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“What should I feed my dog?”
It’s one of the most important decisions we can make for our furry friends. I recently learned some not-so-great things about the kibble I’ve been feeding my senior pup, so I decided to do a little bit of research into alternatives. After sifting through a lot of information about raw foods, fresh foods, home-cooked plans, and everything in between, I landed on two different brands I wanted to try.
I picked the Sundays Food For Dogs and The Farmer’s Dog subscription services because one of my biggest gripes with my current feeding plan is that I always end up having to rush out at the last minute to get a fresh bag of food for Maggie. With my busy schedule, sometimes that’s just not feasible. So I tried out two weeks of Sundays and The Farmer’s Dog to see which would work best for me and my pup.
Sundays Food For Dogs is an air-dried, shelf stable human-grade dog food that uses all real ingredients and is formulated by a veterinarian and an engineer. The air-drying method preserves nutrients and tastes better than high-heat methods (like kibble uses). They also use a “kill step” which eliminates pathogens, meaning that Sundays is safe to handle (unlike raw food).
The Farmer’s Dog is a fresh food that is kept frozen or refrigerated until ready to serve. It is also human-grade, and uses real meats and vegetables. It’s prepared in USDA kitchens, where each recipe is gently cooked at low temperatures according to USDA-facility standards. Their recipes are also formulated by veterinarians.
Both brands walked me through a little quiz so they could determine how much food to send me every week. They asked questions like my dog’s weight, activity level, and body condition. I especially liked the cute little icons on the Sundays quiz.
Sundays has two recipes – Beef and Chicken. The Farmer’s Dog has four – Beef, Chicken, Pork, and Turkey. Now, for my subscription, Sundays recommended that I try the Beef, so I can’t speak for the Chicken. But for The Farmer’s Dog, they sent me a mix of Beef, Chicken, and Pork.
Sundays’ recipes both contain 90% meat and claim to contain no “sketchy” ingredients. They even have a little widget on their site that lets you compare ingredients to over 3000 other dog foods. The ingredients looked pretty good to me, a mix of meat, fruits and vegetables. The food is processed using an air drying method, which leaves it shelf stable while also retaining all of those valuable nutrients. It’s human-grade, which is another plus.
The Farmer’s Dog recipes all contain a mix of meat, vegetables, and something called the “TFD Nutrient Blend” which seems to be just added vitamins and minerals. One thing that I did notice is that the Beef recipe has lentils in it, and the Pork recipe has potatoes in it. Both of those ingredients have been linked to Dilated Cardiomyopathy, a heart condition. There’s no proven causation, though, so I feel pretty confident that I can safely feed those ingredients to my pup.
Both brands offered pretty hefty “first box” discounts — 50% off my first box for The Farmer’s Dog, and 35% off my first box at Sundays. The Sundays cost comes out to $1.38 per meal, and The Farmer’s Dog cost comes out $2.04 per day (that’s with the discount — without the discount, it’s $4.08 per day). In terms of actual price paid, I paid $44.95 for a full month’s worth of Sundays and $28.57 for just 2 weeks of The Farmer’s Dog. Typically, the Sundays would be $69 for a month’s worth, and The Farmer’s Dog would be $57.14 for two weeks. So Sundays definitely wins on price.
Because it’s frozen, the thing I will say about The Farmer’s Dog is I didn’t have any room in my freezer for ice cream during the two weeks I was feeding it to my dog. I also had to remember to defrost each package in the refrigerator so they’d be ready to feed my pup. Not my favorite thing to have to do.
Sundays is shelf-stable, and the cereal-box style packaging fit right in my cupboard. I did appreciate that I didn’t have to remember to defrost anything, and when I was ready to feed Maggie her meals, all I had to do was pour. This was incredibly easy.
My dog is a notoriously picky eater, so I was ready to abandon ship on this whole article as soon as she turned up her nose at one or the other. BUT! She actually liked both of these foods!!!
She gobbled up the Sundays like it was a bowl full of treats. Probably because it reminded her of treats in both shape and the jerky-like texture. I did have to break the Sundays pieces up for her because she’s a pretty small little gal and the chunks were a tiny bit big for her to handle.
The Farmer’s Dog, she also loved, but it did give her the tiniest smidge of indigestion the first 2 days that we tried it. That’s not super uncommon for her, and it can probably be attributed to changing up her diet somewhat suddenly. But once she was over that, it was smooth sailing for the rest of her trial run.
While both Sundays Food For Dogs and The Farmer’s Dog are excellent choices for nourishing my dog, I have to say I’m going to go with Sundays. It’s healthy, it’s easy, and it’s more affordable. She clearly goes crazy for it, so I feel like I’m giving her a tasty new leash on life.
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