My review of 3 suppliers of raw dog food and my preferred choices in the summary
Natural Instinct. - www.naturalinstinct.com - Customer service excellent. As they are literally just round the corner from us, we can pick the supplies up and therefore no delivery charge. Handling the 1kg tubs of Working Chicken is easy and stores well in the freezer. Quality of food seems fine though you are paying for the addition of veg. Defrosting the food is easy as there is no spillage and all the juices are contained within the tubs. Scoop out the food for the dogs and they wolf it down. With 6 dogs, we feed chicken wings in the morning and each dog gets 1/2 tub of Working Chicken in the evening. So 3 tubs used each day. We would buy 80 tubs per order to get the 30% discount but it still works out quite expensive compared to the other suppliers. Dog poo is minimal, though you can see remains of veg in the poo. The main concerns of this supplier is that they are more expensive than the others and the sheer waste of the used containers and sleeve wrapping.
TheyLoveIt dog food - www.theyloveit.co.uk - only sells chicken products so we buy the bulk 40 x 1kg blocks of minced chicken and bags of chicken wings. Delivery charge is about £10. The blocks of 1kg minced chicken are not individually wrapped, so handling require cleanliness. Storage in a chest freezer is easy. Defrosting them is messy as the resultant blood juice can go everywhere so you will need to buy sealed plastic tubs to put each block in. We defrost 3 blocks per day, and feed chicken wings and 1/2 block of food per dog in the evening. Cleaning up the containers afterwards is a must and then restore with new frozen blocks to defrost. Chicken wings come in bags and are not so easy to store as they are irregular shapes and don't utilise freezer space very efficiently. This supplier is effectively a third cheaper than Natural Instinct (but only if you buy the bulk packs of minced chicken). Quality of minced chicken is good. Dogs wolf it down and their poos are minimal. We also feed additional veg to go with this stuff for variety and nutrients and to stop their poos going white and powdery. Good delivery service and price was £10. No real concerns of this supplier though you do have to be comfortable handling raw blocks of meat with no wrapping . Wish they did other types of meat too though.
Manifold Valley Meats - www.manifoldvalleymeats.co.uk - variety of meat types that come in 1/2kg sausages. Delivery about £12. We bought minced chicken, beef and tripe sausage, chicken wings and ox hearts. Handling of the sausages is fine and with 6 dogs, we feed chicken wings in the morning and defrost 3 sausages per day for their evening meal. Handling of the sausages is fine though it can be tricky to cut the wrapping off from frozen. We found cutting the wrapping off from defrosted was messy so stuck to cutting off from frozen . Defrost in sealed plastic containers. Chicken wings come in boxes and are much easier to store in the chest freezer. It also means the wings don't get stuck to each other and so just select 6 wings from a box and feed directly to the dogs from frozen. They love it! I like the variety of meats this supplier does though unwrapping the sausages is a bit of a pain. Dogs poo is firm though a bit powdery. We add ox heart to the meals to loosen the poo a bit. Good delivery service, good food. Price overallis pretty much the same as theyLoveIt and 30% cheaper than Natural Instinct.
Summary - All 3 suppliers provide good or reasonable quality of food. All our dogs have benefited enormously from changing from dry kibble to a raw diet and all have superb glossy coats, better breath, reduced poo output and skinny dogs have put on weight.
The ease and convenience of the food from Natural Instinct is very good though more expensive compared to the others. TheyLoveIt provide only chicken type food and as there is no wrapping, then the reduced cost reflects this. Manifold Valley provide a variety of raw food type for a very good price. For both TheyLoveIt and Manifold Valley, we are able to feed 6 dogs quality raw food for a total of about £2.50 per day.
From now on, per month, we will buy 40 x 1kg blocks of minced chicken from TheyLoveIt and 5 x 3kg boxes of Chicken Wings from Manifold Valley that will include some sausage blocks of other meats for variety.
