Every pet owner wants to provide their pet with the best food they can possibly afford. In your search for quality nutrition, often times we look at the cost of premium pet foods and gasp at the prices. What you are about to learn is that quality pet foods are not nearly as ‘pricey’ as they appear. Quality ingredient cost much more, but they also mean you feed less – on average Pet insurance less.
So let’s break it down to cost per meal… Let’s say your pet currently eats 1 cup of food per day. A 20 pound bag of food will provide you with about 50 servings. If the food costs you $15.00 for a 20 pound bag – that equals about .30 per dog insurance meal.
Now with a good quality pet food – feeding about 1/3 less – a 20 pound bag will provide you about 80 servings. If the better food costs $30.00 for a 20 pound bag – that breaks down to a little less than .38 cents a meal.
So even though the price tag of the food reads to be twice as expensive – it’s actually far from the truth. Using the above example, at .30 cents per meal, two meals a day, in one month you are spending around $18.00 per month to feed a pet with the inferior food. With the apparent twice as expensive higher quality pet food, at .38 cents per meal, two meals a day, in one month you are spending around $22.80 per month. Less than $5.00 per month difference that can save you thousands of dollars in vet bills and add years to their life. You must look at the cost per meal to completely give the price of the food consideration.
Here is what has happened to us…for years and years we’ve watched the television commercials of pet food. They emphasize the words ‘for your pet’s health’ or ‘choice’. We’ve trusted them and we’ve followed their directions to feed our pet 2 or 3 cups of food per day. What we didn’t know was that those recommended 2 or 3 cups of food was necessary because the pet food contained cheap inferior nutrition sources like by-products, meat and bone meal, and grains.
So, it has become our habit to feed more – which they do need more with inferior ingredients. Then someone like myself comes along and tells you how horrible ingredients like by-products and meat and bone meal are – and you learn that grains such as corn, wheat, and soy are inferior – and since this recent pet food recall, you learn that chemicals can actually be added to variations of these grains (glutens)…so then you look over your options at the pet store or online. And you think in terms of how much per ‘bag’ of food. After all, you’ve probably tried several different types of pet food in the past – maybe even one or two that cost a little more than the cheap brands – and you still ended up feeding the same 2 or 3 cups of food a day. Naturally, you look at the $30.00 for a 20 pound bag of pet food and gasp at the cost – you are thinking just the way they want you to think…in terms of the cost of the bag, not the cost of the serving.