Decent Food with Grains

I can't afford to feed the dogs grain-free at the moment. So looking for suggestions of brands to look at that halfway decent.

Off the top of my head I can think of a few, Innova, HK, California Naturals, Wellness.

Innova costs more than TOTW here... the cost of TOTW varies from place to place though, it used to be really expensive here, but it's very affordable now. Cali Natural ran me about the same as TOTW when I finally switched from CN.

Wellness had some formulas I was looking at when I was trying to decide what to switch onto. Blue Buffalo isn't horrible either if you just need something decent for a while until moneys get sorted out depending on pricing of everything there.

I like Earthborn. We take it camping because raw doesn't travel well. lol
Now I'm not 100% sure about pricing, but I think it's reasonable.

I found the HK with grain gave my dogs wicked huge and soft poops. They use uncooked oats among other things that the dogs couldn't process unfortunately. What I have done though to temper cost is make my own oatmeal and brown rice, which isn't very expensive, and cook it (overly cook it, the dogs need it broken down).

Otherwise, I found Kirkland was good for my apbt but not my malinois. Blue buffalo was great for my malinois as puppies.

My top three non-grain free brands are Nature's Variety Prairie, PureVita, and Fromm. Around here, they each run around $45 for the 30 lb bag. Missy did very well on the chicken and duck varieties of the Fromm before we switched to grain-free.

I like Fromm Gold, Acana Classic, Wellness and Pinnacle.

I wish we carried Pinnacle. *pouts*

Seems like here high-quality grain-free foods are cheaper than high-quality grain-inclusive foods. The cheapest here is probably NutriSource, but I found Earthborn pretty cheap online, much cheaper than TOTW.

Do you have a Costco near you? They've got a grain free food that's pretty decent and is priced pretty well.

Want to point out...most of the time you will feed less of a grain free formula so even if the cost per bag is higher you still come out ahead.

If you have Costco as an option you may find that either Nature's Domain or their Kirkland brand should fit the bill for what you need for under $30 a bag. Otherwise I'd consider canidae - avoderm - or nature's balance on the cheap end of other decent quality chows available for under $35 a bag.

I feed Fromm Four Star to my dogs. I also looked at Solid Gold.

Merrick is pretty good as well, but still pricier than some of the others mentioned. Do you know what foods you have readily available?

Diamond Naturals is good, it's about $25-35 per 30/35lb bag.

I found Purina ONE Beyond at Target and some Walmart stores. Its actually a really good food. 15lbs/ $22. The only bad thing is I've never seen bigger than a 22lb bag. I had to buy a small 3lb bag of it once when I forgot to bring Zen's food while traveling. He normally eats TOTW mixed with Pro Plan Performance. He does better with a little grain mixed in with the grain-free. Anyway, I ran off and left the pro plan, so I had to buy a small bag of the Purina ONE.

Also, we sell Taste of the Wild for $42 for a 30 lb bag - so cheaper than a lot of the better grain-inclusive foods.

I also mention the costco food. Their kirkland stuff is cheaper than beneful and doesn't look bad. My dogs say it tastes icky though. They are currently on the nature's domain (from costco) which is fish based and grain free. Here its 36 dollars for a huge bag. The costco membership paid for itself with the first bag of food!

I love Fromm and around here it's cheaper than most of the other foods for sure.

Logan used to be on Diamond Naturals. He was on the Extreme Athlete last and it was around $30 for a 35 pound bag if I remember right. The chicken/lamb/beef formulas are cheaper than that. Tractor Supply also has 4Health which is similar to Diamond Naturals but slightly better, and it's ONLY sold at TSC. Kirkland at Costco is the EXACT same thing as Diamond Naturals but in a different bag, and their Nature's Domain or whatever is TOTW. Sadly I don't have a Costco around here.

Admittedly, we are fortunate enough to have quite a variety of decent kibbles available in our area (even though, for the most part, the prices seem much higher than those available to our doggy neighbours south of the border!!!).

We happen to feed grain-free (Orijen and Acana) only because, after going through an exhaustive number of foods with our current boy, these are the ones with which he happened to do best ...

Having said that, I see little or no difference whether the binding agent is (for example) rice or potato. Good kibble is good kibble (although the raw feeders would probably argue that there is no such thing ), so ...

If we could find a less expensive, good quality food that our dog did well with, grain or no, we'd try it in a heartbeat.

Natural Balance is a good food that is affordable. The Ultra formula is excellent, however, I wouldn't touch the LID... most of them list sweet potato or potato as the #1 ingredient and have low meat content.

Nature's Variety Prairie is my fave grain-inclusive kibble.