What do you feed your dogs?

[Greyhorses]

Hi everyone.

I have two GSDs and a collie who were on skinners however the price seems to be rocketing! Even at cost price it has up by £20 a month!

Can anyone recommend something similar?

I don't want to feed raw- only dry food!

Thanks

You are not going to find much cheaper to be honest than skinners. The only suggestion is to make sure you get the working dog variety that has no VAT on it.

I never realised dog food was such a minefield of cost vs quality. My collie pup is on Royal Canin but only because I got a free bag at the vets and then a £10 voucher off a big bag. Once she's fully grown I will have to change to something cheaper but god knows what.

I thought working dog variety was too high in protein for family dogs?

Mine is on pet shop own brand which is made by James Wellbeloved.

My 3 year old border collie's on Autarky Adult Summer (working dog) and he's great on it. He was too thin before (on Bakers - he came to me on that) and never finished a meal, now he eats it all and has put on muscle, his coat's great, no farts and no fishbreath, firm stools.

It's bloody cheap from Costco, £13 for 15kg.

Wow thats a good price Kleptronic - I take it Autarky is a quality food? Although tbh I'm still trying to work out what constitutes a 'quality' food.

Me too really! It seems good, as in all named ingredients, no by-products, high named protein content (chicken), veg and herbs and hypoallergenic. It does have maize in it, which some would say a dog should not have, but there's always going to be somesuch controversial grain in kibble. whichdogfood gives it 3.5 out of 5 and says it's 'an excellent choice for natural feeders on a budget'. It's cheap 'cos it's Costco and no VAT, much dearer elsewhere, about £20 at least I think.

I get the 15kg bags of skinners salmon auto delivered from amazon for £24 something. good value imho

Two trips to abattoir / processing plant per year at a cost of £80 each time.

Diesel back and forward = 1.5 gallons = £9

time to cut up, bag and deal with it all = £48 for time at less than minimum wage plus £10 for packaging

£227 plus electricity to run two chest freezers and a percentage of cost of chest freezers as they don't store much more than dog food.

£227 divided by 2 for the dogs i own = £113 each per year.

Skinners would cost 0.82 per day for my two if i bought it on the amazon subscribe and save thing. the above is 0.62 per day not including electricity. plus with skinners you'd be buying chews etc. that come in the abattoir stuff.

Skinners is an awful lot less effort though and you don't need a strong stomach for it.

i know most people with raw feeding will whiffle on about the benefits but the above shows that cost is reasonable too as most people would consider skinners to be a well priced food.

My very fussy cocker spaniel is also on "pet shop own brand which is made by James Wellbeloved" having tried lots of high quality premium brands, this is the only food he'll consistently eat.

Or is it made by Wainwrights, I forget.

Glad I found this Thread! We use Barking Heads - puppy for the 4 month old collie and tlc for the 2 year old collie X spaniel. However, I have recently read that it is important not to feed too much protein to non working dogs. Puppy is 28 percent and tlc is 25 percent and I wonder if this is a little high. My collie book recommends a little lower. Also, Barking Heads is very expensive so if something better is cheaper, that would be a bonus. Any thoughts? Particularly from collie owners?

Well really it depends too on how big your dog is!! I feed naturediet. It's 99p a pack (pug has 1 a day) from pets at home, so that's £30 per month average. If I order online it's a box of 18 for £13.00 so 72p £22.00 per month. I don't think that's too much for a very high quality food. However like I say I have a pug. A lab would need more so more expensive.

my dog on the salmon skinners is a border collie. my little terrier mutt has it too and they have v tidy poo
we had some wainwrights salmon and potato from PAH the other week when we ran out and they loved it but seemed to eat a lot more of it.