Food Cost Per Day Comparison

[Oliver & Elizabeth]

I did the calculations (hopefully correctly) of the food cost per day of a few of the most popular brands. Happy Valentine's Day!

Cost Per Day - 40lb Adult Dog
Prices from Wag.com, Petflow.com, and Pet360.com for the Largest Bag Available 
Used Goldendoodles.com Feeding Calculator
* = DK Recommended Food

*Petcurean Now Fresh Adult (GF) - 25lb $59.49 ($1.48)
Hills Prescription Diet I/D - 35lb $89.99 ($1.43)
*Acana Wild Prairie (GF)  - 28.6lb $63.99 ($1.36)
*Orijen Adult Dog 80/20 (GF) - 29.7lb $69.99 ($1.32)
*Acana Chicken and Burbank Potato - 28.6lb $59.99 ($1.29)
*Fromm Four Star Salmon Tunalini (GF)- 30lb $65.99 ($1.15)
EVO Turkey and Chicken (GF) - 28.6lb $63.49 ($1.12)
*Wellness Super5Mix Chicken - 30lb $53.49 ($1.06)
Nutro Natural Choice Limited Ing. Lamb Meal and Rice - 30lb $56.99 ($1.05)
*Natural Balance Limited Ing. Lamb Meal and Brown Rice - 28lb $ 48.49 ($1.01)
Iams Proactive Health Adult Lamb Meal and Rice - 29lb $46.99 ($1.01)
*Blue Buffalo Life Protection Chicken and Brown Rice - 30lb $51.99 ($.99)
*Fromm Four Star Chicken A La Veg Formula - 30lb $53.99 ($.98)
*Taste of the Wild High Prairie (GF) - 30lb $48.99 ($.95)
Purina Pro Plan All Life Stages Chicken and Rice - 37.5lb $52.49 ($ .71)
*Canidae All Life Stages - 44lb $54.99 ($.65)

[Nicky, Riley & Boris]

This is very interesting but the prices bear no relation to what I pay here in Ireland. For example the Orijen Adult dog is $130 for 13K bag which is your 29lb bag but the Acana Chicken and Burbank potato is $75  for the same size bag which is very strange just looking at the prices above.   I have always fed my boys Orijen with the odd bag of Acana thrown in when I couldn't get it and neither of them are allergic to grains, I just choose to feed grain free but for those on a budget here in Ireland they would do well to feed the limited ingredient range from Acana as a good option. 

[Scotty]

Was using this calculator to run some numbers for myself & figured I'd just run everything on the recommended list as well as the "OK list", then just for fun I ran Purina Pro Plan & Pedigree just to see how much is really saved by feeding the less than desirable brands.

What I did was I just looked the majority of the pricing up on Chewy just as a constant source. The brands not sold on Chewy mainly came from Petflow, but I know one brand I even had to look up on Amazon. I basically picked the cheapest option for each brand separated into healthy grain & grain free options.

So if you want to feed say Orijen but don't need a specific blend this is the cheapest way to do it. Also these prices are mainly just from Chewy, so you may be able to find these cheaper than the listed prices. For instance I have been feeding Taste of the Wild & I know I can get a 30# bag about $5 cheaper than the listed price. But again my assumption is that if it's cheaper on Chewy generally it's going to be cheaper at other retailers at a similar ratio. I didn't do raw or limited ingredient for the most part although a couple brands I couldn't find non LID versions (and I found LID versions generally were cheaper) so I just used LID prices on those brands & marked them (LID).

Everything is figured for a 55 lb adult dog that is spayed/neutered.(who knew that would make a difference) But again I'm assuming if it's cheaper to feed a 55 lb dog the same will apply to a bigger or smaller dog as well. Recommended brands have an asterisk behind the name. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Wow, thanks for doing this, Scotty! Very helpful! 

[Scotty]

No problem, I was doing a bunch of them anyway as I am considering changing foods again & wanted to organize as much info as possible & make a decision I can stick with. So really running all of them really helped.

I'm thinking I'll switch to Earthborn Holistic, they have it at a farm & home store about 15 minutes from me. Plus they're building a new store less than 5 minutes from my house, so hopefully they'll carry it there too. And this particular store beats Chewy on my current food by over $5 a bag so hopefully they'll have a better price on Earthborn too, at worse it's about $0.10 a day more expensive at Chewy price.

And honestly it's the least I can do as I've gotten so much help from everyone here already.