Alternative to Stella and Chewys raw freeze dried food

1dog4cats · Apr 8, 2015

My dog is on Stella and chewys freeze-dried raw food. I want to convert my cats to raw food as well. Using the feeding guide provided by the company it would cost over $1800. A month!!! To feed my four cats
Does anyone know of an alternate quality food?

abbyntim · Apr 8, 2015

That seems really expensive. I have two cats and spend $50-$60 per month. One cat eats about 85% raw, 15% canned, while the other eats about 25% raw and 75% canned. The foods I purchase are:

- Rad Cat raw turkey (frozen)

- Primal Pronto raw turkey (frozen)

- Primal Pronto raw rabbit (frozen)

- smallbatch raw rabbit (frozen, not complete- I have to add supplements)

- Halshan raw rabbit (frozen, not complete- I have to add supplements)

- Primal raw turkey (freeze dried)

- Primal raw beef/salmon (freeze dried)

- Instinct canned rabbit

- Instinct LID canned turkey

- Instinct canned beef

- Pure Vita canned turkey

- Party Animal canned turkey

- Lotus Just Juicy canned turkey

- Lotus Just Juicy canned pork

- Orijen Regional Red kibble (occasional treat)

- Pure Bites freeze dried turkey treats

- Wysong Dream Treat rabbit treats

Both cats eat only rabbit in the morning. The female eats canned, the male eats mostly frozen raw with some canned. They eat turkey when we get home. The male eats rad cat and primal pronto, the female eats primal pronto and one of the canned varieties (we rotate). All the others - the freeze dried, the canned beef, and the canned Lotus, are rotated and fed in small amounts as their "bedtime snack", which keeps them from bugging us early in the morning.

One other thing to note: I learned with raw feeding my cats that I don't have to feed as much as the feeding guidelines suggest. My guy eats a lot - more than 6 ounces a day, though I pay closer attention to calories (he's at about 250 now, though we are dropping as the weather warms). If I fed him what the feeding guidelines suggest, he'd be a very fat cat.

1dog4cats · Apr 8, 2015

The combined total per day for four cats is 38 ounces a day translating to 3 1/4 bags daily (all according to guidelines). At $19 and change per bag
this is $58 a day!
Thanks for the alternatives which I will check out.
I'd like, if at all possible, to feed exclusively raw.
My dog is on S and C and is doing great! He loves the food and hisIBD Is in check!
If not S and C, then some reasonable alternative.
IThere has to be a food I can feed all of them for a reasonable amount of money

LTS3 · Apr 8, 2015

Here's a thread: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/292312/freeze-dried-food

Stella and Chewy's is popular but not the only brand out there

Besides, many people have reported difficulty finding Stella and Chewy's for cats for the past coupleof months

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/288313/stella-chewys-on-backorder-everywhere

A mix of canned and freeze dried might be more cost effective for you.

lisahe · Apr 8, 2015

1dog4cats said:
The combined total per day for four cats is 38 ounces a day translating to 3 1/4 bags daily (all according to guidelines). At $19 and change per bag
this is $58 a day!
Thanks for the alternatives which I will check out.
I'd like, if at all possible, to feed exclusively raw.
My dog is on S and C and is doing great! He loves the food and hisIBD Is in check!
If not S and C, then some reasonable alternative.
IThere has to be a food I can feed all of them for a reasonable amount of money

With all due respect, I think something's off with these calculations, unless you cats aren't house cats!

I think perhaps the figures you were looking at represented ounces in volume, where a cup=8 ounces. I have a cat on my lap so can't get up to the look at the S&C bag but I can look at their Web site: it recommends, for example, giving a ten-pound cat 1.5 cups per day, which translates to 12 ounces by volume. That theory makes sense if you have four small cats.

We feed a little Stella & Chewy's to our cats, mostly to spice up Primal's turkey, chicken/salmon, and beef/salmon foods. I think that ounce by ounce, in terms of weight, Stella & Chewy's is a little cheaper than Primal, at least where I live. FWIW, like AbbyNTim, we feed a combination of raw and canned foods.

1dog4cats · Apr 8, 2015

I think you're right. My math is probably off. Math is not my strong suit. I must have miscalculated. I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to do it by weight and not volume!

abbyntim · Apr 9, 2015

1dog4cats said:
I think you're right. My math is probably off. Math is not my strong suit. I must have miscalculated. I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to do it by weight and not volume!

My cats don't eat a lot of freeze-dried raw, but at least Primal's freeze-dried is very calorie-dense. I would look at calories, as well as volume, as you re-calculate.

Looking at the S&C website for just turkey, I would calculate as follows: First, I would start my male at 250 calories per day and my female at 200 per day, for a total calorie need of 450 per day. I see that one ounce of S&C freeze-dried turkey is 145 calories, which means I need about three ounces per day to feed two cats. Assuming the bag is 12 ounces, a single bag will last me more than three days, maybe four, with two good-size cats. At $19 per bag, this would cost me between $5 and $6 per day to feed two cats. Still more than what I am paying now, but much less than your calculations.

Also take a look at Primal freeze-dried. Like LisaHE, S&C freeze dried is more expensive where I live.

2bcat · Apr 9, 2015

As an example, with my two little cats, one weighs a bit over 6 pounds and one weighs 8 pounds (should be 7.5 or less pounds). They eat about 1oz and 1.2oz of Stella & Chewy's freeze dried chicken per day. Each ounce is 125 calories.

If you have 4 cats and even if they're all twice as big and thus need twice as much food as mine, you'd still be well under 1 bag per day. And you'd need to have 4 12-15 pound healthy weight cats to need twice as much food for each of them, which is rather large. The 4 cats should need under 10oz per day total and probably significantly less than that assuming they don't all weigh 15 pounds! What you want to do is start with a rough calorie need (say, around 20 calories per pound of ideal body weight) and then use the calories per ounce (posted on the Stellla & Chewys web site) to figure out how many ounces they would need to eat per day. It shouldn't be much more than 2 oz per day for each cat, for all but the largest cats. Maybe a few super active cats would need a little more.

Mine eat some canned food too, but with the cans I buy, combined with the deals I try to get on the S&C, the cost is very similar. When I feed them Tiki Cat the can is usually more expensive than the S&C freeze dried, so I have made the S&C chicken the bulk of their diet.

Primal is worth a look too, a little more calorie dense with their freeze dried turkey, and each bag is 14 oz so it tends to be slightly cheaper overall. The main reason I'm buying all S&C is because these two aren't as keen on the Primal turkey. I may try some again soon one of these days. Primal's freeze dried chicken is only available mixed with salmon, and I don't want to feed them too much fish.

1dog4cats · Apr 9, 2015

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Thanks so much for the information.I will be checking out Primal foods As for calories, How do you know how many calories your cats should have?
Once I find that out I'll use your formula to arrive at the total daily amount each cat should have. I am so glad I found this website!

1dog4cats · Apr 9, 2015

I hate to admit to my ignorance but I use a food scale to measure how much canned food I give my cat. How do I "weigh" dry food? Or do I just use a measuring cup and fill it with the predetermined amount of food? I feel so stupid in having to ask but I want to get it right!
Thanks for your patience

2cats4me · Apr 9, 2015

1dog4cats said:
I hate to admit to my ignorance but I use a food scale to measure how much canned food I give my cat. How do I "weigh" dry food? Or do I just use a measuring cup and fill it with the predetermined amount of food? I feel so stupid in having to ask but I want to get it right!
Thanks for your patience

No problem , I would just use the standard measuring cup for the kibble ..

lisahe · Apr 10, 2015

I'm not a calorie counter so can't really address that question... but I will say that the measures on the Stella & Chewy's bag are definitely in cups, so I agree with @2Cats4Me about using a standard measuring cup. As for Primal, that food comes in nuggets and the bag has information on approximate ounces and calories per nugget; there's also a chart on how much to feed.

Good luck!

2bcat · Apr 10, 2015

1dog4cats said:
I hate to admit to my ignorance but I use a food scale to measure how much canned food I give my cat. How do I "weigh" dry food? Or do I just use a measuring cup and fill it with the predetermined amount of food? I feel so stupid in having to ask but I want to get it right!
Thanks for your patience

You just weigh it like anything else. I weigh canned food and the freeze dried food, because each gives the calories by weight. Weight is always more accurate than volume for anything solid. Even for dry kibble you may do this, although the manufacturer may give the dry kibble calories by cup and not by ounce. I'm not sure if your question is referring to dry kibble or to the freeze dried, but I'll go on a bit about the freeze dried. Dry kibble you may have to use cup measures. (For smaller amounts in cup measures, remember 4 tablespoons are in 1/4 cup, then 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon if you're going for really minute differences. Getting the fraction right when it only gives calories per whole cup can be challenging.)

It helps if your scale measures in good fractions, like mine shows to the hundredth of an ounce (0.01 ounce) and to the tenth of a gram if I use grams (0.1 gram). I use grams for the cans because I find the math in my head easier to divide 170 grams than it is to divide 6 ounces, and the calorie counts I have are for a whole can. Since Stella & Chewys gives the calorie count per ounce, I use ounces for that.

So for the S&C freeze dried, you put some vessel on the scale and tare it (I just use their food bowls, I have many stainless and ceramic bowls and load them in the dishwasher after each use), then just pour in or scoop in however much you need. It works exactly the same as what you're already weighing. The reason you want to do this with the freeze dried food is they give the calorie count per ounce, and this will give you the right amount. Yes, you're going to rehydrate with water, but water adds no calories, and the calories by weight is using the dry weight. So you weigh out the right amount while dry, then you add the water. You could take the 12oz bags of freeze dried and weigh out portions ahead of time if that timing is an issue with 4 cats. I make my two cats wait for me while I weigh out the food then put the water in. ;-)

The missing link for most people in feeding pets is that the can or bag of food usually gives a recommended feeding in number of cans (for cans) or in cups (or fractions thereof) of dry measure for anything dry. These are typically WILDLY VARYING by manufacturer and even by food type from the same manufacturer! These wide ranging recommended amounts may end up with you feeding way too much (common, since this helps sell more food) or oddly enough in some cases too little (dangerous!) This is why it's so much better to start with knowing the calories of the food and then weighing the food portion. Yes, coming up with the daily feeding amount like 20 calories per pound that the cat weighs (or 25 calories, or however many) is also not exact, but you're starting from a better premise than "feed 2-3 cans per day" or whatever. There's always going to be a little bit of trial and error but you'll have a better idea of what's going on when you know the calories and feed that way. For example, for several months after they came home I was feeding the two cats the same amount. What this resulted in was not each of them growing equally but instead the larger one getting overweight because the smaller one never ate her whole portion and the larger one would eat the remainder in addition to her own portion. So, I needed even less food than I thought! Not a lot, but every little bit less helps validate the cost. ;-)

Basically my way of thinking is to ignore all the measures on the bag except for the one that says 125 calories per ounce. That's the one that matters. "Feed 1/4-1/2 cup" or whatever it might say does not matter. There's a huge variance in those amounts! I ignore it on the cans too. The one that matters to me is the total weight of the can. A few cans list the calories per can; otherwise I go to the company web site to look for that info.

If any of this doesn't make sense then please please ask for clarification and I'll try to help!

stephanie42 · Apr 12, 2015

re: calories, i started by shooting for 200kcal/day for my 9-10lbs girls and 240kcal/day for my then-18lb boy. one girl is thin with CKD/CKF, one is a good weight, and obviously the boy was overweight.

once jake (male) got down to about 14lbs, i started feeding them each a bit less. stella & chewy's chick chick chicken (their favorite) is 125kcal/oz and the homemade i feed is 50kcal/oz. i was feeding one ounce of s&c and about three ounces of homemade a day and the girls were leaving food behind; I'm now feeding about 3/4 ounce of s&c and two ounces of home made and that seems to be working well. we often give jake closer to a full ounce of s&c so he gets a few more calories since he's the largest.

1dog4cats · Apr 12, 2015

So for my 6 1/2 pound seven month old kitten, at 125kcal an ounce would I feed her 1 1/2 ozs. Of S&C a day

For my ten pound cat would I feed 2 ounces a day. Am I getting the hang of this or am I still off base?

And the ounces would be calculated by weight on my food scale...

lisamarie12 · Apr 12, 2015

AbbyNTim said:
That seems really expensive. I have two cats and spend $50-$60 per month. One cat eats about 85% raw, 15% canned, while the other eats about 25% raw and 75% canned. The foods I purchase are:

- Rad Cat raw turkey (frozen)

- Primal Pronto raw turkey (frozen)

- Primal Pronto raw rabbit (frozen)

- smallbatch raw rabbit (frozen, not complete- I have to add supplements)

- Halshan raw rabbit (frozen, not complete- I have to add supplements)

- Primal raw turkey (freeze dried)

- Primal raw beef/salmon (freeze dried)

- Instinct canned rabbit

- Instinct LID canned turkey

- Instinct canned beef

- Pure Vita canned turkey

- Party Animal canned turkey

- Lotus Just Juicy canned turkey

- Lotus Just Juicy canned pork

- Orijen Regional Red kibble (occasional treat)

- Pure Bites freeze dried turkey treats

- Wysong Dream Treat rabbit treats

Both cats eat only rabbit in the morning. The female eats canned, the male eats mostly frozen raw with some canned. They eat turkey when we get home. The male eats rad cat and primal pronto, the female eats primal pronto and one of the canned varieties (we rotate). All the others - the freeze dried, the canned beef, and the canned Lotus, are rotated and fed in small amounts as their "bedtime snack", which keeps them from bugging us early in the morning.

One other thing to note: I learned with raw feeding my cats that I don't have to feed as much as the feeding guidelines suggest. My guy eats a lot - more than 6 ounces a day, though I pay closer attention to calories (he's at about 250 now, though we are dropping as the weather warms). If I fed him what the feeding guidelines suggest, he'd be a very fat cat.

OMG - how do you spend only $50-$60 per month feeding those foods to two cats? I have two cats, four years old, high energy - I go through one 14 oz bag of FD Primal per week, $28 (x 4= $112); NV canned 5.5 oz rabbit, one per day @ $2.90 each x 7 = $20.30, x 4= $81.20; FD treats, e.g., either Bravo turkey or lately Hare of the Cat (rabbit only meat treats), b/t $7 - $9 (x 4= 36). Primal Pronto, 1 bag per week at $13.00 x4 = 52. Occasionally I'll pick up Radcat. Not including RC, my cat food bill is at least $280 a month.

Am I nuts or what - why is this costing me so much money?!

2bcat · Apr 12, 2015

1dog4cats said:
So for my 6 1/2 pound seven month old kitten, at 125kcal an ounce would I feed her 1 1/2 ozs. Of S&C a day

For my ten pound cat would I feed 2 ounces a day. Am I getting the hang of this or am I still off base?

And the ounces would be calculated by weight on my food scale...

1. The kitten may need to have more. I have not fed a kitten in about 20 years so I've only applied newer food info to adult and senior cats. I haven't had to calculate for kittens. But I think calorie requirements for a growing kitten could be more and you may want to look for that kind of specific info.

2. 2 ounces per day and that's probably at most for the 10 pound cat, since that would be 25 calories per pound. I suppose it could be more if he's extremely active but I'd be surprised if 2 oz weren't enough. The math is: find daily calorie intake for cat, divide by number of calories in an ounce of food, that gives you the number of ounces to feed per day. So in this case, if you think daily calorie intake should be 250, divide by 125 calories per ounce, and you get the 2 ounces.

3. Yep, just ordinary weight ounces on the food scale, of the dry S&C pieces. Then add water as you see fit and what the cat will tolerate. Personally I crumble the pieces with my hands before adding the water, but you don't have to. There's no specific amount of water but generally the more the cats will tolerate the better it likely is for them since they should be getting moisture from their food. Between the S&C with a significant amount of water (I make it pretty soupy and they like it that way) and the canned food they sometimes eat, I never see my cats drink from their water bowls.

2bcat · Apr 12, 2015

LisaMarie12 said:
OMG - how do you spend only $50-$60 per month feeding those foods to two cats? I have two cats, four years old, high energy - I go through one 14 oz bag of FD Primal per week, $28 (x 4= $112); NV canned 5.5 oz rabbit, one per day @ $2.90 each x 7 = $20.30, x 4= $81.20; FD treats, e.g., either Bravo turkey or lately Hare of the Cat (rabbit only meat treats), b/t $7 - $9 (x 4= 36). Primal Pronto, 1 bag per week at $13.00 x4 = 52. Occasionally I'll pick up Radcat. Not including RC, my cat food bill is at least $280 a month.

Am I nuts or what - why is this costing me so much money?!

At first glance these look like pretty high prices. I haven't priced FD Primal for a while though. And NV canned rabbit can get up there. If you know you're buying it all regularly, you might be able to cut your cost by ordering online if you're not already doing so. If you're already doing that, you might be able to cut your costs by shopping around a bit more. Be on the lookout for things like 20% off coupons and such, by checking RetailMeNot or similar. Then if you find a coupon like that, order a large amount if you have the storage space and can afford to drop hundreds of dollars at once. Clearly you're already spending a fair bit! A few months ago I bought around 15 bags of Stella & Chewy FD chicken at once with a 20% off coupon for Pet360. That particular coupon seemed to have no upper limit to the discount, or at least a very high one. I saved like $70 with it.

Some online sellers' auto ship programs are better than others. Example: right now on Chewy.com the NV rabbit is $31.28 for 12 5.5oz cans. That's already $2.61 which is no huge savings but then this particular product if you have it auto shipped qualifies for 5% off the price not just once but every single shipment. Takes it down under $2.50. It's not a ton but that's still over $2/case. Primal FD gets 5% off on auto ship at Chewy as well, and it's $27/bag for turkey. So you'd be down close to $25/bag at current price.

Seems like the Primal FD has increased a lot. I use to buy Primal FD turkey and originally favored it because it was more economical, costing around same as S&C bags but had 14oz instead of 12oz and had more calories per oz. Now, though, it seems like that price advantage may have evaporated. I mainly shifted to S&C because the cats liked it better, the FD chicken is their main source of food at this point.

I spend on pricey cans (Tiki Cat Puka Puka, usually around $3 for the 6oz can) and the S&C for two cats. I know it helps that they are small cats but I don't think our food bill is more than about $100/month. A bag of S&C lasts at least 5.5 days. If I need 5 a month that's about $100 at typical prices. So, yeah, ok, it might be a bit over $100 but then I got about 3 months worth at 20% off so I'm guessing over a year it would average out to $100 depending upon how often I had to buy at regular price. To be fair, I'm not spending on expensive freeze dried treats. They don't seem to care for them. But just today even I bought a couple bags of crunchy treats that still cost over $4, and I'm testing out some frozen S&C rabbit. One try of feeding Rad Cat did not seem to appeal to them, but it's still in the freezer.

I've wondered if going to the local store and saying look I'm going to buy this much in this kind of bulk (if you can afford and store something like 3 months' worth at a time) and seeing if they could give a consistent decent price. But I haven't inquired yet. Buying huge amounts can work easily for FD and cans but wouldn't work well for frozen unless you have an extra freezer.

I haven't priced all the foods in the $50-60/month post but that does seem like it would be tough unless most of them are a bit less $$. If you hit all the sales and buy in bulk when it's on sale, maybe that helps.

abbyntim · Apr 12, 2015

@LisaMarie12, I was thinking week and wrote month. That is the amount I average per week. The only reason it is not more is because I located every single store around here that sells these products and know who has the best prices on what. I have worked out a system so I do not run around like I used to, and I take advantage of case discounts and frequent buyer rewards.

lisamarie12 · Apr 12, 2015

AbbyNTim said:
@LisaMarie12, I was thinking week and wrote month. That is the amount I average per week. The only reason it is not more is because I located every single store around here that sells these products and know who has the best prices on what. I have worked out a system so I do not run around like I used to, and I take advantage of case discounts and frequent buyer rewards.

Oh okay! So you would average about $200-$240 a month, that makes sense (or it doesn't, wow, we really pay a lot of money for commercial raw, it's true, homemade would be much cheaper). I have shopped around online and when I can afford it, I do order from Chewy's. Still, I don't save that much more from Chewy's then I would from the indy retailer in my neighborhood. I'm in NYC also - just breathing the air here is expensive.

Alternative to Stella and Chewys raw freeze dried food

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