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Full stop the best thing I did was talk to a pet nutritionist and getting a meal plan made for my boy. Super affordable, easy to make up in bulk and freeze each week - and honestly it feels good to feed my boy something that resembles actual food. Turkey, carrots/zucchini, rice and vitamin powder - all told about an hour each week to prepare, portion out and freeze; and I’m pretty dang sure it comes out cheaper than the dried stuff in the long run.
We’ve had to start doing this because one of our cats just plain refuses to eat any commercial pet food produced over the last year and a half. He was formerly overweight and you couldn’t stop him from eating but now he’s actually underweight as we’ve tried to adapt and try different things.
Having formerly worked in a retail meat department, I know the expired product gets sent to be turned into pet food, but I suspect with supply issues during covid (and greed masked as inflation) manufacturers across the board have substituted whatever it was they were used before for something more inferior now. There aren’t any/many regulations on pet food nor legal protections for pets, so it can be the wild west out there.
Good boy’s eating better than me.
Can you share the recipe?
Sure, for small dog that weighs i think about six kilos: each day he gets 120 grams of protein, 60 grams of veggies, 30 grams of long rice, and .5tsp of vitamin /supplement powder. The recipe also calls for .5 tsp of oils, sunflower oil is recommended, but considering I don’t drain the drippings from the pan after the turkey and instead cook the veggies in it, idk. I usually don’t add extra oil. For protein we usually go with ground turkey, veggies we go with carrots or zucchini (diced in the processor and cooked in the drippings from the meat) and the vitamin powder is something we can pick up from the pharmacy here, but I think you can grab from Amazon. I’ll have to look that one up later.
Each week I get a kilo of turkey from our butcher and cook it down, and that comes out to just about 7 days give or take.
Another option is to read the labels of some of the premium refrigerated pup foods and get the ingredients from those without going to a pet nutritionist.
Yeah I think it’s the portions though that you want to talk to a nutritionist for though. The ingredients aren’t rocket science: protein, veggies, filler (rice), fats and vitamins. But making sure you aren’t over/under feeding is where I think you want to be careful
This is what my poor grandma used to feed the farm dogs in her area. It was the off cuts of meat boiled and deboned and served with grains and veggies. Looked like prison slop, but the dogs loved it, and it still seems more appetizing than dried pellets of “food.”
I’ve spent the last year trying to figure out if it’s actually the prices or if I’ve become one of those “When I was a kid, gasoline was 25 cents a gallon” old men.
Nah food prices have historically been pretty level due to the whole “bread and circuses” thing. The last year or two inflation has hit food prices harder than a lot of other things.
The government will probably start funneling our tax dollars to these manufacturers so that politicians can brag about lowering food costs while executives keep their pockets full. It’s a win - win scenario for them. We’ll just ignore where that money came from like funding for schools and roads.
Purina = Nestle
The feed I buy for my ducks increased by $5 in the past year and the bags went from 50 lbs to 40. My birds usually through 80lbs of feed in 2.5 weeks. I’m spending so much on feed, that I’ve been giving them wild bird seed(which is $10/20lbs) and grass clippings(free) as snacks during the day. It cuts down on how much feed they eat. Next year they are going to get an entire garden dedicated to their diet. I got the seeds this year, but didn’t start them early enough.
You know you can get ducks for free from the park, right?
The parks near us have gone to shit. Those degenerate geese moved in and the neighborhood hasn’t been the same. Haven’t seen a duck since.
Balls. That’s genuinely infuriating.
“our costs have gone up amidst am inflationary environment and we have had no choice but to increase prices. Oh hey don’t look at our financial statements, the fact that we made record profits is irrelevant.”
I worked in a pet supplies store about a year ago, and I was nonstop hearing complaints about the prices going up.
Yikes. A similar sized bag of dog food in my area is like $30 tops, and that’s the most expensive kind.
I agree, used to be under 50 bucks for the biggest bag we could find at the store. Now it’s well over 75.
I wish companies would be transparent in their supply chain logistic costs.
Financial news is flooded with “X multibillion dollar company hitting record breaking profits compared YoY” type headlines. Sure some companies might be taking advantage of “inflation” to bump the price of products and pocket the profit but some others might actually need to bump their price to stay competitive.
With no insight into this, it’s impossible to discern which companies are scumbags and which ones are just surviving.
Well, Purina is Nestle so you know they’re scumbags.
Obligatory “Fuck Nestle”
In my country we have 120% anual inflation or even more by some estimates. It’s awful living like that, I tell you that
I hope you don’t mind me asking, but two main questions come to mind when I hear about triple digit inflation.
First, is it normal to keep savings in another currency? I know in Turkey at least, it’s common to save money in gold, but I don’t know if either that or saving in, for example USD, is common.
Second, how do raises work in times like that? As things inflate at rates like that, your salary would so quickly become quite outdated. Are raises or job hopping common at that point?
And I guess a third question. How do you even life bro? I’m fortunate to live in a country with relatively high incomes and stable currency, and our 10% inflation hurt.
not OP but i can answer,
yes people do try to keep their money in foreign currency or gold. it has gotten so bad lately and banks practically stopped giving loans because they don’t make profit from giving them at low interest rates and with the loan, people just convert it to dollars so it devalues the currency even more.
salaries get crushed, middle class disintegrates and rich get even richer. raises are never adequate. there are no alternatives where would people job hop to?
life is painful, people are just trying to survive daily, they are always in debt and try to shuffle the debt between credit cards. but if your source of income scales with the foreign currency congrats, you are practically in heaven.
More than mildly infuriating! Was probably 30ish pre COVID. And constant supply issues. Have to run all over to find locally. And I’m in LA. Shouldn’t be hard to keep one of the worlds largest economies in supply, right?
Costco still sells 50lb packs for 30-50 bucks if you buy their brand (which, like all Kirkland products, is going to be high quality)
Yeah, cat food has gone up too :( Medium bag for like 30 dollars
You don’t have you buy it if its super expensive, people buying the same items even when the price increases to absurd levels just tells the producer that the consumer doesn’t give a shit ultimately and will continue to pay exorbitant prices.
I understand your pet may need a specific diet but there are always alternatives that will give the same nutritional benefit.
Also, that food is about $20 cheaper online if you must get it and near me at walmart its only $45 locally. It’s kind of insane the amount they gouge based on region.
have you considered jus letting your dog die?
Why doesn’t your dog just get off its lazy ass and get a part time job to help with expenses?
I ask my dog this all the time, actually.
Nah people are taking what I said to the extreme. Nothing I said was wrong.
Only your third paragraph was realistically helpful advice.
Yikes 😬
35 LB isn’t even that much if you have a medium dog.
Nope. 28 lbs last me about a month for two medium sized dogs. The brand I get was normally on sale for around $42 pre Covid but it’s nearing $60 now
I get about a month and a half for a large dog. Its absolutely insane.
It makes me really sad because my girl passed away last year and my boy is getting bored and wants a friend but I just can’t afford to pay for the food. I’ve been thinking about fostering senior pitbulls instead because I would have a better chance of hanging on to them until they passed away if I fostered seniors. At least the Foster company pays for any medical treatment and food that the dog needs
Those pitbulls would attack you dog. Either dumb or just don’t care. I don’t care if this offends you, for the sake of animal safety you need to hear it.
Why do you such a strong stance against pitbulls? It sounds like the poster above may already be someone who has cared for/is caring for that specific breed of dog. If they are comfortable with it and are good owners, why would it matter?
