[Carmeow]

Originally Posted by Teresiana

I've worked my way up to a variety of proteins at this point...chicken, cornish game hen, pork, beef, lamb. But I did chicken only for the first few weeks...slowly adding bone, liver & other organs. I'm also really picky about where my meat comes from, expecially chicken. So I end up paying premium prices for chicken that is not necessarily organic, but definiately humanely raised with no antibiotics or hormones. I actually get my chicken from a farm. Same with beef. You have to be really careful with liver too. Since the liver basically detoxifies the body, I'd rather be certain that the liver my pups are eating are coming from a healthy source. So I suppose you could go to Walmart or Costco to get your meat if you're not concerned with things like that. But I'm the type of person who needs to know where my meat is coming from & I want to be safe. I'd feel horrible if I made my pups sick in the process of trying to feed them something healthier than kibble.

So let's just say that your pups are eating only chicken, 5% of their body weight & your chicken is $4.99/lb. If you have 2 pups (at 5 lbs each to make the math easy), that's 4 ounces of chicken per day per pup...8 ounces for both per day. That's $2.50 per day for both pups. That's $75 a month for food. That's not a lot of money in the scheme of things, but it's more than kibble. That's also assuming that your chicken is $4.99/lb. I'm sure there are cheaper places to get chicken. I'm in NYC. Everything's expensive here.

The butcher part comes in with the organs. They don't sell kidney, heart, pancreas, lung, spleen & brains at your average Safeway. So you need to find a source for that part of the diet. I'm sure if you found a good butcher, they'd probably give those parts away to a good customer. But like I said, I haven't found a great butcher. And the farm I go to is FAR.

Sorry for the long post. Perhaps I'm making it sound more complicated that it really is. Heather has it down! She's way more confident & knowledgeable about it than I am. I'll probably do some more research on raw feeding puppies - just to try to figure out if they really do get what they need. But until I'm 100% confident that I can give my puppy what she needs from a raw diet, I'd rather trust the people at Royal Canin.

No, I appreciate the long post! Sorry for hijacking your thread! I don't think that price sounds too crazy knowing how much better it is for my dogs, and like you, I would be concerned as to where their meat is coming from. I don't think I'd have trouble finding a good farmer or butcher since I live in Texas and it's not too far of a drive to the more rural areas around me. I'd probably be able to find cheaper than chicken @ 4.99/lb in my area. Am I supposed to calculate 5% of Rosie's projected adult weight or 5% of her current weight? Big difference lol. I can't imagine her eating a chicken leg...she has trouble eating the puppy sized Wellness kibble. Tiny mouth, big personality