Fact is a lot is made of dog food ingredients and especially cheap dog food ingredients. Many swear by cheap brands while others even say the more expensive brands are not good and some expensive brands are just as poor but marketed differently.
Affordable deals
Dog food can be made more affordable by buying in bulk. There are many warehouses that assuming you have a car you can fill your larder up to the ceiling with supplies of cheap dog food and the saving can be spent on a better quality as too cheap is often not a good choice for your dog. Try looking here and save money by purchasing 50lb bags.
What’s best to buy?
It’s so confusing when you’re not an expert yourself and sometimes were listening to advice of others that really know no more than you do yourself.
Of course good marketing can make cheap sound nutritious and some can do such a good marketing job that even expensive can be little better than cheap. Some brands have that accusation thrown at them.
Read the contents
What does come across clearly is that the thing to pay most attention too is ingredients. Even there you have to be careful. The rule is that you have to put whatever content dominates the ingredients down first. So if meat is the main ingredient then meat comes first on the list of ingredients. Or does it?
Just as I’m meant to be helping and making things clear to you I’m about to confuse you. When they say 20% meat then what that can mean is meat before it is cooked. By the time it is cooked and the natural water content of the meat is gone then 20% can mean 6%. So basically the relevance of what’s written on the label is dubious.
You want cheap, you get cheap
You don’t have to sacrifice quality too much and a trip to your nearest Costco could save you lots. You can get a decent brand at a similar price to a cheaper brand on a supermarket shelf if you’re prepared to buy a good amount.
A little common sense has to come into play and the reason we buy cheap dog food is because it’s cheap. What we have to do as consumers is balance between cheap and useless. Another tip is ranch stores like Flint River catalogue.
Well as the information on the labels regarding meat content could be misleading us perhaps the next thing to go by is fillers. Obviously fillers are what make it cheap. Corn is cheap and a little corn in dog food is fine but if it’s rammed to the brim with white rice, corn, wheat, soy and other fillers then could be a clue that it’s not too nutritious for your dog.
But without some of these ingredients naturally it will not be cheap. So instead of trying to understand the science and playing at being a pet nutritionist lets judge it another way and work out the economics from the point of view of the dog food manufacturer and your pocket.
Not all it seems
Meat is meat and if it says beef, chicken or lamb then that is what you get. If it says meat by-products, it is hoof, eyeballs, hair and many other glue making materials. So think of 20% meat as roughly 6% meat in real terms then were getting nearer to reading that label correctly. If its meat by products its meat by products. That’s not really meat.
Too much corn or other fillers then no matter how cheap ignore it but that does not mean to say corn is all-bad. Some filler is of better quality than other fillers. Brown rice is fine white rice not so good but still you don’t want a can full of rice whether brown or not. But don’t let the inclusion of some filler be your guide. If you want a cheaper dog food, expect it. Without some filler, it’s going to be another high priced dog food.
If you cannot afford a high priced brand that is recommended by vets, animal nutritionists and Albert Einstein’s dentist then simply stick with a mid range known brand that seems adequate for the majority of dog owners, and most of them are not dying of diseases and contamination of melamine.
The dog food connoisseurs can argue all day but most dogs should be fine on it. If it comes to light that your dog does not get on with it, or has some allergy emerge from eating it then worry about it then. At that point, you see a vet and then you can get qualified advice about what to feed your dog after the allergy has been diagnosed.
Too cheap too bad
Just be warned that the cheap brands do some shocking things to make very poor dog food edible. Spraying fat onto filler for example, to make it tasty for the dog. Cheap dog food is fine but not too cheap.
It would not be making any profit at that price if it had too much quality products in the can or packet. This is not expert advice just trying to make some sense out of alleged facts and figures none of us truly understand.
There are articles on the benefits of homemade recipes for your dog if you have the time. Raw meat is usually fine but never pork but beef is ok. You run a small chance of giving your dog bacteria or worms but if you buy it from a reputable source then it shouldn’t be a problem. But to be on the safe side maybe cook it.