Need to find a good food

There are a lot of options out there and I'm with you - I will only go so far with the amount of money that I can afford to spend on dog food. Luckily, I happened upon Canidae, after doing some research, and both of my dogs do well on it.

http://www.canidae.com/dogs/all_life_stages/dry.html

You can get a 40 lb bag for about $35 so that is not much more than you are paying for Beneful but it has much better ingred's. The best part is that you can feed every one of your dogs this food, from puppy to senior.

The most important thing when picking a dog food though is to find one that works for your dog - regardless of anyone's opinion on what is good or not good. If your dogs are healthy on whatever food you chose then there's no reason to switch (just my 2 cents) 

I pay about $30 for a 40 lb bag of all life stages Canidae.  I realize that's a bit more than you want to spend, but you should be able to feed LESS (kcals will be higher in Canidae).  It'll balance out most likely, depending on the kcals per cup in the beneful.

I was also going to suggest Canidae.  You will actually need to feed less of it so the price will probably work out the same, I believe the feeding recommendation on the bag is two cups for a 50 pound dog, I'm certain that Beneful is more.   

I agree, do what works for your dogs!  Don't think you have to be on super premium or are a "bad owner" or anything, you are doing research which shows you want the best for your dogs, so don't feel down if people say something negative.  We all have to do the best we can with what we have!

I fourth the Canidae recommendation, and agree that it should work for all of your dogs. The original formula is $30/40 lbs around here.

If that's just too much there is also Diamond Naturals, which runs around $20/40 lbs. Even though they have all their products broken down in to stages, the adult formulas are all life stages like the Canidae, however feeding recommendations are 1/2 to 1 cup more than the Canidae.

 If you're also a Costco member, some of their food is actually pretty decent, too. I think they have some organic line or something? It's made by Diamond, anyways, but the ingredients are pretty good and it's at Costco prices :)

Natural Balance is another one that's a great food at a pretty good price. I get a discount on mine but I think you can get a 35lb. bag at PetCo for around $38. As others have said, you should be able to feed less and make that 35 lb. bag go a lot farther on a better quality food, so that will probably help you break even on the price. Just for comparison's sake, my 55 lb. dog eats 2 cups of Natural Balance a day, my 90 lb. dog eats 3.5 cups a day. It takes us over 3 weeks to get through that 35 lb. bag.

Something that would be a definite step up but not quite a premium food is Nutro Natural Choice. I think that can be had at pretty much the same price as you're paying for the Beneful.  

Hey Steph,

Good for you for wanting to get better quality foods. Just so you know there is a pet food store in Frederick on Patrick Street that sells good quality foods including canidae. This is where we buy Salems food, and our cats food and they are pretty helpful. It might be a good idea to go there and just talk to them. Some of the foods they sell there have programs where you buy so many bags and get one free so that might help with the prices too. Canidae isn't to expensive I don't think.

There is also a smaller place in Middletown too that sells good stuff. We don't have anything great in H-town other than the big chains.

LillianD

recommendation on the bag is two cups for a 50 pound dog, I'm certain that Beneful is more.

 Wow, Co-co (~50#) eats 3.5 cups a day and Blaze (~ 50#) eats 3.  Those amounts keep them at a stable weight.  I would think, even after playing around w/ the amount for each dog, it would still probably be less per day.  I guess I'm gonna head over to Frederick this weekend and talk to the people that SalemsMom suggested, and start reading some labels

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions (and if anyone has more, keep 'em coming) and for keeping the thread positive, I really appreciate that.

This is the place in Frederick: http://www.thedawgwash.com/

Middletown: http://www.for-petes-sake.com/index.html - This one is kind of hard to find, but it still sells some good foods.

So after all the recommendations for Canidae I popped over to their website to check it out.  Their ALS formula is 468 kcals per cup, that's more than 100 more than Beneful (360 kcals per cup).  I'll probably be able to cut Blaze and Co-Co's portion by 1/2 to a cup, but Mystic I think, will have a drastic change...right now she eats (up to, she doesn't always eat the full amount) 7 cups of puppy food a day, their suggestion is 5-6 for a puppy and 3-4 for an adult...major difference.

 And checking out the ingriedient list...I could actually recongize most of the top things.  I hope the price isn't to much higher, becuase now I'm really excited to try this.  (I know to switch slowly)

Thanks for the links, SalemsMom, I'm gonna go check those out too.

I just wanted to add to switch them over very slowly. 

7 cups of puppy food a day! good lord! Neiko eats 4c of Canidae and I thought that was a lot! You must be going through food like crazy 

I feed Nature's Variety Prairie kibble to an adult German Shepherd, just under 60lbs.  She is very active, high energy, high drive.  She eats 2 cups of food a day (plus one canned sardine, one dollop of plain yogurt, and a raw egg every other day).

 So, I don't agree at all with the way the foods are broken out on this page (Eukaneba? Super-premium? Yeah, not so much) BUT here's a nice chart that compares the nutrition analysis and caloric contents of lots of different dog foods. You still have to look at the ingredients because caloric content and protein/fat/carb content can be deceptive (a lot of low quality foods use non-meat protein sources to up their protein analysis, for instance) but it can be a good place to start checking out different foods as far as calorie and protein contents. And definitely a good resource when trying to convince someone that a better food is more cost-effective when considering nutrition-per-cup.

http://www.gooddogmagazine.com/drydogfood.htm