Quality Tinned Dog Food at a reasonable price?

moments_of_sanity

Good Evening all you lovely dog owners - we have two Border Collies, one aged 2.5 and one at 18 weeks old. We currently feed them Autarky (adult and puppy) but they also like 'wet food' with it. We feed them Nature Diet at the moment but that is costing us over £2.50 per day in wet food alone :eek:

Can anyone recommend a good quality wet food that I can feed them that won't cost me as much?

Caroline_a

I get frozen meat from a local farm shop. It's really cheap - costs me about £3 a week for a large German Shepherd and a greedy young Spinone. It seems to be a mixture of mince, tripe and offal, and they love it. However there are places online where you can buy frozen dog food - I've never bought tinned food, as you're paying for water and tin, and my dogs have either been fed on complete food, or raw as they are now.

moments_of_sanity

Caroline_a wrote: »

I get frozen meat from a local farm shop. It's really cheap - costs me about £3 a week for a large German Shepherd and a greedy young Spinone. It seems to be a mixture of mince, tripe and offal, and they love it. However there are places online where you can buy frozen dog food - I've never bought tinned food, as you're paying for water and tin, and my dogs have either been fed on complete food, or raw as they are now.

What brand and how much per day do you feed yours? should I cut it by half if I am feeding Autarky as well?

Apologies for all the questions but I have seen the Raw diet before but don't know much about it.

rising_from_the_ashes

I'm similar to Caroline - I'd never feed mine tinned as it's pretty much full of horrible things.

I buy frozen chicken pieces and also get loads of veg (carrots, bit of swede, loads of cabbage, broccoli etc), cook, mix together and freeze in individual meal size portions.

Works out from about 10p / 20p meal (depending on whether I've managed to get a load of reduced veg or had to pay full price for it).

moments_of_sanity

rising_from_the_ashes wrote: »

I'm similar to Caroline - I'd never feed mine tinned as it's pretty much full of horrible things.

I buy frozen chicken pieces and also get loads of veg (carrots, bit of swede, loads of cabbage, broccoli etc), cook, mix together and freeze in individual meal size portions.

Works out from about 10p / 20p meal (depending on whether I've managed to get a load of reduced veg or had to pay full price for it).

Where do you get your chicken meat from and what quantities do you mix veg & meat?

rising_from_the_ashes

I tend to buy these:

http://groceries.asda.com/asda-estore/search/searchcontainer.jsp?trailSize=1&searchString=frozen+chicken&domainName=Products&headerVersion=v1&_requestid=62593 - £1.39 for 1kg
http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/index.jsp?bmUID=1311362387605 - £3.79 for 2.5kg or
http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=259192841 - £3 for 2kg

If you've a Farmfoods/Iceland etc near you, you may find them cheaper.

They take a few minutes to "pick" once cooked but you can get loads of meat off them. I tend to buy several bags and cook a load at one time.

Re portions, not an exact science for me anymore (I used to weigh each portion religiously but got fed up with it) - he gets a good handful of veg and about a tablespoon of meat.

He does get a good quality dry food (Wainwrights or Skinners - he is wheat intolerant) and used to just get a lot more meat mixed in but he was getting a bit podgy so it was the vet who suggested adding more veg to bulk up his meals and cut the amount of meat & dry down.

One word of advice ...... if your dogs aren't used to getting veg, start with a little and build up gradually!!!

Beckyy

You can feed the chicken portions raw, they're great for cleaning teeth. If it's cooked then definitely no bones.

Veg are good for bulking out, but dogs can't break down the cell walls to to actually get any benefit fromt hem they would need to be pureed/finely mashed. Youc an give them normally for extra 'bulk' to meals though, my dog loves broccoli!

I feed my dog on a full raw diet. You can get dog meat from Pets at Home (it's pricer from there). there are also many other suppliers such as Durham animal feeds, Landywoods and The dog food company.