Here it is; I'm told that Victor may be closer to $38/bag at our local farmer's co-op. I'm going to try to go there tomorrow to get some more info on my lunch break. The previous post shows the text that accompanied the chart on Facebook. (ETA-- just went back and saw that it's around $38 WITH TAX. All the chart prices are before tax, so the Victor price should still be about right.)
I'm asked general dog questions all the time, particularly about food. And let's be real. Feeding raw the convenient way isn't even close to being affordable for most people; and making it themselves isn't really in the cards for most others. It's still is daunting and can be time consuming-- if you're not prepping the ingredients and processing meat, you're tracking down deals. It can be costly if you can't buy in bulk or find good deals. And it's just not for the squeamish or the busy.
Back when we used to feed kibble as their sole diet, I wanted to get the. Very best food we could afford, and we couldn't afford much. But we also had a variety of dietary needs, etc.
And I am OCD in a very real way. I wanted to know if the better foods really were cheaper than they looked, which we could best afford... And so I did all these calculations scribbled on legal pads. I did this for the cats, too. I loaned my scribbles to people looking for new foods, I lost them. I did them over...
I've got a lot of friends recently with new dogs, so I thought now would be a great time to formalize that chart.
The long and short is, high quality foods may cost more per bag or per pound, but that's not the whole story.
I had to make a number of informed assumptions to create the chart
First, I used the feeding guidelines as recommended by the manufacturer. It's important to know that these are frequently inflated. But I wanted to use the conditions that the average owner would be using, and I'm not really interested in making the decision about how many calories a 25 or 50lb dog needs.
In calculating cups per bag, I used the kcal/kg or grams/cup compared to calories per cup to determine this. So if a 30lb bag of food has 4000 calories per kg, and 400 calories per cup:
30lbs = 13.64kg (@2.2lbs/kg)
13.64kg x 4000 = 54,560 calories per bag
54,560 / 400 calories per cup = 136.4 cups per bag
Make sense?
The problem here is that you're moving from weight to volume to measure mass, so it can't be accurate. A pound of gravel takes up more volume than a pound of sand. And each measuring cup, even if it measures 8floz like every other one cup measure, the variations in shape are going to garner different mass.
So, I cannot promise that there are exactly that many cups and it will cost exactly that much per day, etc. But I don't think it negates the overarching point: that "expensive food" isn't necessarily expensive.
These foods are representative. Remember that each of these brands has numerous flavors and varieties, and each one is not the same-- not the same caloric content, not the same price per day, not the same ingredients. But, again, they represent options.
Some are owned by big companies. When I say that they have been recalled, know that it's not necessarily that flavor, but rather that variety; I've done my best to find the correct info here-- please let me know if I'm wrong-- however, these are huge companies and some have had huge recalls.
Take the recalls with a grain of salt. Salmonella, as I think I've talked about before, isn't so scary for dogs, more so for people (so wash your hands!). I'm usually more concerned with how the company handles a issue like that. I'll let you research those yourself for now.
You get what you pay for, but not always. My choice of foods here was meant to represent some mid-range grocery brands, what we've traditionally thought of as "good, fancy" food, and an affordable range of more holistic foods (grain free and inclusive), and there's a wide spectrum of cost across the board.
Victor is one of the cheaper foods; but it's ingredients are solid and certain varieties boast that they are GMO free with American sourced proteins. They are a family-owned company, as is Merrick; Whole Earth Farms (made by Merrick) is USA made with no Chinese-sourced products. But Blue Buffalo is one of the most expensive. It's good food, but of those three, which has the most familiar name? Blue spends a lot on advertising, whereas the others don't.
On the other hand, the 1-3 star foods have a lot of cheap fillers, but they spend even more on advertising than Blue. Who do you think is spending more on quality ingredients?
The returns go beyond your pocketbook. Dogs eating more nutritious food eat less and utilize more-- meaning smaller poops. Ingredients that they can handle better means less body odor, fewer allergies, less itching, fewer staph infections-- the potential for fewer and lower vet bills over time.
Healthier, happier dogs.
And every dog is an individual. Each of the 4-5 star foods are good foods, but each is different. Some may tolerate certain brands and varieties better than others, so if one doesn't work for your dog, don't give up. It doesn't mean it's bad food, and it doesn't mean holistic or natural foods are BS.
This isn't exhaustive, it's not complete-- it will always be in flux. I will add to and adjust as new information comes in or as new foods crop up.
I hope it's a start...
No comments:
Post a Comment