Cutbacks required, please reccomend good but cheaper dog food

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My husband had just been made redundant, apart from being a massive shock we need to make some savings pretty quickly.

I feed my Labradoodle on burns dry food alongside naturediet.

Can anyone reccomend any cheaper but good alternatives.

thanks

`I don't know how much they are but my dog eats James WellBeloved dry kibble, which seems to do wonders for his skin condition so there must be something good in it.

I pay £6.50 for a 1.5k bag.

I fed my dogs on WAGG and they seemed happy and healthy on it. My last dog died more than 2 years ago, but I used to buy 15kg for between £8 and £10 from Pets at Home and it lasted her 3 months. HTH.

Another JWB fan. We feed 2 growing pups, a Labradoodle and a Staffy on 4 2kg bags a month.
Fussy Staffy likes his different flavours!!

Ooops meant to say we pay around £7 for a 2kg bag.

I think JWB is about the same price as Burns. Those with 2KG bags must have small dogs.

Pets At Home do Wainrights, which is similar to JWB and a bit cheaper, I think around £30 for a 15KG sack.

Skinners Duck and Rice has a bit less meat in, but still around 20% and is about £25 a sack.

If there is a Jollyes near you, their own brand dog food is what we feed ours, 40% meat (more than JWB or Burns) and around £25 a sack. It goes far though, we were on 3-4 sacks of JWB for our 4 dogs and now use 2-3 sacks a month (nearer 2 sacks) as they need much less amount wise to keep the weight on. They are all supershiney and don't get ill, plus they poo less on it and their poos are firmer.

I would rather feed myself to the dogs than Wagg, I won't even subject my rats to that. Very low meat content and high wheat content.

My dogs are small and Devil Dog is supremely fussy, so what I failed to mention is that the JWB is topped up with salmon (fresh and tinned), chicken, raw mince, raw bones, some sort of fatty block thing the butcher makes and just about anything else you can think of that I believe won't irritate his skin, he eats very little of the JWB, I have to to mix it thouroughly with other types of food before he will contemplate eating it. He probably eats better than me. And he costs us a bloody fortune

thank you - JWB and Burns do cost about the same, I just found Burns better for her skin. I agree with Midori, I wont be feeding her Wagg or anything similar. Im off to good Jollyes as well.

ooops I mean google :)

If you get skin problems you might get on with the Jollyes. I would never have in a million years looked at a Pet Shop own brand. (I am a dog food snob. ) I had tried everything I could get my hands on over the years and two of my girls were still getting dry, flakey skin. They are fine on the Jollyes. The only other thing they have got on with was raw feeding, but for various reasons I couldn't keep it up.

Would you consider a raw BARF type diet? This works out much cheaper than Burns/JWB. I have two Labradoodles (just about to add a third ) and they will all be fed BARF. This www.doodles-n-poodles.com/ forum is great for diet advice. All the best!

I have used Dr Johns Gold. and Dr johns silver. both around £10 a sack and very good.

here

The folk on the lab forum I am on all rave about Skinners Duck and Rice. The working variety is VAT free (and afaik no one ever checks to see if your dog is working). It has more calories in so you may need to feed your dog less.

The kibble part of my dog's diet, (I do BARF mostly), is Skinners chicken and rice sensitive (the duck and rice makes her poo sloppy). Still MUCH better value than JWB and imho you get a nicer, smaller, firmer poo post Skinners than with JWB .

pmsl @ BARF

It is somewhat barfsome some days MK, especially green tripe days [vom]. Dog LOVES it though and in the bizarrio world of what goes on in dogs' innards, tripe poo is the nicest not-smelling-of dog shit dog shit that I have had the pleasure to pick up.

my boys are on wainwrights.

we tried JWB but with 2 of the greedy doodles, we were going through £60 of food permonth

a 15kg bag of wainwrights is around £30, bt look for pets at home codes, as that will knock bits off, (signing up for the newlletter gets you a 10% code). one 15kg bag lasts the two hounds 3-4weeks.

they are growing well, poo's all fine as doggy poo goes, and good coats on the pair of them.

Well, the only thing that doesn't upset oldboy's tummy is Chappie. The tinned stuff stinks, but the dried is ok.

And YES, I know it is the cheapest of the cheap, bulked out with fibre etc, but IME most dogs do very well on it. Dogs are scavenging animals by nature- they would eat all of a carcass- the hair, the skin, the organs- and pretty much anything else they could find. A diet very high in protein isn't really all that natural to them, as they need roughage and carbs too (unlike cats)

A 15kg bag of dried Chappie costs about £12

Has anyone suggested changing to working dog food, e.g., Skinners Duck and Rice working dog, so that you don't pay any VAT on it?

Sorry, I see they have

We have given our lab Pets at Home's own brand dry dog food - it actually has a higher meat content than some of the other, branded dry dog foods.

We do tend to buy whichever is cheapest, amongst the better dry foods, though - and being a lab, she will eat anything.

She's on light science diet at the moment, as we felt she needed to lose a pound or two - sadly she got into the cupboard where the dog food is stored, and ate 4kg of it, so resembles a barrel on legs at the moment!

Thanks everyone, I think we will try the Wainwrights food.

Many Independant pet shops have their own brand. This is usually made in what used to be the JW factory in Sudbury when production was moved to france when RCW bought JW. So much of this own brand is very similar to JW.

I changed my lab from Burns to Wainrights opver a year ago, and he does very well on it. And our bank balance does better on it too :)

www.petsathome.com/shop/wainwright-s-large-breed-senior-complete-dog-food-with-turkey-and-rice-2kg-and-15kg-12863