extra freezer room for a while...tho I do have some great stock and frozen cooked chicken for the humans too) to take advantage of odd cuts and cheap sales, and if I recalculated with less expensive kibble food since Ross is gone, I might not come out so good.

 

I am pleased enough with the condition of the Papillons mouths on raw that I won't change unless financial circumstances force my hand.

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I've personally found Proplan to have the best value. My year old pup was eating 2 cups of Proplan puppy a day and I switched him to Nutrisource all life stages since a friend recommended it so highly. Well, 2 wks later little Loki was eating 4 cups of food a day, burning his muscle, and begging non-stop for more. Found out that Loki's proplan puppy had 500 kcal/cup while the Nutrisource all life stages had around 350 kcal/cup. Obviously, Nutrisource wasn't a good buy for Loki. In order to meet Loki's caloric needs I'd have to feed Nutrisource Super Performance and still have to feed over 2 cups a day. I finally decided to switch Loki back to Proplan- he's been on Proplan Performance All life Stages (if i remember right its 560 kcal/cup) for about 2 weeks now and is happy again. Although Proplan seems pricey they have several programs that keep the cost down. If you breed or have 5+ dogs you can join the proclub where you turn in weight circles for money for your vet, etc. Also, if you friend them on facebook they always have a new $5 off coupon up and Proplan is typically on sale for $5 off at Petsmart. Although Proplan may not be raw or completely natural for those who need a high quality dog food on a tight budget it works well. At least for me it does. :)

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