Cheaper dog food

[Toastandstrawberryjam]

I have a beautiful 3 year old cocker who currently is fed Lilys Kitchen dry food and the occasional bit of human food.

Due to personal circumstances I am going to have to seriously budget my finances and while I will make sure I don't scrimp on anything for her, I need to know if there are any cheaper dry foods out there that are really good quality.

TIA

Do you have a Costco membership? Kirkland dog food is pretty good quality and v cheap.

Have a look at Millie's Wolfheart.

It's excellent stuff, certainly on a par with most other premium dry foods, but it's very reasonably priced.

All About Dog Food is a great site for researching new foods and they include pricing details in their reviews.

No I don't have membership for there.

Shes a greedy little one so I expect she would eat anything. She's tried lots of different foods so isn't fussy, but they've always been the expensive ones.

Will go look on that website, thank you.

I feed Csj - champ is the cheapest one and fine for us. It's classed as working dog food so you don't pay VAT on it, even though it's just the same as regular dog food. They send out samples - give her an email and she'll send you some out.

I feed one of ours Skinner's Field and Trial. It's not organic and it makes no lavish claims, and it's quite high in cereals (if that bothers you. However, it's less than £20 for a 15kg sack and he a) loves it and b) absolutely thrives on it.

He's also rather keen on the muesli mix they do.

The other (smaller) one gets James Wellbeloved, because all the other foods I've tried make her incredibly itchy and she ends up pulling out her fur. It's almost twice the price of the Skinner's.

I second Millie's Wolfheart. The kibble is of solid quality, no grains or fillers, high in good quality protein.

My small breed 5 month old eats three meals a day - the first two are Millies Wolfheart. The last one is a serving of my homemade food - boiled Natures's Menu mince (80 pence or so for 500 gms) with 3 veg (chuck cheap frozen veg and the mince in a pan once every week or so - stick in fridge/freezer with juice and all - treat!)

Own brand low fat yogurt once a day as a treat.

I suggest getting sample packs of Millie's for £1.50 each and trying out the various mixes.

I've tried several high end foods with big dog, who has a very sensitive stomach and a tendency to get itchy skin, and have found a lot of them too rich for her. She couldn't tolerate Orijen or Barking Heads and was on Fish4Dogs successfully for a while, but seemed to go off it and wouldn't eat it without a meat topper, which was costing a bloody fortune.

I tried her on Autarky Salmon on the advice of a friends, and she's been on it now for nearly 6 months with no problems. It's not the best food on the market (scored 3.5 on the allaboutdogfood website) but it's fab for the price - I pay about £22 for a 15kg sack.

Raw food for a smaller dog could work out pretty cheap. It could be worth looking into. It costs me around £1.70 a day to feed my 40kg greyhound a raw diet and he's thriving on it, it would be quite a bit cheaper for a smaller pooch.

I don't think I could do raw food. I know it would be good for her but it just makes me feel nauseous!

Def getting some good suggestions here, will try and get some samples.

Also if anyone has a cat too? I have two of those who need weaning of an expensive dry diet. One has had kidney problems so have to be careful with him and they are both constantly hungry!!

CSJ is good for keeping up weight. We feed Burns, which is a good mid-range food. 15Kg is enough for 3 20Kg dogs for about a month. It's about £45/15Kg sack.