Feeding Animals OS?

Bit late to grow yourself now, but ask any friends & family to save you sunflower seeds. I used to grow giant ones and could get enough seeds to last for months. Parrot and mice will eat these.

I have 5 cats and get through approx 2kg Iams and 7 tins of food a week. Mine would quite happily stick to tinned food (once they've had Whiskas they won't eat anything else!) but I have 2 large-breed youngsters that need a constant supply of quality food. The 1 or 3kg bags are often on BOGOF if you shop around, but I find they go off the Iams if I buy the large bags - it must get "stale" very quickly.
Autarky dry dog food very good value (about £15 for 15kg), my Lab gets itchy on anything else. I store the bag in a large flip-top kitchen bin.

Loved the thread. I am saving huge amounts on my food bill by doing os and choosing to shop at times the supermarkets are reducing. However my cats are not prepared to make such economies. One is very picky. She didn't speak to me for days when we moved from the very expensive Hills food to slightly less expensive Iams. She literally sat with her back tuned to me when I dared to offer Lidls tinned food.

Any suggestions welcomed!

if you got a local butcher that you use regular.... if you ask he will normally give you bones and scraps for free..... i do this with my butchers....and it does save on the food bill....as the days he has bones and scraps he's not asking for food, same...when we had the cat.......
with the mice i found that wild bird food... was a lot easier for them to eat... plus its half the price of hamster food.....i also had dwarf hamsters at the time... and they had the wild bird food , and they done really well on it.....
also go to a little independant pet shop to buy your loose food....dont buy that in the supermarkets or big chain pet stores.... as they are prepacked and more expensive.....same as the koi food.. go to yuor local pet shop...and buy it by the lb.....ooops its kg now.....and you can have the quantity that you want.... so if your a bit short one week htey normally will weigh the amount that you want....or might help you keep in budget that way....

homemade dog biscuits.... buy reduced wholemeal bread.....thinly spread marmite or bovril on them.... and bake them in the oven on a slow heat....so then you have yuor own doggie treats......

and you can also add boiled rise......pasta.......carrots..... to your dogs tinned food to bulk it up......

hope some of these things that we used to do/still do helps....

We BARF feed our dogs, and one of the cats will eat some raw meat. We get raw meaty bones from butchers for about 50p a tray, does 2-3 meals, and we get raw meat from a supplier we found in yellow pages, they give us chicken wings for free :j they also do cooked meats cheap if you dont want to feed raw. I use my smoothie maker to pulp veg for them, either our leftovers or any that might not be as fresh as I would like for us humans, you can also pick up cheap veg in greengrocers, ours has a box of cheap veg thats not fit for humans but people will buy for pets. Any surplus veg goes into the freezer, so I always have a supply handy for them. If you do a google search theres loads of info on the net available. It is a bit time consuming at the start but once you get used to it, it becomes 2nd nature, just like balancing meals for your kids/self. A good book to buy is Give your dog a bone, cant remember who the author is. We have a book, which I've lent out so cant remember the title, by Kymthy Schultz (sp?) which gives advice for dogs and cats. I got it from Amazon for about a fiver.
If you want to stick to tinned, Chappie is a decent cheap dog food, a lot of vets recomend it, I always have a tin handy for emergencies, ie, I've forgotten to take stuff out of freezer and dont have any tins of fish to feed them. I bulk buy james wellbeloved cat food from pets at home, they always seem to have it on 3 for 2 or buy 2 and save X amount.My cats will eat Lidl and Aldi's cat food, but I like to buy them a variety, as you knwo how bored they can get with food :rolleyes:
As for supplements,( for my dogs) they get a garlic clove each every day in there food, this also wards off fleas, I give them a herbal dog supplement called Keepers mix, I got a huge tub from t'internet for about £8 and its lasting me ages. If you feed them chickenwings, offal and fish a few times a week it shouldnt cost you too much for supplements. Most of the veg they get is fed raw, apart from cabbage,broccoli,cauli and sprouts, I was adviced to cook these first. Some people feed fruit as well, one of my dogs will eat it but the other wont, so I uaually stick to veg, They also get raw egg mixed in a few times a week.
I have often wondered about feeding my fish a more natural food, and I remember when my dad used to keep fish, he would feed them lettuce, not sure if this is safe these days with pesticides etc. Might try my local petshop and see how much it would cost to feed them the live food, like brineshrimp etc. I used to work in a petshop years ago and once a week would treat my fish to live food, they loved it. Now I only have 2 fish, so it might last a bit longer.
Hope this has been of some help. I'm no expert on pet food, have picked a lot up from different forums I use, and been given some great advice from others with more experience, if you've got the time, have a look around t'internet.
Sue