Acceptable cheaper brands of canned food

Hi all,

I'm currently feeding my kitty Elvis a half dry, half wet diet. He's currently 1 year old. I was feeding Orijen Poultry and Fish and now switched over to Nature's Variety Instinct Chicken kibbles. As for wet, I feed a large variety (Wellness Core, Nature's Variety Instinct, EVO, Merrick's Before Grain). I'm highly considering switching him over to an all wet diet and I'm just wondering if there's any of the cheaper brands of canned food that you guys find ok so I can feed half the cheaper ones and the other half the higher quality ones that I'm feeding now. It's kind of costly to feed him 100% premium brands wet food but if that's what it takes to give him a healthy life then I guess I'll just have to suck it up

Are you buying the premium brands in the 13 oz. cans? That helps keep costs down.

The Fancy Feast (classic) varieties are low carb and high protein. You could rotate some of them in once in a while .I feed the beef and liver one once in a while. Some of the flavors have nitrates, this one doesn't, so check the labels.  Do you have a Pet Value near you? They have Petformatin chicken and lamb 3 oz. cans for $.74. The ingredients are decent too. I have heard quite a few people say Friskies Poultry Platter is the best of the very in-expensive brands. I think it has more meat than the others. Petsmart sells a brand callled Authority that has pretty good ingredients considering it's only $.39. for 5.5 oz.

About 2-3 meals per week I feed them whatever meat is on sale at the grocery store. They have their own little crock-pot . They had pot roast on Christmas!  This is cheaper than the premium cannned and because it's not too often I don't have to worry about supplementing it. All of their other canned meals are balanced. I like them getting a few meals that are all meat too.

I look for coupons online and always stock up on the sales. Petco gives %5 back on whatever you spend. That gets me a few free cans too.

Just thought of a few more. Have you tried Nutro? If you have Trader Joe stores they have a nice turkey food that is inexpensive too.

Hey smitten4kittens, thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I'm from Canada and our pet food price (well price of anything) are ridiculous compared to the US and in addition to that, we don't get Petcos which has awesome prices.

I'm also kind of hesistant about feeding raw as I'm not sure if my cat will get sick as a result so wet food is the way to go however if he tolerates well then I will definitely go for it as 1) raw is what cat eats in the wild and 2) I can probably be off the hook in terms of brushing their teeth.

Do you have Petsmart? because I would second the recommendation of their store brand Authority. It's really higher quality than Fancy Feast but it's cheaper too.

Hi Yes. We do have Petsmart. It's about $1 a can here.

Thanks. Maybe I'll go with that

peugeot206 said:

Unfortunately I'm from Canada and our pet food price (well price of anything) are ridiculous compared to the US and in addition to that, we don't get Petcos which has awesome prices.

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Ugh, tell me about it.  I was feeding my girls high quality canned, and when I did the math I think I was spending $162/month.  I ended up switching to raw.  I'm not sure if I'm doing the math wrong, but I think from where I'm getting my food from, it's a good deal cheaper to feed raw (though, not really all that cheap). 

Do you have Sheba there?  I like it because it has a named meat as first ingredient, is grain free, and no carageenan,  Here it's about $0.55-.60  per can.  The only thing is it doesn't come in the larger cans, only 3 oz.  But still much cheaper than Nature's Variety and the like. I feed it in rotation with the more expensive brands.

You probably don't have Tractor Supply stores there... But if you do, 4health canned food is cheap and the ingredient list is very good. I pay 99 cents for 13.5oz cans. It does contain carrageenan and grain, but there's no byproducts or creepy stuff. I only started using it two days ago, so I can't give you a real review, but you might look at it. I'm using it in conjunction with Blue and Taste of the Wild cans.

I buy 4health too just on the side for my cat who loves wet food but feeding her the stuff is expensive so i give her at least 1.5 oz of that stuff to make up for the calorie intake

LilGreenAstrid said:

You probably don't have Tractor Supply stores there... But if you do, 4health canned food is cheap and the ingredient list is very good. I pay 99 cents for 13.5oz cans. It does contain carrageenan and grain, but there's no byproducts or creepy stuff. I only started using it two days ago, so I can't give you a real review, but you might look at it. I'm using it in conjunction with Blue and Taste of the Wild cans.

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Do the have 4Health canned food for cats now? It's not on their website. I've only seen their canned dog food. . .

I too was very frustrated with high cost to feed my 2 cats, and i only buy wet food, no dry food in my cats diet....dry food in my opionion is not good for cats....but back to cost, i was spending about $150 month for wet food....

i now make my own cat food , and its somewhat cheaper...i can buy white meat chicken for $2.00lb....so that comes to about .68cent for 5oz can, and i was buying earthborn chicken for $1.69 a 5 oz can...i do have to buy vitamines, etc, to add to it,,,but its not that much

I'm going to take down all these store names and make them destinations when I do my cross-border shopping

Thanks everyone!

Do the have 4Health canned food for cats now? It's not on their website. I've only seen their canned dog food. . .

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They have it in stores now. It's made it possible for me to transition to an all-wet diet! The ingredient list is similar to the Blue Buffalo that I pay $1.39 per 5.5oz can for, so that's only 1/3 of her diet now, and I could replace her dry food with the 4health canned. My cat's VERY picky about her wet, so I had trouble finding decent canned stuff that she'd eat and that I didn't have to travel to buy.

Hmm, if it costs the same here I'll have to get some. That's less than Friskies costs at Petsmart. . .

Except I just Googled it and on another forum someone says it's around 30% carbs DMB. Yikes, that's almost the same as their kibble! Well, at least it's wet .

Eek, I used an online calculation tool and it came out to more like 5%. How do I accurately calculate that?

It's cheaper than Friskies at Tractor Supply, too. And since Friskies is laden with byproducts and I've found huge chunks of bone in multiple times, I feel a lot safer with 4health. And it's not her sole food source.

Do you have Trader Joes?

I get their canned wet food to supplement the more expensive no grain wet food cans that I get for my cat (he also is not allowed dry food, and yes wet food can be expensive). Trader Joes cans are fairly cheap though (60 cents for 5.5 oz) and the ingredients look good to me (other than the rice, but since it's lower down on the ingredient list and real meat is on the top of the ingredient list, I am not overly concerned about it). It helps spread out the cost a little bit better from the other cans I get (which tend to cost anywhere from 1.25 to 2.00 a 5.5 oz can). And then I'll also feed my guy a little raw chicken or turkey on top of this (or else some commercial raw, which is balanced already, so I don't have to worry about supplementing or anything. If you are hesitant about feeding raw for those reasons, it might be worth looking into. That being said, commercial raw is not cheap either).

I second the mention for Authority canned food. I would sometimes supplement wtih those cans as well if I wasn't by Trader Joes. I prefer the TJs but Authority does not seem too bad for the price.

Hi everyone,

I've never heard of any brands or stores you've mentioned   except Authority because we got Petsmart here and as strictly speaking, they don't sell the best food (except Wellness, Halo and Blue Buffalo).

Must've been nice being able to get decent food for 60 cents. Here in Canada, you can get a can of Friskies for that.

By the way, is there a specific flavor of Authority that you guys recommend? It seems like some of then have gluten in it and some don't. Obviously I would choose the one without right?

Yes. Gluten raises the % protein, but your cat can't utilize it. So definitely avoid gluten if possible.

What about online stores?  I don't know if that ends up being more expensive with the shipping, and you pretty much have to buy a whole case of food, but it might be something to look into.