Where to Buy Meat for Your Dog’s Raw Food Diet — Tips and Low-Cost Options
A quick note before you read: I first wrote this back in 2010, so the specific prices below are from back then, and your area today will be different. I’ve left the old numbers in as a rough reference point, not a promise of what you’ll pay. The good news is that the strategy for finding affordable meat has held up well over the years, even though the price tags have not.
One of the most common questions I get about raw feeding is a simple one: where do you actually buy all this meat without spending a fortune? It really depends on what you consider low cost. For some people any grocery store meat feels too expensive, and if that’s you, you’ll have to do more work to hunt down the cheap stuff. But plenty of people can feed their dog perfectly well on grocery store meat as long as they’re a little selective about what they buy. Here’s where I’d start.
Start at the grocery store
Chicken leg quarters are the backbone of an affordable raw diet. Back in 2010 I could find them for somewhere around $.59 to $.89 a pound, and even now they’re usually one of the cheapest meats in the store. They make up a good portion of what my dogs eat. If you find the quarters too fatty for your dog to tolerate, just pull some of the skin off before feeding.
Turkey is a little more work, since a whole bird is cumbersome to cut up, especially for smaller dogs. But if you don’t mind the effort it can be a great value. Prices jump around through the year, but if I looked around I could usually find a basic, un-enhanced turkey for under a dollar a pound, and the holidays are the best time to stock up. As with chicken, if the turkey is too fatty you can remove some of the skin.
Pork goes on sale constantly. Various cuts often drop to $2 a pound or less, and I’ve caught pork butt roasts around $1.49 a pound. Beef roasts are at almost every grocery store too; the cheapest ones in my area tended to run about $2 a pound, and I’ve seen them on sale lower. Both are worth watching the weekly flyer for.
Don’t forget organs and the butcher counter
Organs aren’t optional in a raw diet, they’re where a lot of the nutrition is (I get into why in my raw feeding recipes post). The good news is they’re usually cheap. Beef heart is the sweet spot: it isn’t popular for people to eat, so it’s often plentiful and inexpensive. If you can find a meat market or butcher willing to sell it to you, you’ll likely pay less than a dollar a pound. A butcher counter is also the best place to ask about liver, kidney, and other organ meats you won’t always see out on the shelf.
Fish rounds things out. I rarely found it for less than about $3 a pound, but once in a while it dropped closer to $2, and if it’s a decent fish at that price I’ll grab some to add variety.
The real money-saver: buy on sale and freeze
If I had to give just one tip for keeping raw feeding affordable, this is it. Watch the weekly sales, and when a good protein drops in price, buy a lot of it and freeze it. A chest freezer pays for itself fast when you feed raw. Freezing has a bonus too: holding meat frozen for a couple of weeks knocks out many of the common parasites, so it’s good for safety as well as your wallet.
Cheaper routes that take more work
If grocery prices still don’t fit your budget, there are cheaper options, they just take more legwork. International and ethnic markets often carry organ meats and cuts that mainstream stores skip, frequently at better prices. Buying directly from a local farm can also work out well, especially if you’re willing to take a share of an animal and put it in the freezer.
At the far end, if you need a large amount of really cheap meat, you can look into a rendering or meat-processing plant. This is where animal byproducts are taken to be processed into the “meal” that ends up in a lot of commercial pet food. Some plants will set aside unprocessed meat and sell it; back when I looked into it I saw prices as low as $.29 to $.39 a pound. The quality is lower than anything you’d find in a store, so you’ll have to investigate and decide for yourself whether it meets your standards. It isn’t for everyone, but I mention it because for someone on a tight budget it can be the difference between feeding raw and not.
How much should you actually buy?
Before you load up the freezer, it helps to know roughly how much your dog eats in a week so you don’t over-buy or come up short. I built a free raw feeding calculator that works out daily and weekly amounts from your dog’s weight, so you can shop with a real number in mind.
That should give you a good start. If you’re still working out the basics, here’s how I switch a dog over to raw and my simple approach to raw recipes. Good luck.
Jamie Dolan
Neenah, WI
