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?

I had a 17 year old staff who lived exclusively on wagg. The cheapest. She very rarely went to the vets.

No I do not agree that a good diet is subjective.

A good diet will have sciencetific data and be evidence based that it is healthy that is the whole point I am trying to make.

If you ask 10 different knowledgeable people what makes a good dog diet they will agree with the basic principle of a good diet.

Just as it is the same for humans.

A good diet is very simple to understand however it is hard to decipher from cost and misleading labelling

Unless you have access to the dogs' background, their medical history and their breed, nobody on here can say for certain that feeding X diet caused Y problem.

I'm not saying that some food isn't better than others, but it's not as straightforward as "X is always better than Y".

What if the dog refuse to eat Y, or it gives them diarrhea?

As I have said before there is a lot of choice and change to a good dog food that your dog can eat.

If it does then you will have a clear list of ingredients and be able to work out which ingredient you need to avoid.

Unlike a cheap food like chappie that has meat derivatives or meat meal in the ingredients which will change each time they make the food , maybe chicken, may be fish may be large quantity of bones and less tissue etc

A good diet will have sciencetific data and be evidence based that it is healthy that is the whole point I am trying to make.

But multiple different diets can fit that criteria - and what is healthy for one dog won't necessarily be healthy for another. That's the point I'm trying to make.

You can't make a blanket statement of X is better than Y without knowing the dog, their history, what allergies they may/may not have and what diets they've tried successfully (or unsuccessfully) in the past.

You can argue that scientifically, X food is better than Y, but if the dog won't eat X, then the fact that it's better is totally irrelevant, lol.

Last try .

A healthy diet will be similar for all dogs. Healthy identifiable protein , nutritional carbs (not starch)

Veg is heathy but tmi, sprouts give me dreadful "digestion" issues
So I still have a healthy diet but will swop the sprouts to eat cabbage instead.

So healthy dog food 1 gives my dog the runs swop to dog food 2 still healthy but without the ingredient that is not tolerated. No need to go to shit food instead

I will not substitute the sprouts for a Macdonalds.

I will eat chicken in preference to chicken nuggets.

There will be a healthy diet for most dogs to eat.

The issue does arise with a dog that can only eat a hydrolysed diet - tbh they are a bit stuffed and luckily in the minority. They will either have to each a processed diet or have a lot of medication.

@IngGenius yes, I understand your point - honestly I do.

But none of that solves the problem of fussiness - some dogs just won't eat certain foods and owners have no choice but to feed something they will eat/tolerate and can afford.

So if your budget is £1 a day but the only foods your dog will eat and tolerate cost 40p a day or £2 a day, you have no choice but to go for the 40p food.

And yes, I'm sure you can get scientifically healthy diets for 40p a day but again, if your dog won't eat it then it's irrelevant.

In an ideal world, all dogs would like and tolerate excellent quality foods and all owners would be able to afford those foods.

But you can't force a dog to eat 🤷‍♀️

Given the number of obese dogs about I'm not sure that finding a dog food their dog will eat is a problem for many owners!

I'm willing to bet that the majority of people feeding poor quality foods are not doing it because it's the only thing their dog will eat.

You could also go to local butcher as they mice offal into tubes which are relatively cheap, mine charges £5 for 2kg, they are frozen so depends on freezer space

But you can have overweight dogs on healthy diets too - weight is mainly down to feeding too much and not enough exercise.

I agree too many people overfeed their dogs, but they do that regardless of the kind of diet they're being fed.

It's gone up hugely!

We've been buying cheap frozen chicken breasts from Iceland or Lidl and alternating chicken and rice with dog food.

It's scandalous that human grade (although v questionable welfare) chicken is cheaper than mid range dog food.

Reading through these posts, whatever works for your dog seems to be the answer …nobody is an expert (despite wanting to be), I personally don’t understand why anyone would feed their dog kibble but that’s my opinion doesn’t make it right. I can only speak from experience of owning working gun dogs but I get that budget constraints limit what you can feed your dog. Personally I wouldn’t ever feed my dogs anything apart from raw as it in my experience has a better impact on their digestion, teeth & general health but I don’t expect other dog owners to do the same. The only thing I don’t agree with is treats but that doesn’t work well with working dogs. Vets & pet shops make huge mark ups on pet food so wouldn’t listen to their advice on nutrition anyway despite what they tell you

My niece is a vet and recommends Hills: our springer (v sensitive tummy) doing great on it.

Mine is £80 something for 12kg!!!might be £84, might be £89. I just know I don’t want to know 😄

but even at £89 that works out at less than £3 per day for a month of food.

Given the number of obese dogs about I'm not sure that finding a dog food their dog will eat is a problem for many owners

We're lucky with ours. She's a rescue and I have a suspicion that food has been in short supply in the past. We don't change her food often but she will happily greedily eat absolutely anything we feed her.

DDog is fed Years..£70 a month. She loves it and is in great condition on it. It appears to be a 'good' food in terms of nutritional value so I will try and absorb the costs rather than pay for diet-caused illness in the future.