Decent lower-priced food?

[Tygertiger]

I’ve always fed the cats grain-free wet and dry food from expensive brands, but the mortgage rises mean I need to economise a bit. What are good brands which aren’t too expensive? Luckily cats will eat anything. Ideally I still want grain-free. Thank you!

Harrington dry is a good food, it's 33% chicken but it does have some maize and oats which you might not like.

It's £8.49 for 2kg in Asda.

What did you feed before? Just asking to understand from which cost you are reducing. Feringa on zooplus is good quality and would be cheaper than what I currently feed.

I've just swapped my two on Amazon brand Lifelong cat food. It's grain free and £15 for 3kg. It's gone down very well.

The Butchers company make a really good quality food for a low price, it's called Classic. It comes in 400g tins and contains only named meat, no grains or sugars. Can be bought from most places too! Though be wary of buying the 24 packs online, there are a few reviews out there saying the time come damaged.

Thank you. Applaws dry food before they had the poison controversy, then Wild Freedom or Thrive dry. Wet food, I’ve tried a few and usually get Wild Freedom or James Wellbeloved. I use Zooplus, but it’s hard to compare brands on there without a filter/search function.

I’ve seen Butchers recommended before, so I’ll have a look at that, thank you.

Meowing head is over 70% meat content (not meat derivatives!) and grain free. It’s on Amazon for £12 for 10 sachets, it isn’t the cheapest but the sachets are 100g and it’s great quality food.

Meowing Heads*

The Butchers Classic cat food recommended by pp is grain free, but I think iirc it has a low meat content.

It is, and it’s meat derivatives - cats are carnivores, go for as high a meat content as you can afford.

It's not it's named meat just a cheap suggestion depending on how far the OP's budget can go.

Am I looking at the wrong one? Or are necks and liver not classed as derivatives? So sorry if I’m mistaken - always looking for cheaper alternatives for my cat but dismissed this because I thought it wasn’t proper meat!

Those don't count as derivatives - they are just parts of meat that are perfectly fine for cats.

If they were derivatives, they will be labelled as follows (or similarly): Meat and animal derivatives (chicken 4%) for example.

The Classic label is more akin to the European brands you find on Zooplus.

A named meat is sometimes more reassuring for owners because "meat and animal derivatives" is an incredibly vague term which could consist of many different things and there is no guarantee or even indication of the animals they come from.

And also don't be sorry!! I know viscera sounds so weird but it's perfectly fine as is neck meat - it's basically bits of the animal humans don't eat

Definitely if OP can afford to go with brands with even better sourcing then I personally think that's great, but it is very cheap for something that's a bit different than the usual brands!

Well I could have saved myself a fortune had I known that! Thank you!

Aha no worries, necks don't sound great but it's better thank beaks and bumholes

But it’s still only a max of 34% meat according to one online listing, so the rest is gum & nutritional additives. it still has a low meat content, regardless of what bits it is, or am I reading it wrong?

I'm finding actual fish cheaper than fishy good quality cat food at the moment!
Another way to make a bit of a saving is bulk buying. I get large bags of grain free James Wellbeloved dry food. Fresh/frozen meat and chicken and then a bit of cheaper wet food for variety. I reckon that a mix of complete dry food, meat and any wet food I can get the buggers to eat seems to keep mine happy and healthy!

I buy sack of purizon on zooplus and the sack lasts over 6months and I free feed my boy cat.
He used to get expensive wet but stopped eating it so I buy cheapo stuff and hope he is getting enough goodness from the purizon dry food.

I buy sack of purizon on zooplus and the sack lasts over 6months and I free feed my boy cat.
He used to get expensive wet but stopped eating it so I buy cheapo stuff and hope he is getting enough goodness from the purizon dry food.

Not saying it's the best food money can buy, OP is looking for decent low price alternatives to higher cost cat food. It's cheap and it's better in quality relatively than foods at similar price points (just in my opinion) as I personally avoid vegetable protein extracts and cereals in cat food. 34% meat is also better than say Felix or Whiskas (I think - Felix is like 44% meat but in the chunk and the chunk is only 50% of the product). It also as said earlier is not just labelled as derivatives so it gains an extra point in my book for that too!

I think it's much more economical to buy a high quality dry food but lots of people don't seem to like to feed dry food or their cats don't like it, and OP was previously feeding wet food.

OP Wainwright's pouches are also okay for the price, named meat and higher meat content than the foods typically availably from the big supermarkets. I think online if you do subscribe and save it's 80 x 85g pouches for £27

We used to feed Animonda Carny from Zooplus. It does sometimes look a bit grim - little bits of tube and the like - but cats like that!

Bozita was also good but we had one cat that just licked the gravy off the chunks so they were better on an old school cat food.

This link is quite old now but the poster did all the hard work of comparing food content and prices:

https://www.petforums.co.uk/threads/zooplus-cat-food-list-just-the-good-stuff-work-in-progress.440844/

Check out cool cat club, grain free, high meat content, monthly delivery. Both my fussy cats love the wet and dry food. They do a sample box.

The gum is listed at 1.4g per kg. Nutritional additives by weight will also be minimal. The rest (56% ish - current recipe is 40% + 4% I think) will just be water. They use water for making the jelly, and they puree up the meat and offal into a gunk to form the chunks. Yes it's not especially nutrient dense and it's the byproduct/ cheapest bits of 'meat' - but it's a cheap food and there is nothing especially alarming in it if you are a cat.

The thing to watch out for with the cheaper foods is often you will need to feed more than more nutrient rich foods, which makes it less of a good deal than the shelf price might appear. But that's just a trial and error thing to get the best balance.