Best value for money buying cat food online

SillyMangoX

I've finally convinced my parents to let me start buying cat food online with the stipulation that it would work out cheaper than the whiskas we are feeding them at the moment. I've it worked out they each get 2 pouches a day plus 30-40g dry royal canin. (Or whatever we win at cat shows). So thinking about it, the whiskas boxes have 12 pouches, and feeding 3 cats 2 pouches a day the boxes last 2 days, so that's 6 euro every 2 days. The royal canin is 37 euro for 4kg, and 30g a day per cat it's lasting 44 days which isn't bad. But I was wondering with ordering on the likes of zooplus or amazon would better quality foods work out cheaper than that? I've been going around pet shops all morning looking at food and pricing things. The applaws tins are 2 euro each and they would need 2 a day, so that's 12 euro for one day of food. So basically would buying online be cheaper? And would anything be cheaper than 2 euro a tin? I'd rather pay that bit extra and know they like their food and it's good for them rather than get the cheap option and just have them lick up the jelly and leave the rest!

thegreatiam

SillyMangoX wrote: »

I've finally convinced my parents to let me start buying cat food online with the stipulation that it would work out cheaper than the whiskas we are feeding them at the moment. I've it worked out they each get 2 pouches a day plus 30-40g dry royal canin. (Or whatever we win at cat shows). So thinking about it, the whiskas boxes have 12 pouches, and feeding 3 cats 2 pouches a day the boxes last 2 days, so that's 6 euro every 2 days. The royal canin is 37 euro for 4kg, and 30g a day per cat it's lasting 44 days which isn't bad. But I was wondering with ordering on the likes of zooplus or amazon would better quality foods work out cheaper than that? I've been going around pet shops all morning looking at food and pricing things. The applaws tins are 2 euro each and they would need 2 a day, so that's 12 euro for one day of food. So basically would buying online be cheaper? And would anything be cheaper than 2 euro a tin? I'd rather pay that bit extra and know they like their food and it's good for them rather than get the cheap option and just have them lick up the jelly and leave the rest!

Ive found zooplus to be very cheap for quality. Plus the reward bonuses mean that Sharpy gets a new toy for free every now and then.

I bought a few different brands to see what he liked, he was on RC for €6 per KG, we have him on sanabelle for around €4 Per KG, get 10 kg bags for the best price.

Zooplus have a good range, plus they offer other supplies worth getting.

If you want you can also use the zooplus.co.uk for a different range and have it delivered to a parcel motel if the box is small enough

Pumpkinseeds

I find Zooplus.uk very good for Applaws, about 35 pounds for the 7.5kg bag we get. I buy the Felix pouches on Amazon for about 13 pounds for 44 pouches. Now I know all the arguments for an against Felix and Whiskas but it's our choice. We'd pay about 6.50 for a box of 12 pouches in the supermarket. Plus purchases over 25 pounds are often free delivery to Ireland.

morgana

Zooplus.de currently has for instance

Gemischtes Sparpaket Animonda Carny Adult 12 x 200 g for 7.99 Euro
(Mixed Saver Pack)
i.e 2 boxes of pouches, at roughly the price you'd get Whiskas at Tescos.
This is grain-free food but they have a bewildering choice of varieties and bands. There are a lot that come out more or less at the price of supermarket pouches.
I am using zooplus.de because I did extensive comparisons and they come out cheaper even though their shipping is more expensive but their prices are on average 2 euro less than on the irish site - so the more you order the more you save. You can pay be credit card or Paypal (but they charge 50 cent extra for Paypal).
Delivery is with DHL (although it was delivered by An Post) and it took about 4 days.

SillyMangoX

That's great thanks!! I'll have a search through the sites when I'm on the laptop tonight. I bought 3 tins of applaws and one of almo nature in the pet shop. I know they love applaws anyway!! I also saw real nature cat food in maxi zoo, I couldn't understand the ingredients, I think they were in German but it seemed good value, something like 1.50 a tin and they only need just over one tin each a day. Does anyone have experience with that food?:)

Nody

So 6 EUR = 12 pouches of 70g
37 EUR for 4 kg = 9.25 EUR / kilo.

Starting with dry Applaws, buy a 400g trial bag to try and then buy a 2kg and finally 7.5kg once you're 100% sure. Even the 400g bag will cost the same as what you pay for RC per kilo so only savings from that point if it works out (also have Taste of the wild as back up here). Oh and once you order the 7.5kg bag please order a storage container size small at the same time if you don't have a suitable container that can take the full content of the bag. We got that one and it makes a noticable difference in preserving the food smell over having it in bags, putting it in 2kg box (RC box we got for free) and then into the bowls. With that we simply open it every two days, take out a big cup, squeese out air and close it again with the zipper. Easy peasy!

For wet things get a bit more complicated; Applaws gets to expensive (10 EUR for 12 servings) but Zooplus own brand Cosma works out. Getting the 400g can (one can would be all meals for one day for all three cats, 200g split in the morning, 200g in the evening) works out at 2.49 EUR / day serving in 6 pack size or 5 EUR per two days. They are also very common for specials being the house brand and can buy more cheaper that way. Stick with Cosma original chicken (sardines on occasion, tuna even more rare due to the heavy metal in tuna) instead of the more exotic versions (I've found chicken always works were as the others can be a bit hit and miss depending on the cat). You can also go with Porta21 which is like applaws (shredded meat in broth or jelly were as Cosma is only jelly) which would work out at the same price as Whiskas basically.

Having said that I'm also a firm believer in rotating the food to avoid them only eating one type, with that in mind I'd also throw in Animonda Carny which works out almost half to Cosma in price. Go for the 400g cans (it makes a big difference in price to go big cans in general) and you have a good selection to choose from to vary their meals. Feringa is the premium version of Zooplus which works out similar to Cosma as well.

Now that you're saving money you can stick some treats in there, for example you have Terra Faelis which is very nice quality as general food and 50g Schesir are expensive to feed as main food but as treat (or hiding pills!) they work out great.

morgana

I need to rotate food as the feckers turn up their delicate feline noses on what was the flavour of the month just yesterday.
If you buy carefully and do your sums you can save quite a bit by buying the larger tins while giving them much better quality food.

miezekatze

I recommend Bozita for wet food, it's not bad quality, it's grain free and it's quite cheap and often on special offer if you buy multi packs. My cat loves it.

If you use the German zooplus site, things are often cheaper and there are more brands available. My girl loves GranataPet wet and dry food, I think it's grain free too. They often have a sample pack available for around 12 € which includes two 400g bags of dry food, 3 100g tins of wet food and 3 bags of cat treats.

Cosma is a supplementary food, but since your cats also eat a lot of dry food that's probably not an issue. My girl likes it, but it wouldn't be her favourite. I know other cats go crazy for it though.

I also buy Grau when it's on special offer, it's good quality, but can work out quite expensive.

SillyMangoX

Wow Nody thanks so much for that! Just read your post out to my mam and she agrees it's good! Just wondering how often would you order the food or how much of it would you buy at a time? I'll have to top up my 3V card soon and get ordering

Anytime I'm preferring toys from zooplus I get them the cosma snackies treats, and got them an advent calendar of them for Christmas and they go bananas for them, absolutely adore them so hopefully they will like the wet food too!

ETA: we have a storage bin already that holds 10kg, had to buy it after Peach won a 10kg bag of red mills cat food for being best non pedigree in show!

Nody

SillyMangoX wrote: »

Wow Nody thanks so much for that! Just read your post out to my mam and she agrees it's good! Just wondering how often would you order the food or how much of it would you buy at a time? I'll have to top up my 3V card soon and get ordering

Anytime I'm preferring toys from zooplus I get them the cosma snackies treats, and got them an advent calendar of them for Christmas and they go bananas for them, absolutely adore them so hopefully they will like the wet food too!

Well if you don't mind going big a 70+ EUR order from Zooplus.de will save you serious money (for example Cosma goes from 6.29 to 4.58 EUR per kilo!) and be shipped for free if memory serves.

Personally I usually aim to do 1 to 2 orders a month (due to space it all takes and to use the weekly deals) so with that in mind I'd look at one small order to start (200g cans, 400g Applaws bags) to test what your cats will eat which will be a bit more expensive from zooplus.ie and once you know what you want a big 12+ can of each type order from Zooplus.de which will be the money saver. That way you don't risk ordering in stuff your cats are unlikely to eat in the first place and you get some significant savings out of it all. Then once you're down to about 10 days worth of cans / dry you put in a follow up order for another 30 days and start a rotation basically on ordering either cans or dry stuff and throw in smaller orders for specials (but look at the price per kilo, some specials are only like 0.5 EUR off and not worth it while others can be 4 EUR off per kilo!).

SillyMangoX

That's brilliant thanks so much!! I just have one problem, when Peach gets 'nice' food she wolfs it down and pukes it up straight away.. then eats it again.. I got them a tin of applaws each today as a little treat which they get when we go to the pet shop to buy the dry food. So I think if I'm putting them onto a good food long term I will have to invest in a slow feeder bowl for the little piggie!!

I was just looking at the Porta21 dry food, they have 2x10kg bags for €74.90 compared to 2x7.5kg bags for applaws for €89.90. Would the Porta dry food be as good quality? We have loads of room for storage anyway so can buy in bulk!

Nody

Porta 21 Feline Finest Sensible - Grain Free yes as it's still high on meat content (70%) and grain free; the other once I'd be hesitant about due to content (i.e. meat content is 30 to 50% only; usually 20%+ rice which has no space in a cat's diet but is better then lets say wheat).

mymo

I bulk buy the bozita and one carton of it feeds my 3 one good meal a day, then I use applaws dry, 2 x 7.5kg bags were on offer, not sure if they still are. With bozita, the more you buy the cheaper it gets, I buy 2-3 months worth normally.
I need to order again tonight, I usually try .ie, .co.uk and .de for bargains before I choose.


Edit, I buy through fatcheese and get cash back too.

Morf

Great thread this!

Have started both of mine on Hill Science Plan. Was €15 for 1.5kg.

One loved it to start and the other would only eat it reluctantly and graze a bit. Now both seem not to be too keen.

Could anyone suggest a few trial packs to try? Is it best to mix wet and dry food (or does it depend on preference)?

Both adult, spayed/neutered and semi-outdoors.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Rips

If you are buying from somewhere like zooplus, buy in bulk and get free shipping, and buy the saver discounts. You'll get the money back off your first order almost, and you get that discount for the year then. Well worth it. I get about €3 off every order, and rack up the points and get free stuff all the time.

€1.80/day to feed my cat on my choice of wet food from Zooplus and when we were feeding wet and dry, it was much cheaper.

+ a pouch of whiskas, even if it works out at 50c or so, had him hungry by 4pm.

I'd advise anyone if feeding dry to actually weigh out the recommended amount, with the better quality products its usually a surprisingly small quantity.

Nody

Morf wrote: »

Could anyone suggest a few trial packs to try?

Applaws does 400g bags of each kind you can try; for other foods you can try to order the smallest bag. In general you want no grain (i.e. wheat, corn. etc. rice is not good but better then the other two) in at least the first three ingredients listed (best) or at least below 20%. This quickly cuts down the number of brands you want to try on dry.

For wet try to get a mixed package (usually contain 1 can of each type) in a suitable size but keep in mind that you don't want to feed tuna (it's by far the most common fish listed but heavy on heavy metals due to cat size vs. human size) but chicken/pig/cow/lamb etc. in it. Once again look at the content (certain 10EUR / kg brands are piss poor while a 4 EUR can be good, some I'd recommend are listed above but there are more brands I'd buy on the spot out there such as Bozita, Grau, Catz, etc., simply look at the content list, and not the spiel they give about the food, and ask yourself if you'd consider that eatable or if it's the scrap scrubbed of the floor). There's also the raw option (which I'm working towards with our fosters) combined with kibble.

Is it best to mix wet and dry food (or does it depend on preference)?

In my opinion yes; the reason being most wet foods are not complete (i.e. they require wet AND dry food) but also because of the water they consume, variation in food and simply ease for the long term (for example my own cats were only fed kibble for years and to date I still can't get them to eat wet except with 2 brands were as our foster cats who're fed both from day 1 will consume any wet food and any dry food basically). Kibble may be convenient but personally I think variety is better and it means if a food (for what ever reason) lacks something the next one they get is likely to contain it. Oh and don't worry if you see stuff like heart etc. listed; for a cat that's a good thing!

Rips wrote: »

If you are buying from somewhere like zooplus, buy in bulk and get free shipping, and buy the saver discounts. You'll get the money back off your first order almost, and you get that discount for the year then. Well worth it. I get about €3 off every order, and rack up the points and get free stuff all the time.

This for Zooplus; I've actually bought a 3 year extension on the 5% discount and I've saved over 50 EUR on it and picked up 3 ceramic bowls, free toys, a dog cover for the back of the car etc. for free from the earned points.

Zapperzy

I feed mostly smilla and animonda carny wet food in 200g tins. Both grain free and more reasonably priced than the others. I do get the odd few tins of grau grain free, feringa and a few other grain free ones as a treat but they are quite expensive. The big 400g tins go off by the time bunty gets to the end, same was happening the bozita tetrapacks. I find if I order a good mix of brands and flavours it keeps her interested otherwise she gets bored of any particular one :rolleyes: The mixed trial packs they do are handy for that, they mix the flavours up in each pack

Jesses on smilla and animonda kitten food, both €4 for 6 x 200g tins on zooplus.de, more expensive on the .ie and .co.uk sites. Whiskas was €5 for 12 x 85g pouches and she was going through at least 2 of those a day.

If you can afford €99+ orders at a time order through the zooplus.de site, delivery is free over €99 and overall things seem to be cheaper on it. Under €99 delivery is €10.40 which is quite steep so you'd need to work out if your actually saving money. Chrome is very handy for translating websites

Germans sure know how to make good cat food and beer

Morf

Danke schon!

SingItOut

SillyMangoX wrote: »

I also saw real nature cat food in maxi zoo, I couldn't understand the ingredients, I think they were in German but it seemed good value, something like 1.50 a tin and they only need just over one tin each a day. Does anyone have experience with that food?:)

Real nature is basically the closest thing you can get to feeding raw in a commercial food. The food is cooked and pressed cold (unlike most commercial pet foods) so it retains a lot more nutritional value, you don't need to feed a lot of it either. It is highly meat based. . . Select gold is a brilliant alternative to royal canin, couple of euro cheaper aswell. I had my two cats on it and it made their coat so glossy and they both shed a lot less. It also has a high meat content.

Source: I used to work in MaxiZoo :pac:

iora_rua

SingItOut wrote: »

Real nature is basically the closest thing you can get to feeding raw in a commercial food. The food is cooked and pressed cold (unlike most commercial pet foods) so it retains a lot more nutritional value, you don't need to feed a lot of it either. It is highly meat based. . . Select gold is a brilliant alternative to royal canin, couple of euro cheaper aswell. I had my two cats on it and it made their coat so glossy and they both shed a lot less. It also has a high meat content.

Source: I used to work in MaxiZoo :pac:

I get the MaxiZoo 'senior' Select Gold and Real Nature range for my cats, but at E2.00 and plus a tin it does get expensive. What I think is unfair, is that the matching dog tins are six for the price of five, but that offer is not extended to their cat tinned range! :mad: As a result, I mix in a couple of tins of felix or kitekat during the week, but then it's not a properly balanced mix for older cats

I used to get Bozita from Zooplus, but the cats kept getting 'picky' about which flavour they liked/disliked and anyway they were getting on in years. However, following the suggestions on this thread, I might go back and try some of the other brands and check out the German site. Thanks folks!

SillyMangoX

SingItOut wrote: »

Real nature is basically the closest thing you can get to feeding raw in a commercial food. The food is cooked and pressed cold (unlike most commercial pet foods) so it retains a lot more nutritional value, you don't need to feed a lot of it either. It is highly meat based. . . Select gold is a brilliant alternative to royal canin, couple of euro cheaper aswell. I had my two cats on it and it made their coat so glossy and they both shed a lot less. It also has a high meat content.

Source: I used to work in MaxiZoo :pac:

Haha wow good to have someone in the know! :P is the real nature only available in maxi zoo?:)

SingItOut

SillyMangoX wrote: »

Haha wow good to have someone in the know! :P is the real nature only available in maxi zoo?:)

Yup it's only available in MaxiZoo stores, it is very expensive but again you don't feed a lot of it so that balances out the price. With the select gold dry food it generally goes on offer every month the real nature never had special offers while I was there

Zapperzy

I don't know if real nature has the ingredients listed on the back of the tin in english but I couldn't find them on the maxizoo website so I went looking for them elsewhere (quite hard to find, the real nature site doesn't list them either ). Found them here http://www.fressnapf.de/shop/real-nature-katze-adult-6-x-400g just google translate the page.

Depending on the flavour some of them contain barley, brown rice, potato or whole wheat pasta so not grain free, although the fish & chicken flavour only has potatoes listed so that could be considered grain free but why potato in a cat food Apart from that it seems quite good so it depends really what price it is, unless it's cheaper than other grain free foods I'd be choosing a different brand.

SingItOut

I'll have a look for my MaxiZoo training handouts and let you know all the ingredients, god only knows where that folders gone now but I'll have a look

lubie76

I order a mix of wet and dry from zooplus.uk about 3 times a year. I usually buy in bulk (I have 3 cats). The bigger the can the better value and I regularly buy animonda carny in the 800g cans - I just get keep in fridge with plastic lid and get full 2 days out of it and it works out at £2.20/kg. I do shop around though to see best value per kg as they not fussy cats but I will only buy premium type foods like Bozita, animonda, smilia etc

For dry I buy porta 21 grain free in 10kg bags normally 2 of them for £50 as it's discounted and this is enough dry food for 6 months. I took one cat off dry food completely at the advice of my vet as she was in pre diabetic stage and she gets on fine with the complete wet diet with small bit of raw.

I would say altogether throughout the year I spend about £450 which I think is good for 3 cats- I see a vets locally had a so called bargain posted on their FB page today - 12 x 85g pouches of hills feline for €11. Crazy money if you ask me.

SillyMangoX

Going placing my order of the trail foods tomorrow! And of course I just had to buy some other stuff as I was on the site..!

Morf

Tried to get a few sample foods in Maxi Zoo.

Select Gold chicken wet food seems to have the male minimally interested and the female not at all.

The female will eat the Select Gold "acceptance" on some occasions and not others.

All this added to a fmaily member here with no interest in measuring out the dry food and throwing 1/3 of the bag of "acceptance" out in the morning in an open shed where other cats in the neighbourhood can and will help themselves.

Have another select gold dry food that I haven't opened yet.

ferretone

Select Gold is too grain-based for cats to my mind. The Nature's Best in Maxi Zoo is much better: mostly made of named meat products, which means not too bad as these things go. That's what my cats were getting for the wet part of their diet until recently, though I'd say they wouldn't have much time for it since I switched that to raw duck hearts! They look a bit askance at their Applaws dry food now, but thankfully still eat it, as I don't think I could easily give them a balanced diet otherwise!

Morf

I might just give up trying to introduce them to something.

Just pick something and get a good supply.

No matter what I give them lately they seem to turn their nose up at it.

Good quality/high acceptance/whiskas or similar.

Thanks for suggestions though.

Pumpkinseeds

I'd really recommend signing up to Parcel Motel. You use their UK address and they reroute it to the parcel motel nearest you, that you've chosen. It costs 3.50 per delivery. I wanted to order a 2kg bag of cat food from a UK pet shop and they wanted over 12 euro delivery, I wasn't going to pay that and of course UK delivery was free. Since Antrim, is classed as the UK, delivery was free to there so only would have cost 3.50.

It's also a really handy way of getting around the problem of some businesses not shipping to Ireland.

SillyMangoX

We got our delivery from zooplus today, I got 400g of applaws dry chicken and I got the trial box of cosma that has every flavour in it. So far the cosma chicken and tuna has gone down very very well! I'm just going to give them one tin between them each day to see what flavours they like. And the slow feeder bowl for peach is brilliant she didn't get sick after eating this time