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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Dog Owners: Recommend your generic (or cheap-ish) dry dog food
We buy Purina, but the price has gone up significantly over the past couple of years.
Went from $13/bag to $18.50/bag (for the 50 lb bags) - and that's at WalMart.
We have three dogs, so needless to say we go thru a lot of food.
I don't want to skimp on quality, but would really like to cut back on this expense if possible.
What do you recommend?
or... do you know of any websites where you can order it cheaper?
TIA!
Went from $13/bag to $18.50/bag (for the 50 lb bags) - and that's at WalMart.
We have three dogs, so needless to say we go thru a lot of food.
I don't want to skimp on quality, but would really like to cut back on this expense if possible.
What do you recommend?
or... do you know of any websites where you can order it cheaper?
TIA!
Re: Dog Owners: Recommend your generic (or cheap-ish) dry dog food
I buy Eukanuba but that's probably more than you want to spend. However, you can sign up for emails and coupons at Complete Petmart, put in your prefered brand of dog food, and they'll send you coupons once a month. They also have sales at the beginign of the month. It brings down the price of our food from $50 or so after tax to $40 with tax . A 30 pound bag lasts us one month for two 60ish pound dogs. I bet they have an offer for Purina-maybe you'd be able to save about 25-30% by getting it during the sales? We get a free bag after we buy 12 bags, so that brings the price down even more. The warehouse clubs often have bigger than normal bags of dog food so you might want to check there. Also, I've heard that Costco's store brand of food is made by Diamond and it's fairly cheap for a good quality food. You'll probably be able to feed less per serving than you do with the Purina. Unfortunatly Costco memberships are a little pricy and the only two stores are in northern Cincy. It might be worth it if you have a friend who has a membership.
http://completepetmart.com/crittercareclub.html
I feed my dog Iams. It's pretty expensive but I buy a 4 lb bag and it lasts me almost 3 months! I have a 2.5 lb dog who likes people food...what can I say! But I agree with pp and after talking to my vet he very strongly recommended a higher grade food for our pets.
We do Purina too and I get coupons all the time from their website. I also pull the coupons from the boxes of treats that we buy and sometimes they put them on/in the bags of food.
We also mix 1/2 & 1/2 with Purina Dog Chow & Purina One or Beneful.
Have you looked into buying it from a feed mill or grain store rather than a pet store? There is a feed mill locally that my H mentioned dog food was really cheap at, but it's not convenient for us. I'll have to ask him if he remembers what the name of that is.
I would recommend switching to a higher quality dog food. Most grocery store brands (Science Diet, Eukanuba, Purina, Iams, Beneful, etc) are filled with corn and other gross fillers. I know our golden used to go through food like it was going out of style, and it wasn't helping our bank account.
I always shop at Complete Petmart here in NKY, it has tons of foods that are high quality and not that bad when you catch them on sale. I usually use www.dogfoodanalysis.com to see how well "rated" some foods are.
I feed my dog Royal Canin. I managed a pet store for 5+ years and from what my experience and what I've learned is that most of the grocery store dog/cat food is not very nutritious for your pet. And like PP's said it is made up of mostly fillers. Just take a look at the ingredients... the first 5 ingredients are the what the food is mostly composed of:
Example:
Royal Canin Ingredients: Chicken meal, brown rice, rice, oat, chicken fat
Purina Beneful Ingredients: Ground yellow corn, chicken by-product meal, corn gluten meal, whole wheat flour, animal fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols (form of Vitamin E)
Corn is a filler, it has no nutritional value and your dog will fill up on this, go to your backyard and make dog mines all over then come back hungry again. Also, any food that has the word 'by product' is something you want to stay away from. It consists of the ground, rendered, clean parts of the carcass of slaughtered chicken, such as necks, feet, undeveloped eggs and intestines, exclusive of feathers, etc. It is not a good source of protein by any means.
Please know, I am not trying to start any trouble, just wanted to make sure you knew what what you were getting for the price.
Wanted to add, I know that it gets expensive when you have more than one big dog. If you do decide to try a more expensive food you often can use less per serving (we do 1 cup per dog, once in morning, once in evening on a lite food-could probably feed even less than 2 cups per day on regular, non-diet food). DH was shocked b/c his parents feed their dogs Old Roy and they feed something like 5 cups a day. I had to do the math and point out that we really weren't paying that much more in the end. Also, there's usually less poop to clean up with the more expensive foods. I'm the pooper scooper so that was a big factor to me! (dh can decide on the food if he ever gets beyond his fear of poop -and that's not likely!)
Anway, I second the suggestion of trying a feed store and some companies will sell you breeder bags for a good price. I think the bags might be plain brown or bigger or something -not sure b/c I've never ordered them. You might have to order several bags at a time but this shouldn't be a problem as long as you have a spot to store the food. Try calling Purina, if nothing else you can ask them for some coupons!
Please check this website out. It will give you a lot of information on the quality of the food your dogs are eating. The grocery store brands are actually pretty unhealthy for dogs, with tons of filler, etc. Those foods you have to give more to your dog (it has more filler, less nutrients, have to eat more to get the same out of it, this is probably so you run out of food sooner, so you have to buy more of their product) than if you were feeding a higher quality food. Most grocery store brands are a 1 or 2 star rating out of 6 (yikes!). Please look into what is in your dogs food before you give it to them. Cheaper isn't usually better with dog food. I wouldn't think the price difference would be huge, but I'm not sure. We are comparing foods right now, but aren't even considering the grocery store brands (the ones you see most in your grocery store and in tv ads), such as Iams, Purina, eukenuba (sp?),and things of that sort. I suggest looking into these: Innova, natural balance, and wellness for example. For my dog, I wouldn't go below the 4 star rating. If we want to eat good, why not feed my dog something healthy and good also? Rant over.
I'll also jump in and agree that most of the grocery store brands contain fillers like corn and corn meal and you basically have to feed MORE per sitting to fill up your dog.
I switched to a healther dog food after researching labels at petsmart (you should look for the first few ingredients to be meat, and not byproducts or corn), and while granted, the cost difference is a couple bucks more per bag, the quantity of food I feed is less, so it lasts longer. (and also noticibly less is the quantity of poop!)
Jenn & Jason
September 27, 2008
Pretty much what lots of others were saying about getting a higher quality food. It's more cost up front, but you feed less in the long run and it evens out. A bag of cat food lasts me forever, and her shedding is so so much better on good food (I feed Wellness at the moment), and the amount of poop is way down. Her poop even stinks less. The website that was posted is great. It might take your dog a few weeks to adjust to the new food, but it would be worth a try.
ETA: I get my food off of petfooddirect.com and there is always a coupon floating around that covers at least the shipping, if not a bit more. I also use ebates on top of that.
I started out feeding my dog (a Pomeranian) Eukanuba because it was what my parents always fed their Terriers but...then I started researching for foods that cats and dogs could eat together (I have a cat as well) and in the process of that learned a lot of things about the major brands of pet food.
Needless to say, I immediately stopped buying Eukanuba and urged my parents to do the same - when they did that, the Scottie that had terrible awful skin issues and really bad eyes began improving in health drastically and is like a brand new dog now.
I feed my Pomeranian (and my cat, too) BG - Before Grain. It's available at Complete Pet Mart (not at PetSmart, though) and is pretty affordable. I like it because it has no grain filler at all. Chicken is the base for all the varieties (there are 4, I think... Chicken, Bison, Salmon and Tuna) but that's okay... I buy the Salmon so my dog gets 2 types of meat, the chicken and salmon.
Good luck with your search! Another alternative that can be more cost effective in the long run is to actually make your own dog food. Blend together chicken and some vegetables (that are okay for dogs to eat) - there are plenty of recipes for this stuff online - and serve that then freeze the leftovers for the next feeding.
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