Pet
Food
Choice

The Real Feeding Cost!

It is not easy working out the actual cost of feeding your dog or cat simply by looking at the cost of the tin or sack of pet food.

This is because feeding rates vary considerably between brands, mainly because of the types of ingredients used. Some protein and grain sources are much more digestible than others (e.g. rice is more easily digested than wheat or oats) so you have to feed more to get the same level of nutrition from the food.

Feeding a dry complete dog or cat food is always going to be cheaper than feeding a wet food (canned or pouch) but it's only when you look at the costs over a year that the differences become really profound.

The table below makes some basic assumptions, and is purely considering cost, not what goes into the food. These are all complete foods, so offer all the nutrients that your pet should require, and the costs are based upon the recommended feeding amounts for each of the foods, and at a typical retail price (at Jan 2008.)

I've only compared 15kg sacks of dry food for dog food, and therefore haven't included costs for a 5kg dog (the food would last way too long and probably go off!) However, even buying 2kg bags of food for a small dog, you would find feeding rates affect the actual cost/year in a similar, if less pronounced way.

As you can see, yearly costs of betweeen £107 and £1058 for a labrador can provide food for thought when choosing your dog's food!

Obviously feeding rates are much lower for cats, but that hasn't stopped some manufacturers from making very expensive product. As you can hopefully see below, the difference in yearly feeding costs between dry and wet foods is quite large, and even on a small sample of available foods, there's a range between £41 and £956 depending on your choice of food.

Feeding your cat is always dependant on how fussy an eater he or she is, and how much you want the diet to resemble human food!
All the diets above offer complete nutrition, but obviously ingredients vary and unit costs generally will reflect this.

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