The Farmer’s Dog: Dog Food Review

Introduction
One of my clients feeds their dogs the Farmer’s Dog Food which is a cooked fresh and frozen dog food and so I decided to try this for my dog, a 100lb Doberman Pinscher, who has a super sensitive stomach and has turned into a picky eater lately. Luckily, this company offers a 50% off the first week trial order so that is what I did. As you can see in the photo above, the first order included a container to hold a couple of pouches of the food in the refrigerator to thaw, 14 pouches of the chicken and rice formula, and a 3 oz package of chicken treats. I’ll be rating this product out of 5 stars based on three main criteria: 1) affordability 2) health benefits and 3) practicality:

Affordability (2.0/5.0 Stars)
This product is not affordable if you have a large breed dog and are on a tight budget. The pre discount cost of these meals was $96.27 pre tax which equates to $13.75/day (2 pouches per day). That is a food budget that most college students would be happy with. I could eat on that budget, maybe not eating out every meal but I could certainly cook for one person for $13.75/day if I needed to. If you’re a millionaire and just want to spend that on dog food maybe price isn’t an issue but for the average American this is pricey. With the discount and taxes included my total for the one week of food was $45.88 or $6.55/day which is affordable as a trial for me. All in all, I’m giving an affordability rating of 2.0/5.0 stars. One caveat is that if you have a small dog this could dramatically less so that is something to consider. Although there are more expensive dog foods, this is pretty much unaffordable for the average American.

Health Benefits (4.5/5.0 Stars)
I won’t bother with a technical breakdown of the health benefits because I’m not a vet or a nutritionist of any kind. You can read more about what the company says about the product here. It does make sense that using higher quality ingredients and not cooking them into a kibble is going to be healthier though. What I noticed from my dog eating this food is 1) better breath 2) darker and healthier looking stool 3) higher energy levels compared to kibble and 4) he loves this food which is a big plus. In general, these indicators seem to point towards better digestion and gut health. I also have not noticed any diarrhea switching him to this food which is unusual since he generally has pretty bad digestive issues when I change his food at all. It may have helped that I gave him a few bites of this food for 3 or 4 days before giving him full meals. Based on the things I noticed, a rating of 4.5/5.0 stars makes sense. This is still cooked/processed food so I can’t quite give it a 5 star rating but it is appears to be pretty decent.

Practicality/Convenience (3.0/5.0 Stars)
The fact that this food has to be frozen and then thawed in the refrigerator is obviously less convenient than kibble. They give you a little thawing container to help which really doesn’t add much to the convenience aspect of things but is a nice thought. Where this really isn’t convenient is a boarding situation where you have to explain to the sitter or boarding facility that the food must be frozen and then thawed each day. And then there’s bowl cleaning. With kibble I generally will toss all the bowls in the dishwasher between meals but if I don’t get to it then it’s not a big deal to feed kibble to the same dog in the same bowl for all meals – with this food, the bowl is going to have to be cleaned immediately to prevent flies and the smell of rotting food remnants. While it isn’t the least convenient food (I’m looking at you Darwin’s) it certainly isn’t the most convenient which earns it a rating of 3 stars.

Conclusion
It goes without saying that this website is not sponsored or affiliated with the Farmer’s Dog. This is a good dog food option though in my opinion of the subscription services out there that I’ve tried that offer similar prepared or raw dog food. The smell is much better than other foods. It does smell like something a human could eat, although I am not going to try it. The real downside is the cost. There’s almost no way to justify spending that amount on dog food especially for a large dog unless you have money to burn. I totally would transition my dog to this food full time if I had the budget. As it stands, I’ll probably buy a week of this food every now and then if it seems like he’s getting bored of his regular diet.