The Cost of feeding your Doodle

[Nicky, Riley & Boris]

I was in the Pet store and standing by the checkout counter when a woman came up with a bag of 'cheap' dog food.   I couldn't help overhearing what she said to the checkout guy.  She said she had to buy it because she needed to save money and had to move to a cheaper brand.  This got me wondering if there has ever been a proper cost analysis done here.  Perhaps we could post how much it costs us to feed our dogs per week and perhaps go someway to find out if better foods are much more expensive and if so by how much?

[Sue, Murphy and Bella ()*o*()]

I have often wondered too how much, but I figured it didn;t matter because no matter what, I was going to give them the best that I can afford. Now with two I have had to really read the labels more to get the best bang for my buck, to see which ones I feed less of each day and I usually look at how much the bag is per pound. For instance Canidae is about $1.00 per pound. So a 40# bag is $40.00. With two dogs, I think it lasts about 3 weeks to a month. However, I feed raw foods, fresh and frozen veggies, fruits and cooked foods as well. They get yogurt everyday in the morning. So adding all that up would be hard.

I know that in my area Orijen is double that, so at least $2.00 a pound and like Karen said, depending on the formula it may even be $2.50 a pd.

My two get about 2 cups of kibble a day each, which might be about 2 pds total and the other foods make up the difference for thier size and age.  It would take a lot of time to really figure this out but it would be interesting. I am not going to feed lesser quality foods though as I do believe in quality foods affecting the long term health of the dogs.

[Camilla and Darwin]

Wellness Core is 2.50 per pound and I'm almost positive that Orijen is more expensive. Then again, I do buy the 12lb bag rather than the larger one.

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

Camilla, can I ask why you only by the 12lb bag? I buy Acana and get the biggest bag available 29.6 lbs at $56 per bag, it last about 6 weeks.

[Camilla and Darwin]

Yes, we buy the 12lb bag because we can't fit the 26lb bag in our tiny apt. :-) The only place we have to keep his food is under the sink, and the large bag won't fit.

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

OUCH! I just wondered if you bought the smaller bag because of the "freshness" factor. DH spends a lot of time repackaging that big ole bag every time we fill the smaller container on the counter and is always wondering if the last of the bag is as good as the first.

Hopefully your new place will be bigger....how's the house hunt going by the way?

[Camilla and Darwin]

Pretty good. I think we will be able to find a bigger place, which is exciting, and we definitely will get the big bag. :-) We feed Darwin his food straight out of the bag but I have considered buying a rubber garbage can type container, or a tupperware. Hmmm.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I debag the food immediately into ziplock bags and then those go into the storage container. But they could also go into the freezer, if you have space.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

My daughter buys the smaller bags for storage reasons also.  I keep trying to figure out where she could store a bigger bag so she could save some money. So far no creative solution has been found.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I'm paying $22 plus tax for a 5.5 lb bag of Regional Red, so that's $4 per lb. However, you can get a 29.7 lb bag of Orijen Adult formula for $72, which is roughly $2.50 per lb.

[Allyson, Peri & Taquito]

Peri's cheap. I spend about $30 every 6 weeks on her Fromm (15 lb bag), but remember she's only 25 pounds and is a little doodette.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I was thinking about this discussion last night and it also occurred to me that with a different food, JD would be eating more than 5 lbs per week, because the dry foods can range from about 350 to over 500 calories per cup. On Orijen, he gets 3 cups per day. There are foods that he would need to eat 4-6 cups per day to get the same number of calories. So it's very difficult to do a cost comparison between foods themselves. Knowing how much a food costs per lb. doesn't tell you how much it would cost to feed that food to your dog, because you'ds have to know how many lbs your dog would require per week, per month, or whatever.

[F, Calla & Luca]

But we could, meaning a very dedicated food guru could, compare based on cost per 100 calories or something. We could all contribute a little research about the average online price, for instance and calories per cup for instance, on the food we feed.