"our costs have gone up amidst am inflationary environment and we have had no choice but to increase prices. Oh hey don't look at our financial statements, the fact that we made record profits is irrelevant."
Full stop the best thing I did was talk to a pet nutritionist and getting a meal plan made for my boy. Super affordable, easy to make up in bulk and freeze each week - and honestly it feels good to feed my boy something that resembles actual food. Turkey, carrots/zucchini, rice and vitamin powder - all told about an hour each week to prepare, portion out and freeze; and I'm pretty dang sure it comes out cheaper than the dried stuff in the long run.
We've had to start doing this because one of our cats just plain refuses to eat any commercial pet food produced over the last year and a half. He was formerly overweight and you couldn't stop him from eating but now he's actually underweight as we've tried to adapt and try different things.
Having formerly worked in a retail meat department, I know the expired product gets sent to be turned into pet food, but I suspect with supply issues during covid (and greed masked as inflation) manufacturers across the board have substituted whatever it was they were used before for something more inferior now. There aren't any/many regulations on pet food nor legal protections for pets, so it can be the wild west out there.
if your in the us there actually is quite heavily regulationed actually and kept to a similar standard as human food mainly do to the fact of in times of need people can and have resorted to eating dog food
Sure, for small dog that weighs i think about six kilos: each day he gets 120 grams of protein, 60 grams of veggies, 30 grams of long rice, and .5tsp of vitamin /supplement powder. The recipe also calls for .5 tsp of oils, sunflower oil is recommended, but considering I don’t drain the drippings from the pan after the turkey and instead cook the veggies in it, idk. I usually don’t add extra oil. For protein we usually go with ground turkey, veggies we go with carrots or zucchini (diced in the processor and cooked in the drippings from the meat) and the vitamin powder is something we can pick up from the pharmacy here, but I think you can grab from Amazon. I’ll have to look that one up later.
Each week I get a kilo of turkey from our butcher and cook it down, and that comes out to just about 7 days give or take.
This is what my poor grandma used to feed the farm dogs in her area. It was the off cuts of meat boiled and deboned and served with grains and veggies. Looked like prison slop, but the dogs loved it, and it still seems more appetizing than dried pellets of "food."
Another option is to read the labels of some of the premium refrigerated pup foods and get the ingredients from those without going to a pet nutritionist.
Yeah I think it’s the portions though that you want to talk to a nutritionist for though. The ingredients aren’t rocket science: protein, veggies, filler (rice), fats and vitamins. But making sure you aren’t over/under feeding is where I think you want to be careful
I've spent the last year trying to figure out if it's actually the prices or if I've become one of those "When I was a kid, gasoline was 25 cents a gallon" old men.
Nah food prices have historically been pretty level due to the whole "bread and circuses" thing. The last year or two inflation has hit food prices harder than a lot of other things.
The government will probably start funneling our tax dollars to these manufacturers so that politicians can brag about lowering food costs while executives keep their pockets full. It's a win - win scenario for them. We'll just ignore where that money came from like funding for schools and roads.
I wish companies would be transparent in their supply chain logistic costs.
Financial news is flooded with “X multibillion dollar company hitting record breaking profits compared YoY” type headlines. Sure some companies might be taking advantage of “inflation” to bump the price of products and pocket the profit but some others might actually need to bump their price to stay competitive.
With no insight into this, it’s impossible to discern which companies are scumbags and which ones are just surviving.
It's just human nature, simply complacency. At times when doing business is generally more difficult, why produce more when you can produce less and charge more? On a long enough timescale in current conditions, every business will do it eventually.
This is what has just been happening with Cal-Maine eggs for example. Exaggerating about supply chain pressures and arbitrating prices to cover production slowdown was just the easiest thing to do in the circumstances. It isn't until much later when the earnings reports come out with no substantial supply chain interruptions to mention that people start to realize what's going on, and by that point they've already siphoned hundreds of millions more from the public than the circumstances warranted.
Egg prices are dropping now. Why? There's been no recent change in cost indicated in Cal-Maine's production. The only recent news regarding their operations is the release of that earnings report. It's as if public knowledge about their record profits is somehow affecting the price of the commodity they produce?
More than mildly infuriating! Was probably 30ish pre COVID. And constant supply issues. Have to run all over to find locally. And I'm in LA. Shouldn't be hard to keep one of the worlds largest economies in supply, right?
Costco still sells 50lb packs for 30-50 bucks if you buy their brand (which, like all Kirkland products, is going to be high quality)
Nope. 28 lbs last me about a month for two medium sized dogs. The brand I get was normally on sale for around $42 pre Covid but it’s nearing $60 now
Nope. 28 lbs lasts me about a month for two medium sized dogs. The brand I get was normally on sale for around $42 pre Covid but it’s nearing $60 now.
The feed I buy for my ducks increased by $5 in the past year and the bags went from 50 lbs to 40. My birds usually through 80lbs of feed in 2.5 weeks. I'm spending so much on feed, that I've been giving them wild bird seed(which is $10/20lbs) and grass clippings(free) as snacks during the day. It cuts down on how much feed they eat. Next year they are going to get an entire garden dedicated to their diet. I got the seeds this year, but didn't start them early enough.
The parks near us have gone to shit. Those degenerate geese moved in and the neighborhood hasn't been the same. Haven't seen a duck since.
If you've got a problem with Canada Gooses, you've got a problem with me. And I suggest you let that one marinate
Damn, your issue is geese? My local parks all got filled with fentanyl addicts trying to set each other on fire.
They need to import some nesting Canadian Geese. Those addicts will all go missing within a few days . . .
Same. My little lord needs prescription wet food. It used to be AUD$25 for a box of 12 sachets (which was already expensive for less than a week worth of pet food), creeping up over the last six months, now AUD$37.50.
I have an elderly dog (Boston Terrier) that eats wet food only and can't eat chicken or grain. Her food is currently costing me about $200 a month. It's rough. I mean, worth it because she's amazing and I want her around as long as possible, but it's rough and I am lucky that I can afford it at the moment.
Yea pretty much. As much as I mull over solutions it always comes back to returning to our roots, which happens to be impossible at this point with the current population crisis. I'd imagine redistributing the wealth to alleviate these things would be extremely hard, would probly take a war to get going, or start multiple little wars in the process. It's really pretty bad. Worse than people like to think. I dont know where we go from here. That's part of the problem and why we maintain the status quo.
For now you can probly start approximating what is in that food with your scraps, like back in the day. I don't really know and I hate not knowing shit lol. (Why I'm here)
We have to go full Star Trek and remove profit and personal gain as the motive for doing everything. In the meantime I guess it’s time to start reading up on what a dog’s diet should be.
Haha i agree, but getting there is the hard part. Theres so much infrastructure built up around a messed up system that all we can do is slowly change and crawl towards our ultimate goals.
I'd be curious to see someones experience on this, and get the lowdown on if it's cheaper and more efficient, and if so, how much money they saved etc.
I try to spread the idea as often as I can that it doesn’t have to be this way. Snowball effect I suppose.
The Oroville had a really good take on this. It took me starting it 3 different times before it hooked me, but damn the third season (all the seasons really, but this season were 90 minutes episodes) kicked.
Oops wrong date! Meant 2053!
<After the war ended in 2053, humanity slowly began to rebuild civilization and the planet, eliminating sickness, hunger, poverty, and despair within two generations. Earth was mostly restored by the 22nd century as the United Earth Government formed, however there were still some lingering effects from the post atomic horror. Star Trek: Enterprise
This is where that paragraph came from (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Earth) Cool place if you're into Star Trek
What’s even more fucked is the alternative of making your own dog food isn’t an option because human food is expensive af too! Want to try to eat healthy? Fuck you
I worked in a pet supplies store about a year ago, and I was nonstop hearing complaints about the prices going up.
Yeah we've been dealing with the same. My only option has been to switch dog chow over to a Purina blend at Sam's. It's literally 29 USD as opposed to PetsMart at over 80.
I agree, used to be under 50 bucks for the biggest bag we could find at the store. Now it's well over 75.
It makes me really sad because my girl passed away last year and my boy is getting bored and wants a friend but I just can't afford to pay for the food. I've been thinking about fostering senior pitbulls instead because I would have a better chance of hanging on to them until they passed away if I fostered seniors. At least the Foster company pays for any medical treatment and food that the dog needs
Those pitbulls would attack you dog. Either dumb or just don't care. I don't care if this offends you, for the sake of animal safety you need to hear it.
Why do you such a strong stance against pitbulls? It sounds like the poster above may already be someone who has cared for/is caring for that specific breed of dog. If they are comfortable with it and are good owners, why would it matter?
I think you meant to say that they "could" attack your dog. Most pitbulls are fine dogs, most rescue dogs are a little messed up regardless of breed. You can't just generalize a breed and say "it's a pit bull it will attack"