The Cost of Switching to the Raw Food Diet

Markus intently eating his raw food of chicken, bone & vegetable from CRUDO

Raising Markus is the series where we share stories about our time raising Markus. Said to be aggressive and having gone unadopted for over a year, Raising Markus is the story of a rescued dog from Korea given a second opportunity, now in Vancouver, Canada. This series will include the lessons, joys and struggles of dog owners fumbling our way through our first adoption. The hope is that if you're considering rescuing a dog of your own, our stories are useful to you.

It's been a few months since we put Markus on a raw food diet and now that we've had the chance to establish a routine and crunch some numbers, we're taking a deeper look into the cost of going raw.

I will say up front that the products that are compared and their prices are specific to our area and the food that we gave Markus.

The Cost of Going Raw

A bowl of raw chicken, bone & vegetable from CRUDO by Surrey Meat Packers

When people talk about switching to a raw food diet, one of the immediate concerns we think about is the cost. Is it worth it? Does it pay for itself in longterm health benefits?

I cannot answer that last question and I suspect I'll never be able to. There are plenty of articles out there that suggest going raw is better for the longterm health of your dog. The basic idea is if they're not consuming things like preservatives and/or fillers, their body's not absorbing it either.

This post isn't about the benefits of going raw - I'll leave the decision up to you. What I'm hoping to do here is to lay out some numbers so you can be equipped with some hard numbers as you make a decision.

Comparing the Costs

A tube of raw chicken, bone & vegetable from CRUDO by Surrey Meat Packers

What I can do for you is answer the question of how the costs compare. I will start with the freeze dried dog food. I do need to say upfront that when we switched Markus over to a raw food diet, we were feeding him Valens. Valens isn't your traditional kibble, but is better categorized as freeze dried dry dog food. On a spectrum of kibble prices, Valens is towards the higher end.

So let's use some specific examples. Markus' favourite flavour of Valens was Fisher, which retails at $100.99 for an 11.34/kg/25lb bag depending on where you get it. We switched between different proteins (with Farmer) so the prices do vary a little bit here, but we were averaging about 56 days in between at about 2 cups a day. In total, we had Markus on Valens for about 8 months, which is our sample size.

Certainly there are other brands of kibble that are less expensive and we actively chose Valens because of how the food is manufactured and how much Markus actually likes to eat it. In some ways, they're not direct comparables because Valens isn't technically kibble, but for the sake of argument, they are all dry dog food.

Now let's take a look at the raw food diet and the trend so far. The sample size is a lot smaller here because it's only been a few months since he's been on this diet, but I believe these numbers are a bit more accurate than the dry dog food.

The reason for this is because Markus has been eating his raw food consistently. With the raw food, he'll eat his daily amount whereas with the dry dog food, we would give him his 2 cups a day, but he wouldn't always eat it. In fact, he could go a full day without eating or days where he'd only eat a portion (although he was starting to eat pretty consistently with Valens at the end).

All of that is to say that the numbers for the dry dog food aren't all that accurate because Markus didn't finish his quota everyday, but he did with the raw food diet.

At CRUDO by Surrey Meat Packers, a box of 44lb of raw Chicken, Bone & Vegetable comes in at $85.00. On average, one of these boxes lasted us about 49 days.

What some people don't realize is that you don't have to feed the dog as much of the raw. If you're feeding your dog 2 cups of kibble a day, you're feeding them considerably less in raw food. The general rule of thumb is 2-3% of your dog's ideal weight based on how active they are.

Putting it all together

Markus’ raw chicken, bone & vegetable with a splash of pumpkin

A small miscalculation with the number was that we realized we had also been feeding Markus too much of the raw food in the beginning and we've dialled the amount back recently.

We initially did our measurement with 3%, but he was more between 2 to 2.5% based on his activity level, which ended up being a difference of about 150 grams a day. This is just to say that it should last even more than the 49 days average.

It should be stated again that we're comparing a fairly high quality line of dry dog food versus the lowest costing protein at CRUDO. When you compare the raw data (pun absolutely intended), the costs are pretty close. A 11.34/kg/25lb bag of Valens Fisher at $100.99 lasted us on average about 7 days longer than a 44lb box of raw Chicken, Bone and Vegetable at $85.00 a box at CRUDO.

So those are the numbers. I know they are very specific to what we were feeding Markus at the time and it might not be as comparable with your situation. There are a lot of unspoken factors that come into play here - how far we have to drive to pick up the raw food, how much raw food we're purchasing in bulk, having to have freezer space for it and the mess that it creates.

I can't really speak to the longterm health benefit because we're simply not there yet. Even then, it'd be extremely hard to attribute his (hopefully) good health to specifically the raw food diet. I will say that as a dog owner of a rescued dog who spent his first 3 years living off and eating who knows what, if putting him on a raw diet improves his health and makes up for the time that we've lost together, it'll have been worth it.

There's also something to be said about how much Markus likes the raw food. To date, he has finished every single bowl of food that we've put in front of him. While he was eating dry dog food, he was never really that excited for it. These days, he's actively excited when he comes home from his walks because he knows it's meal time.

At the end of the day, I believe that the costs are close enough that it's negligible. Knowing these costs, if there's actually a chance that the raw food diet improves Markus' longterm health, then I'm all for it. As a picky eater, Markus also extremely loves the food, so it's hard to put a price on that too.

We’re so grateful for your support of The Markus Project. We mostly choose our locations through searching and word of mouth. If you know of a park, trail or location you think we should check out, please share it with us. We’d love to know!