Help me choose a food program?

Hi,
Homemade food has been proven too intensive for now- I may go back to it later. I need help deciding on a food regimen for my puppies. They are miniature goldendoodles, five months old and weigh 10 lbs and 13 lbs. I was going to use a dry food/food roll mix and looked into Natural Balance rolls, but the fifth ingredient was sugar! Currently they eat Royal Canin Mini Puppy. The vet has not noted stomach sensitivities or any weight loss or gain needs currently. I need the diet to be relatively cheap also, right now it's about $60 a month on Royal Canin. If we could drop it to $45 or less, that would be fantastic. Thank you,
Willowsailor14

Try this site it covers commercial home made and raw diets
http://www.dogaware.com/

Also it's American so kibble should be available HTH

I'm going to be using Taste of the Wild kibble for my dogs and for my puppy (mastiff mix) I'm estimating about $64 a month but he's huge so it would be significantly less for your pups.

They offer canned as well.

A nifty way I found to figure how much things are going to cost and how much to feed is this:

First you need to find the RER or resting energy requirement (basically how many Kcals a day they need to have to lay around and do nothing)

The formula is this:
RER = 70 * (Weight in kg ^0.75)

You want to use the ideal weight for your pet (so if your pet is fat it’ll be lower than their actual weight and if your pet is skinny it’ll be higher than their actual weight).

To convert lb to kg divide by 2.2
So 10 lbs = about 4.5*kg

Once you have your RER you have to figure out where your pet is on energy. I found and put together a great guideline so you know where to start. Remember that this is a starting point and if you’re feeding your pet and they’re loosing or gaining weight and they’re not supposed to then adjust the amount accordingly.

Intact Puppies & Kittens: 2 - 3 * RER
Neutered Puppies & Kittens: 1.5 - 2 * RER
Neutered Adult Dog: 1.4 - 1.6 * RER
Neutered Adult Cat: 1.2 - 1.4 * RER
Active Adult Dog & Cat: 1.6 - 2 * RER
Working Dog: 2 - 6 * RER
Overweight Dog: 1 - 1.2 * RER
Overweight Cat: .9 - 1 * RER

Please remember to weigh puppies and kittens every 2 weeks until their weight levels out/they reach their adult size and then switch them to adult! This time can vary with the breed and size of the animal (the larger the adult weight the longer it’ll take to mature)

You should be able to find how many Kcals are in a cup of dry food by looking at the label on the bag. Same with finding how many Kcals are in a can of canned food. You can also go the brands website and find all the Kcal information there!

Then you simply divide your pets Kcal/day need with how many Kcals per cup or can to find out how much your pet should actually be eating. This is extremely useful if you're feeding a mix of canned and dry food.

All information was gathered from:
McCurnin’s Clinical Textbook for Veterinary Technicians

It's hard to compare foods by cost as BrendaMarie pointed out each bag of food will have different nutritional values, just because one 20kg bag costs $80 and the other 20kg bags costs $60 doesn't mean that the $60 one is cheaper if you have to feed twice the amount of food to get enough nutrition into your dog.

I personally fed raw, I found I prefered to know that my dog was getting the best nutrition in the most natural way and it stopped me fretting about finding the best food out there. Might be worth working out what your dogs need to eat as adults using the information above, how much you are willing to spend and then look at some high quality foods and see if they are affordable per meal or day for your dogs. Yes there will be variation, not just by activity but your dogs metabolism and health but it's a good guideline to work from.