One medium dog, about 300g of kibble a day, so a 15kg bag lasts me the better part of seven weeks. The big bag saves real money but I have started wondering whether the last third is worth eating by the time we get there. He has never refused it, but he also once ate a sock. Is there a point where it goes off in a way I cannot see?
I did the maths on this and the saving is smaller than it looks once you account for waste. My 12kg bag was about 18 percent cheaper per kilo than the 6kg, and I was binning perhaps the last kilo and a half of every second bag because it had gone stale and my dog got fussy. Two smaller bags cost me a few pounds more and I stopped throwing food away, so it came out roughly even and the food is fresher.
Storage location matters more than bag size. A garage or a shed that swings from 4C to 30C ages food far faster than a cupboard indoors. I moved mine inside and the last third stopped being a problem.
Check the printed best before and note that it refers to the sealed bag. Once opened, the clock is a different one and nobody prints it. If the kibble looks dusty at the bottom, feels greasy, or he starts leaving it when he never did before, that is your answer.
Buy the big bag and freeze two thirds of it in portions. Kibble freezes fine, comes out unchanged, and you are effectively opening a fresh small bag every fortnight. I have done this for three years with a large dog and it turned the bulk price into an actual saving.
This works well as long as you let it come to room temperature in the sealed bag rather than the open bowl, otherwise condensation forms on the kibble and you have created exactly the damp you were avoiding.
@abigail_ruthven · 3mo ago · 3 replies
The failure mode is not mould, it is the fat going rancid, which happens slowly with air and warmth and does not always smell obvious to us. Most manufacturers suggest using dry food within about four to six weeks of opening for that reason, which puts your seven week bag right at the edge. The nutrients that degrade first are the fragile ones like some vitamins and the fats themselves, so it is a quality question rather than a poisoning question.
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@abigail_ruthven · 3mo ago
Worse, if you tip it in loose. The bag itself has a fat barrier and the bin gets a film of old oil on the walls that goes off and taints the fresh food. Put the whole bag inside the bin and roll it closed. That is the single best thing you can do.
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@hornworm_hunt · 3mo ago
Is decanting into a plastic bin the fix, or does that make it worse?
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