Dog Food Digestibility Examples
Food A provides 100% of daily nutritional requirements for a 25 pound dog with a one cup serving. Food B provides 100% of daily nutritional requirements for a 20 pound dog with a one cup serving.
- Food B will most likely cost you less to purchase, although you will feed more each day.
- Food A will most likely use higher quality ingredients, since it is more highly digestible, as reflected in the feeding guidelines.
So which is “cheaper”? Which is the better value?
Often, but not always, the better quality food will end up costing about the same or slightly more than the bargain brand. This is usually not obvious if you compare only pricing, but you now know how to do more than that.
Do the math, and you may be surprised at the result. Look at the bag size, feeding guidelines, and price.
Here is another hypothetical, but typical, example for a pet owner with a 25# dog.
- A 15 lb. bag of Smiley Dog food costs $28 and has a feeding guideline of 1 cup per 25 pounds.
- A 20 lb. bag of Smelly Dog food costs $25 and has a feeding guideline of 1 cup per 20 pounds.
It looks like a no-brainer here. Smiley Dog food costs $3 more and you get 5# less. Shouldn’t Smelly Dog food be significantly cheaper?
Let’s take a closer look at that 25# dog owner’s situation.
We’ll assume three cups of food equal one pound. That means:
- 60 cups in a 20# bag of Smelly Dog food
- 45 cups in a 15# bag of Smiley Dog food
Smiley Dog food will last 45 days. (45 cups/ 1 cup each day from feeding guidelines). It will cost $0.62 per day to feed ($28/ 45 days)
Smelly Dog food will last 48 days (60 cups/ 1.25 cups each day from feeding guidelines). It will cost $0.52 per day to feed ($25/ 48 days)
Hmmmmmm.
We can immediately determine that Smiley Dog food is better quality than Smelly Dog food because of the feeding guidelines.
A difference of a dime a day. Not quite as stark a difference as it appeared earlier. That’s the value of considering dog food digestibility in your evaluations.
And what happens when the manufacturer of Smelly Dog food decides to reduce their bag size to 17.5 pounds while keeping the price the same? The daily price difference drops to $.02/ day.
Woof.
Is it worth saving a few pennies to put your dog through the added stress of metabolizing a poor quality food? You’ll more than make up for it with fewer vet bills over the life of your dog. Not to mention how much less volume of poop you’ll clean up over that time. . .
Choose a better dog food!