Pet
Food
Review

The Real Cost of Feeding Your Pet!

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.

Have a look at the table below which tries to show the difference that feeding rates have on the yearly cost of feeding a labrador of 30kg in weight.

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.

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.