Cost Effective Frozen Raw Diet For Large Dogs?
Posted by
editor in
Question & Answer on
Feb 21st, 2010 |
4 responses
I’ve been feeding my boston Nature’s Variety raw and he is doing really well on it. He eats 6 medallions a day, which ends up being about $15-$17 per week depending on the protein. I also have a large mixed breed dog, about 50 pounds, that I would like to start on raw food. Is there another brand that is more cost effective? I’d prefer to keep using a prepared diet, as we’re fairly new to this, and am not comfortable yet making my own.
Similar Posts:
- Dogs And Raw Feeding?
- What Is The Best Brand Of Premade Raw Dog Food?
- We Want To Start A Raw Food Diet For Our French Bulldog Boston Terrier But We Don’t Know Where To Start?
- Using the Vegetable Diet to Shed Pounds
- Information On Raw Feeding, Please?
I agree with Pete above. Doing it yourself is the way to go.
It’s fairly easy to do it yourself once you get started, and you can learn as you go.
It will save you so much money.
Buying in bulk will make it even cheaper.
I fed my dog Ox cheeks tonight for about $1AUD, you cant get cheaper than that.
I get kangaroo meat from my local supermarket, organic for $4kg, which lasts a few meals. I get offal/organs for around $2kg.
I buy whole free range/steriod free etc chicken when they are on special that work out at under $2 per meal.
I buy bags of whole bait fish; pilchards/sardines/mullies for $4 per bag and that lasts a few weeks.
I also get bags of lamb off cuts for $2.99kg, the bags are full of raw, very meaty bones. Many of the bones are shanks, necks and legs that are broken and cant be sold for their higher price of around $6-8kg. I have a farmer here that gives me a 15kg bag of Roo tails for $10.. Rocco would eat a bone around 500grams for a meal, so that is 30 meals for $10! Cheap.
If you’d like any help getting started, feel free to e-mail me. I can give you some ideas based on what I do.
Alternatively, if you want to keep feeding them the Natures Variety, speak to the place where you get them and ask if you buy in bulk can you get a discount.
Good Luck.
Add; Im going by Australian prices here, the prices I gave you make each meal cheaper than a can of *cheap*dog food.
Your prices there may be even cheaper.
if you can find a slaughterhouse or meat factory anywhere
nearby, my suggestion is that to go there and enquire
whether you cannot buy meat on a regular basis directly
fromthem. i used to do that for long years. of coursei t involved
my having to cut up, portion and deep freeze the meat myself
(including cow’s stomachs), which i actually came to hate
after some time. but this practice saved me lots of money
and i could be sure that what i fed to my dogs was absolutely
fresh. poultry farms are another possible source of supply, same
as fish farms. if you can do it this way you would have to
add mineral- and vitamin powder to the food according to your
vet’s advice.
Probably not.
I spend roughly between $60-$80 a month feeding my two dogs a 90 pound lab, and a 50 pound mali. Much less when I can find freebies. You’re paying that per month feeding one small dog.
I’d do some more research, join a few groups, and when you’re ready start them both on diets you make.
Dogster and Big Dogs Porch have excellent raw feeding groups that’ll help you out when needed.
I don’t think you ever feel fully ready until you try it.
Not sure where you live, but ‘The Mountain Dog Food Company’ in Edmonton, Alberta markets a vast selection of frozen raw foods. I use some of their products for variety in the girls diets. They have whole ground chicken, with and without veg., chicken necks, turkey necks, turkey hearts, elk necks, lamb necks, frozen green tripe etc.
The most cost effective is going to be to do it yourself. A packing house can sell you bulk product for considerably less than the prepackaged product. Prepackaged is nice in terms of ease of use, but you do pay for that convenience. The local meat packer sells me 25 kilo boxes of chicken backs and necks for less than 80cents a pound, but it’s all frozen in one big block, so then I have to semi-thaw it repackage it into meal sizes and refreeze it. That’s the basis of the girls diet. One supermarket here caters to Raw feeders and brings in bulk orders of turkey necks, at almost half the price of the Mountain product. That butcher also brings in bulk chicken gizzards and hearts. I live in an area where Raw feeding is big, so many different places are bringing in things. Balancing the diet is not difficult, although there are different approaches to that, I don’t use vegetables, but I use Green tripe daily and supplement with SeaMeal. You can probably cut your bill in half by doing the packaging yourself.