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How much do you pay for pet food? It just might be cheaper for you to make it yourself than to purchase it at a grocery store.
I have a small dog that doesn’t eat very much, but the size of the dog
doesn’t matter. Look at the prices of your pet food in terms of cost
per pound. For years I bought a high quality pet food called EVO by
Natura. It was the best dry dog food I could find. It cost a bit more
than other brands.
One day I learned that garlic was deadly for dogs. Garlic will break down the cell walls of blood cells and eventually will kill your dog. EVO
ingredients show that garlic is within that food. I stopped feeding
EVO to my dog right away. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN ANY DOG FOOD COMPANY PUT SUCH A POISON INTO THEIR FOODS? Are they just that stupid? I contacted them about it and didn’t get a response.
I switched to using a cheaper dog food that didn’t have any bad
ingredients on the label. It cost $9.99 for a six pound bag. Then two
months later it cost $10.99. Then two months later it cost $11.99.
That equates to $2.00 per pound.
There are plenty of human foods that don’t cost $2.00 per pound.
Think about that for a moment. I can buy a whole turkey right now for $.87 per pound and even if I discount the weight of the bones it would be less than $1.00 per pound. That is for all meat too, not the rice or corn fillers that are bound to the “meat” that goes into making the dog food. During Thanksgiving 2009 I bought a whole turkey for only $.40 per pound.
It would be interesting if the pet food manufacturers actually said
which cuts of meat were used in their foods and exactly how much were in each pound of food. You must know that pet food manufacturers use all of the parts of animals in their pet food products. You can bet it is more than just the muscles.
For years I’ve known that canned dog food cost more than human food by the pound. It has been that way for decades. Only recently have I noticed that dry dog food is so much more than human food. This has probably been going on for years but it didn’t catch my attention until I got annoyed with the frequent price increases. The stories of poor people eating dog food instead of human food are now less likely to happen.
Right now I can buy ground beef for $2.49-$2.79 per pound. I can buy rice for much less than $1.00 per pound. Chicken legs and thighs cost as low as $.49 per pound on sale in ten pound bags. Usually it is closer to $.89 per pound.
This past week I’ve been out of dog food because the brand I have been buying is out of stock and didn’t come in on the last shipment. I’ve been feeding my dog a combination of rice and beef with a couple of spices mixed into it. She loves it much more than regular dog food. Of course I must spend the time to cook the rice and the hamburger.
I have a big pan in which I dump the ground beef. It gets cooked
quickly because I break it apart. It looks like the meat you would
find in a taco. I then add the cooked rice and stir fry it in the big
deep pan. This is when I add salt and some other things. I go very
easy on the spices. When making the rice I add olive oil to keep it
from sticking together. It is good for dogs too.
I make enough to last a week. It gets put into a sealed container and
refrigerated. I take it out twice a day to feed my dog. I heat the
individual portions in just a minute or two in the oven using the
broil setting. I don’t use microwave ovens because they destroy the
molecules of the food which ruins the nutritional value. DO NOT USE
GARLIC OR ONIONS! They are bad for dogs. I don’t know if they have
the same effect on cats.
Some vegetables aren’t good for individual dogs. My dog doesn’t do well with peas. Corn and potatoes are ingredients in some dog foods. I don’t feed those to my dog. Grains and other vegetables aren’t really part of a dogs natural diet. Rice doesn’t seem to cause as many problems with dogs as the other bulky vegetables do. I don’t give my dog any form of wheat for the same reason. Wheat isn’t really good for humans either.
As an aside, don’t ever feed grapes or raisins to dogs. They can kill your dog over time. The same is true of chocolate in case you didn’t already know.
I’m looking into exactly what ingredients would go into a multivitamin
for dogs. They don’t need vitamin C or B supplements because dogs
produce their own vitamin C and B. It is probably important that my
dog get some type of food supplement. My homemade dog food isn’t
getting all of the additives that a dog food manufacturer would put
into their foods. A human vitamin pill would be wasteful because it
would be full of vitamin C and B. It probably would contain other
things that a dog doesn’t need or would be harmful.
Have you ever realized that the price of your dog’s food costs more than some forms of meat?
If I really wanted to give my dog 100% chicken I could do it for half
the price of dry dog food by the pound. I’ve never boiled a chicken
before. I know some people like it cooked that way. I bet that I
could boil a chicken in a big pot or use a slow cooker and all of the
meat would just fall off the bones. That would make it extremely easy
to use as dog food. I could use the stock for my own foods throughout
the week. I just might give that a try this week.
There are also vertical chicken roasting racks. In case you don’t know,
they are wire racks that look a bit like long metal cones. One puts a
chicken over it. That makes it stand up vertically so that the heat
can easily reach all parts of the chicken at one time (inside and
outside). This makes it cook faster and all of the fat drops off into
a pan. This cooking method does make a chicken taste great but it
doesn’t make the meat fall off the bones.
What do you think about all of this? Would you prefer to feed your dog
store bought food that contains mystery ingredients that actually
cost more than human food, or would you prefer to cook your own pet
food from now on and save some money? It wouldn’t take much more time out of your day. You could just cook it at the same time you cook your own meals. Cook enough to last for a few days at a time and just heat the individual portions each day. If you have multiple dogs this would become a bit more work but it would still be cheaper and healthier for your animals than mystery animal food.
This is probably the best way to feed pets in the cheapest healthiest way. If done efficiently, cooking for your pets wouldn’t take up much more time out of your day. The time element probably pays for itself in the hours you won’t need to work to buy the pet food in the first place. It is also easier to transport more food to your home than needing to go to a specialty store to buy the right kind of pet food. Most grocery stores don’t sell the good pet food brands.
Please post some comments. Share your opinions and pet food recipes.
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