So the smaller volumes and potentially more frequent purchases of these products may add some to the cost. Of note is the fact that the fresh food diets are shipped in small portions every few weeks while the raw diets are usually sold in small packages ($700 for a 20lb bag of freeze-dried raw dog food, if it was available! With dry foods, the smaller the package, the higher the cost per calorie. But both dry and wet foods are dramatically less expensive than fresh foods or raw foods – the fresh foods I surveyed (6 popular brands) cost 4 – 6 times what the most expensive dry food cost and 18-27 times more than the least expensive dry food! The highest price food cost about 36 times what the lowest priced food cost for a year! The yearly costs ranged from $201 to over $7,000 – a pretty dramatic range! Feeding only wet food costs about 5 times as much as feeding only dry food, even when feeding the same food brands for both wet and dry. All of the dry food was less expensive than the alternatives, even though I included one of the most expensive popular dry foods. The daily costs ranged from 55 cents to nearly $20 for the same amount of calories! Some of the mass market dry and canned were quite a bit cheaper than the “premium” brands, but there was definitely overlap, especially for the canned foods. Here’s what I found in terms of costs to feed the average 55lb dog: All of the products were at their regular price, none were on sale. I selected only foods marketed for adult dogs ( puppy foods are often more expensive) and stuck with chicken or “original” flavors, to avoid increased costs from exotic meats or other ingredients and to allow for a better comparison. When possible, I selected the same brand of dry and canned food in each category for a more direct comparison. For cans, I based my calculations on cases of 12 when available, rather than individual cans, and always the biggest cans available (typically 12-13 oz). I based the dry food prices on the bag closest in size to 30lb, as this is a common size to purchase for a medium-to-large dog and larger bags are often less expensive per pound than smaller ones. I gathered pricing info from the websites of the stores where the diets would generally be purchased. I picked diets that represented well-known, popular foods in each category, trying to select those that I perceived to be some of the most popular diets at both the bottom and top of the price range that I’ve seen for the category. Note that we do not recommend raw feeding because of health risks to pets and people!
To get a better sense of current dog food expenses, I collected some data on the cost to feed certain types of dog foods to a hypothetical pet – a 55lb dog needing a very average 1100 kcal (1 kcal = 1 “human” Calorie) from food each day to maintain weight.
How much can one expect to spend on the different types of dog food? The costs for each type of food can vary dramatically! There are four main types or forms of commercial pet food: dry foods, wet foods (cans, pouches, tubs), fresh food (cooked and purchased fresh or frozen), and raw (frozen or freeze-dried). We previously posted on estimating costs of pet foods and it seems like a great time to revisit the topic, this time focusing on the typical costs of feeding various types of pet foods. US pet food and treat sales were around $42B in 2020 and estimated to top $44B when all the 2021 data is finalized. Pet food costs are particularly relevant right now, when the costs of many consumer goods have increased rapidly in the last year, leaving many of us paying more for our food as well as that for our pets. I was recently teaching a group of veterinary students and we got into a discussion about the costs of various types of pet foods.
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