Orijen - HOLY COW $$$$

 

Yes, and I can't afford to feed it anymore which stinks because it's the food Rosco does the best on by far.

You WILL feed a LOT less of it over the Natural Balance though. And they actually have proof of where their meat sources come from....this company is VERY thorough and I can see their raise in prices. Heck everything else is going up. 

When I was feeding the Orijen, the medium sized bag was more then enough for a full month for 3 dogs.

But yes, all the grain-free, good kibbles have gone up....thus the reasoning I gave up and just switched to homecooked.

EDITED: I do have 2 little dogs and only one 55# puppy, though. I could not afford to feed 2 55# dogs this same kind of diet. But again, I switched to Honest Kitchen Preference pre-mix and mixing it with my homecooked meats, turning out to be quite a bit cheaper in the long run.

Also, Orijen is a lot richer in actual protein sources then Natural Balance is by far, I think the first 4 ingredients are all meat. If I went back to kibble, I'd still chose to feed the Orijen and possibly some homecooked.

Natural Balance is not grain-free with 3-4 meats as the first ingredients, is it?

 Yes, it's lethally expensive and believe it or not, I pay more than that because mine has to be imported from over there.  Hence my impending switch to raw, since I figured out that I can feed Ben AND the eventual Maremma raw for less than just Ben on Orijen.

stanton

Natural Balance is not grain-free with 3-4 meats as the first ingredients, is it?

I can't vouch for every NB food on the market, but I buy the Limited Ingredients line that IS grain free.  The ingredients for this bag:

Potatoes, Duck Meal, Duck, Canola Oil (preserved with natural mixed tocopherols), Potato Fiber, Natural Flavor, Salmon Oil, Flaxseed, Potassium Chloride, Choline Chloride, Taurine, L-Lysine, L-Carnitine, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Vitamin E Supplement, Iron Proteinate, Zinc Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Potassium Iodide, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B-1), Manganese Proteinate, Manganous Oxide, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin A Supplement, Biotin, Calcium Pantothenate, Manganese Sulfate, Sodium Selenite, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B-6), Vitamin B-12 Supplement, Riboflavin (Vitamin B-2), Vitamin D-3 Supplement, Folic Acid.

My dogs do very well on the various potato diets, so I like to stick with that ingredient.

And I understand about being able to feed less -- but Luke (83 lbs) already only gets 3 cups a day and wouldn't be very happy being cut down even more.  lol  It would still cost a lot more per month to feed.  I guess Orijen just isn't in my budget.

I can see how people could make the arguement that feeding raw is cheaper -- if you feed Orijen.  Again, if I had two dogs of Kaiser's size (14 lbs) it would be a different story.  That $80 bag would last half a year instead of 3/4 of a month.

KarissaKS

I can see how people could make the arguement that feeding raw is cheaper -- if you feed Orijen. 

 

Actually with the supplier I've sourced it would be cheaper even if I fed a much less expensive food, but the price of the Orijen does certainly make the difference more pronounced.

 If you wanted to try Orijen, I might shop around a little online.  I order the Orijen for the pups now, because there are usually good shipping deals and such.  I recently discovered that ordering the dogs' Orijen online is at least $15 cheaper than ordering it in the store (including shipping).  But it is definitely still going to be one of the more expensive foods on the market. 

It's the food that I will swear by though.  Honor and Nike have incredible results when on Orijen, and as long as I can afford to feed them it, I will.  I do have the advantage of having three smaller dogs, I go through approx. 3 cups a day between the three of them.  It does work out that I feed less on Orijen as well, which means I can go for longer before I buy more.

That formula of NB that you posted is mostly carb based, in fact, it's quite high in carbs with the first ingredient being potatoes. It may not have *grains* per-say, but it's no better then a grain-based diet.

I'd maybe look into Healthwise from Naturapet.com, same company that makes Innova, it's around same price you're paying, and the adult Active formula is real high protein with little carbs.

Seems like your dogs are young and energetic, if you fed them a food with meat as the first or even first 2 ingredients, you'll probably feed a lot less.

Yes, it is just as expensive around here. I bought one bag of it and the dogs seemed to go through it just as quickly as other foods, so I haven't bought any more.

I'm a serious cheapo. I object to paying those kind of prices for kibble period, no matter how good. And Natural Balance is a non-starter for me - even it is a seriously expensive way to feed my dogs mostly potato or sweet potato with a taste of fish or duck or venison. Lulu is on a sweet potato and fish based diet now - she's the easiest one to prep for now even though she gets twice as much food. Just start the sweet potatoes, then later pop a case of tilapia filets in the oven (no worries about ethoxyquin), steam a couple other veggies and prepare her vitamin and mineral blend for use through the week. I do hers and then do all the rest while her stuff is cooling. And even though the tilapia is fairly expensive (about $3/pound and she eats 4 pounds a week), the fish is, of course, the only significant expense for her. Let's see, I feed a 100 pound dog for about $48 a month. It would cost twice that for Orijen and probably three times as much for NB because NB is so light on calories.

 I switched Bugsy over to Orjen Fresh Fish and yes it is expensive but I just bought two bags (29.7lbs) at $67 each with free shipping.  There is one local place I can get it and I think it comes to $71 with tax but the regular formula is cheaper.

it is a great food and he's doing better than ever allergy-wise on it and I do feed less of it than any other food we've tried.  For me that bag will last about 5 wks as I do about 1-2 raw meals a week.  There is absolutely no way I could feed him raw for 5wks for $67.

If he didn't have the allergies he does I would likely try others but for him this is really our number one option

That formula of NB that you posted is mostly carb based, in fact, it's quite high in carbs with the first ingredient being potatoes. It may not have *grains* per-say, but it's no better then a grain-based diet.

I don't consider Natural balance to be even remotely acceptable. Big bag of potatoes with a tiny sprinkle of meat. Of course it's cheaper per pound than a food actually made out of quality meat. But it's not worth what they charge for it- consider how cheap potatoes are. And not something you want to base a dog's diet on.