Cost of dog food!!

[Supernova23]

Clearly it's gone up with everything else, but Jesus Christ!! I always used to feed my dogs decent food, but I really can't afford to be spending £40+ for a 12kg sack given they get through that in two weeks. I used to feed Millies Wolfheart which was £29.99 for 12kgs. Now it's £44.99!! I've had to bite the bullet and put them on a cheap food. How are you managing pet food costs?

Insensitive why? She stated it as fact. Just because your vet said differently doesn’t make them correct.

I dont think Ci is cheap (but then maybe against quality it is not sure how you measure it)

Ci is a high meat content food hence not being cheap.

It has fresh meat content which is clearly listed so it will be the meat of the animal and not the tendons ligaments etc

it has very few fillers a very small percentage of beet pulp in some of the flavours ( smaller quantities may be good for fibre but not totally agreed on).

It has added prebiotic from veg . Also has glucosamine added good for joint health.

On paper a good food but not cheap at about £45.00 ish for 12kg unless people know how to get it cheaper?

It is pretty similar to Millies on quality and price

I make my own for our 3. About £60 a month and they all look better for it
Sweet potatoes (diced & cooked until for soft)
Broccoli
5% mince beef
Raw egg
Chicken feet
Coconut oil (half tsp
Olive oil (half tsp)
Squirt of salmon oil
Dog friendly herbs
Vet said it was a great diet 🤷🏻‍♀️

Just checked Ci prices they have gone up too so over £50.00 for most of their flavours in a 12kg bag

So not cheap.

Luckily my hairy friend likes Lidl complete working dog kibble (£7.99 for a huge bag that lasts him nigh on a month, and VAT-free), and it's supplemented with wet, tinned food for a taste (12 tins for £9 - lasts 3 weeks). He has our plate scrapings too and is particularly partial to shepherd's pie and cottage pie so I make a bit extra for him, and he obvs has his own Sunday dinner.
He's nearly 12 and the vet always comments about what great condition he's in for his age.

@ChangedmynameagainforChristmas my friend is a vet and said they get very little training on nutrition, literally you could miss a day's lectures and miss a whole species info for the entire course so don't rely on a vet for advice! She said it's like going to see a GP when you need to see a proper dietician for a human.

she earns a small % by stocking Royal Canin but doesn't use it for her own dog .....

That's just not true. Lots of dog food is the equivalent of living off a McDonald's and chocolate diet.

I feed Carnilove. It's fantastic stuff and ocado sell the kibble for the best price around.

Aldis chicken thighs. Seriously cheap. We buy these and ours has one a day and supermarket kibble plus diced carrots/sausage/peas.

My 13kg dog is raw fed at the moment it's costing £70 every 6 weeks which is under £12 per week. I think I could probably do it cheaper if I needed to though by shopping around a bit.

@ChangedmynameagainforChristmas
Vets know very little about nutrition.
A good place to see where the negativity comes from is allaboutdogfood.co.uk
They have a clear rating system.
For example - Royal Canin seems to lose favour because it is low in meat content, not hypoallergenic, contains a lot of preservatives, and there's not a lot of clarity on the label so it's difficult to tell what exactly is in the food.

With some of the cheaper food if you added a couple of eggs and sardines in tomato sauce over the week it would make a big difference. I buy tinned sardines from Tesco or Asda I think the sardines in Tesco are only 40p per tin I spread that over 3 days and on the other days he gets an egg. Then when we have roast he gets s bit of meat and veg.

Trouble with cheaper food is the additives and fillers. Unfortunately adding "real" food will not counteract the effect of these.

Labelling in dog food is horrendous and so hard for owners to work out what is in the food.

Do you cook the thighs or give them raw?

You Brits are not alone. In this part of Canada, the cost of cat food has gone up at least 50%. The manufacturers have got us over a barrel. What are we going to do, starve the por pussycat.

My step-daughter in the US has started making her own dog food for her three dogs.

@OhMerde I'm just going by what the vet said. Our dog is happy and healthy. He's in a decent shape too. Expensive foods are not affordable for a lot of dog owners now so what would you prefer them to do? Starve?

We use Lupo Sensitive for our large breed, its around £40 for 15kg, seems really good. Can get some deals on ZooPlus. Small breed has Ava weight control (pug)

No of course not. However, many people who feed dogs cheap food will end up with very poorly dogs eventually and big vets bills. By feeding well, i honestly see it as off-setting future vets bills.

I see the allaboutdogfood comparison site recommended a lot in here.
I agree it's a good general tool, but my concern with it that it is biased towards grain free foods. Any food that contains any form of grain is marked down.

Dogs are omnivores not obligate pure carnivores. In my opinion, some rice or oats in the mix isn't bad. Allergies aside of course.

We feed our dog (circa 10kg) butternut and although there has been a price increase, it's not been unreasonable. I do wish they would just increase it all though instead of adding uplifts to 50% of their options. That said, it's also nice to be able to choose cheaper options etc.

Can't fault butternut, our dog is very healthy on it. Costs us around £40-45 a month.

Of course nutrition matters. It matters for every single living being! Fed is better than dead but that's a low bar! We feed MilliesWolfheart but it has gone up drastically.

www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/

Is a good place to start to find a food that's balanced nutrition and price.

But many people are now in a position where they can't afford to buy the higher quality brands. Cost of living has increased massively and pet food seems to be an obvious place to cut costs, and I don't think it's fair to make people feel bad by implying that they're going to make their dog unwell down the line.

The truth is, millions of dogs survive just fine on cheap, supermarket-brand food and don't go on to have any health issues whatsoever.

My dog has a really sensitive tummy but does well on Butternut box, it's 100 quid a month, crippling but she's worth it

We've not been dog owners that long but I'm surprised how little money some people seem to expect to spend on food. We buy expensive ish food and have a largeish dog and it works out around £2 a day. That's never struck me as particularly expensive but it seems people expect to pay pennies.

Dog treats on the other hand, if you look at price per kilo, some are extortionate.

Unfortunately there is a lot of evidence that poor quality dog food does cause major illness in a very large number of dogs.

Its not so much the actual food ingredients although cheap food has a load of crap in it especially the fillers that are only there to bulk out the food, no nutritional value at all.

Dogs are quite happy on meat meal IF the additives are not added to stop the food going rancid or bits of meat that we would not eat eg the tendons and ligaments but it is the poor processing and added ingredients that make cheap food bad for the dogs.

The cheaper food has poor quality additives and fillers and it is mainly these that cause cancer, pancreatitis, also obesity as it is calorie dense but nutrient deficient, heart disease and increase in allergies. BHA and BHT has been banned in Europe and USA but in UK it it still being added to cheap food (but not being listed on the label)

I totally blame the labelling as for example additive free food is most likely NOT additive free. Because the dodgy additives were added at the time the meat was extracted from the factory and not added in the factory that processed the kibble it does not have to be declared. The only way to make sure your dog food has healthy additives of which there are many (but of course more expensive) is if the label reads guaranteed additive free- if y ou look this only appears on the expensive dog food.

Owners have no real way of knowing what they are buying and how it is damaging their dogs