My dogs are purely raw feed and have been for ages now. They are doing really well in all ways and I strongly believe it is the best for them  currently I spend about £50.00pm thats buying in bulk about every 2 months. I have invested in a 8cu ft freezer for the purpose the biggest i could fit in.
Now here is the problem , oh has lost his job and my remaining salary is hardly enough to cover the mortgage and council tax let alone feed us or the dogs and hopefully he will be able to get another job before his 3 months salary runs out .
Regarding the dogs what would people do to feed  them part of me says change to a cheaper dried food but is there really one that may not give other problems and do the the better dried foods ie orijen ag jwb really save me much money. btw I am feeding a 40g gsd who is well excercised so needs a fair bit of calories and pomx ( she really isnt the problem could feed her raw for peanuts lol

In my experience feeding raw works out far cheaper than feeding a good quality complete - I wouldn't want to feed a cheap, grain-heavy food. Who are you using as your raw feed supplier at the moment?

Hi Chris!

That's awful about your OH losing his job :-( hope finds another one soon.
with regards to feeding, I haven't ever fed raw so don't really know much about the costs an all that. I feed Kia Arden grange, 15kg on average lasts 7ish weeks. The last lot I paid for I got two 15kg sacks for £46. Tiger is on nature diet, its the only food that he does well on. It works out it costs more to feed him than kia, and you know the size difference between them! :-)

A local supplier, I could change to albion who seem the a good competitive alternative and that improves things by £10.00 mth. Would like to get to £35.00  
Thanks Kiger love the fact that little one costs as much as Kia lol

I use Albion now, was using Landywoods (which would probably be slightly cheaper, although packing into the freezer is more difficult due to shape of blocks), and would think you could easily feed 2 dogs for £35 a month. I order about £80-100 mince at a time and that lasts me around 4-5 months, feeding 5 dogs (4 large, 1 medium). I get bones free from my local butcher and top most meals with a handful of zero-grain complete.

thanks pedlee will have another look at albion and see how far I could get it down to. Unfortunatley I have no nice friendly buthchers nearby so would need to get everything from albion bones carcasses etc.

Really hope to be able to stay with raw,
May have to consider sending the dogs out to work to pay for their keep LOL 

I feed two dogs - one 33kg the other 5-6kg- on Landywoods raw food and spend around £20 -£25 a month. I share an order with someone else so that we can get free delivery and between us can order a good mix of varieties. I found my order sharer on BritBarf so may well be worth asking on there.

I used to feed Arden Grange and find feeding raw is an awful lot cheaper - having said that I do feed the odd bit of kibble now and again just in case they ever have to go to kennels and to try to avoid problems with their rears in that situation.

Fingers crossed that your OH manages to find a job soon and that this is just a temporary setback for you all.

If you can't find somebody to share an order with, another solution would be to feed half raw & half complete untill you can afford to switch back to 100% raw. I understand that by feeding raw alone it can work out much cheaper than by feeding complete, but in order to do so one must buy in bulk so it's a case of needing to spend a large amount out in one lump.

I feed Buster complete & tripe, sometimes swapping the tripe for raw minced beef, white fish or raw beef chunks (which appear to be just cow-tongue - he LOVES that), or even tinned 'Butchers' dog food when I'm low on freezer space.

I haven't the space to buy raw in bulk so I just buy a few bags of 2kg bags of raw (Prize Choice frozed food, tripe/beef etc.) and feed that at a 50:50 ratio with Beta complete.

That way you don't have to alter thier diet entirely, only in part, untill things pick back up.

Unless your dogs are growing (I prefer a premium food for puppies) I have never had a problem feeding an economy complete feed (yes mainly grain based but my dogs are always in great condition) when used as a base for raw feeding.  We get a variety of raw from Landywoods and use the complete as a filler.  We don't have the freezer space to go completely raw but have found this a good compromise and the dogs have thrived.  We currently have 6 dogs ranging from 30-70 kg, and could not justify feeding the adults a premium food, the monthly bills would be ridiculously high.  Unfortunately in the current financial climate many people are having to make cutbacks, and I certainly won't feel guilty for using a cheaper food, so long as my dogs are healthy and happy,

Rather than adding a cheap complete you could always add cooked rice/potato to make the raw go further.

HJave spoken to albion who are being very helpful and are putting together an order aming for £35.00 a month thats at least a saving of £15.00. Thanks for your ideas if plan A doesn't work I will look at some of your other suggestions at least sharing the problem makes me feel a bit better.
At least with the summer coming other bills will be a bit cheaper to certainly excercises the mind these situations I am really trying to look positive and see this as a blip in lifes rich tapestry omg now iam getting poetic lol

thats a good idea pedlee I already put in the odd bit of salmon oil so that wouldn't be a bad combo 

All my GSD's are on Alpha Field. They do real well on it.
You can get it from your local pet shop, it is not on the shelf so you have to ask for it.
Alpha is VAT free so a 15kg bag is £10 to £12

Another place to chuck into the mix is Durham Anmal Feeds(DAF). I switched to them last year and they are very cost effective with a good range of products. They even do 'big bags of bones' at about £2 a bag and they really are a big bag!!! Worth looking on ther website f it doesn't work with Albion and they are also very helpful.

Thanks Paula have just checked and unfortunately daf dont deliver in my area yet. of course that is unless I becams a distributor !

albion have just got back to me and can suppliy an amount that works out at about £33 pm ye !!  Thats a great start now just checking feezer space will try that for abit and see how our fortunes change. Thanks for all you r ideas some good ones there.

Would you get paid for becoming a distributor?!! Could be a way of making a bit more cash?! I don't know how much work is involved though know nothing about it!!!

I guess so Paula I imagine you would need warehouse space and lots of freezers and a refridgerated van maybe something to look into if oh doesnt get another job soon