Evo went up $10!!!

 I pay like $55 for the 28lbs of "white meat" so I guess thats not a lot to me for the red meat (which is $60+ anywhere I've looked). I've bought or priced the food in several different states too as we travel. Its been pretty consistent in the differnet places. $50-58 for white and $58-65 for red.

I just bought a 28lb bag of the Turkey for $52.00 which has been the same for a while.  The red meat was $62.00, yikes. This is from a small, local petshop, there is a feed store that is a few dollars cheaper but it's too far to make it worth the drive.

 okay, I'm late jumping in this one, but I was at Pet Extreme today and got a 30 lb bag of Cal Natural chicken and rice for $36.99. They have Wellness, Eagle Pack, EVO, Avoderm, Innova but I can't remember all the prices. They were mostly around $40-$45 per bag and some of the bags were up to 33 lbs. each. After reading some of the prices on this thread, I'm feeling kind of lucky.

I’ve been comparing dog food brands by quality and cost and created a spreadsheet comparing different brands and formulas which I pasted at the bottom of this post.

Based on what I’ve found so far I’m looking at switching to either Chicken Soup, Canidae, Healthwise, Premium Edge, or Solid Gold. 

Formulas listed are adult unless otherwise stated.  I tend to avoid the lamb formulas and the fancy ones like buffalo or herring, and choose the more mainstream ones like chicken or beef.

Sadly many of the dog food companies do sneaky things to make their products look better.  Here’s a few things I look out for.

• Bag weights creeping down, but price stays the same.  This comes across to me that the company is being deceitful, as opposed to keeping the bag weight the same (40 lbs) and increasing the price.  We consumers realize prices for everything are going up.  Treat us as smart people and don’t try to dupe us.  Just in the last few months I’ve noticed California Natural went from 36 lb bags to 30 lb; Evo and Candidae also went down a few pounds.
• Calorie information:  You’ll find kcal per “8 oz cup” listed on most dog food bags; it’s less likely you’ll see the Kcal per lb or kg, or the ounces by weight in an “8 oz cup.”  Just listing kcal per 8oz cup is a volume measure and doesn’t tell you the true calories of the food by weight.
• Glucosamine listed in “ppm” (parts per million) instead of by weight (mg/kg).  I’ve asked a few dog food companies what the ppm translates to in mg’s but never got an answer.
• Not replying to customer questions, particularly when I asked what the kcal/kg.  Nutro never replied to my multiple requests.  Some (Newman’s, Natural Balance) took a few emails to get what I really was asking for then they only gave me a figure for one formula.  So for those brands I never got answers from you’ll see a blank or “DIV/0” in that field, and I won’t be buying their brand.