What it really costs to make cat food - not so much!

Dr. Lisa Pierson of catinfo.org - who is much more of a numbers person than I am - has on her website an awesome, detailed breakout of what it costs to make homemade raw cat food. 

Many folks are understandably dubious about the price of doing it themselves and, to be sure, if you go down the path of making cat food yourself there can be an initial outlay for a grinder and a supply of the dry vitamins and other ingredients.  The grinder, however, will last you for years and years (mine's been going strong for well over a decade).

I finally did some calculations this morning on what it costs me to make a supply of cat food for my two furry shamans.  I bought free-range chicken (on sale at Whole Foods) and when I added up the total cost of the meat, eggs, organs and other ingredients - and divided the cost by the number of days it will feed Wilson and Sidney-Beans, I came up with a cost of about 90 cents a day per cat.  

As a benchmark, I looked at the cost of buying - on sale - a premium canned cat food.  That came to  $1.50 a day per cat.  

A few other snippets to inform your thinking about cost:  

• Our friends at the One Stop Jerky Shop sell the grinder for around $160. I've been using the same grinder for well over 10 years - amortized, it's cost me $15 a year to have that grinder.     

• If you use this link to order the other ingredients (vitamins, salmon oil, etc.) from iHerb, you can get $5 off your first order.  

• Diet is the brick and mortar of health - as Dr. Pierson reminds readers, you can pay now or pay later.  Paying later can come in the form of high vet bills from nutritionally-linked ailments like IBD, diabetes, obesity, and urinary tract disorders. 

Methinks homemade raw feeding really is a bargain.    

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