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Is The Farmer’s Dog Worth It? The $2 a Day Is a Small Dog’s Price

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Featured card reading Is The Farmer's Dog Worth It? For a 60 to 100 lb dog, full meals run about $10 to $17 a day, not $2. Photo of a pale Labrador lying on the floor beside a steel food bowl.
Photo: Ferran Ventura / Unsplash

Published October 20, 2026Checked against the current regulations

Is The Farmer’s Dog worth it? For a Chihuahua, maybe. For a dog the size of most service dogs, the honest answer starts with a number the ads do not lead with: somewhere around $10 to $17 a day on full meals, which is roughly $300 to $500 a month and $3,600 to $6,100 a year for one 60 to 100 pound dog.

I have not fed The Farmer’s Dog to my own dogs, and I have not bought it, so this is not a review. It is measured against my standard on working dog nutritional requirements, and it does three things: the math for a working-size dog, a plain look at what the company can and cannot show you about the food, and a test you can run on your own kitchen counter. My rule is that I do not review what I have not used, and I am holding myself to it here.

I am a service dog handler, not a veterinarian or a trainer by profession, and nothing here is professional advice.

The short answer

The food itself looks solid on paper. The company says every recipe is formulated to AAFCO standards, it shows “AAFCO Complete & Balanced” on its own homepage, it paid for a one-year study at Cornell, and Dog Food Advisor lists no recalls. None of that is the problem.

The price is the problem, and it gets worse the bigger your dog is. A Lab, a golden, a shepherd or a Lab mix doing public access work is a large dog on this company’s price chart. For most handlers, $300 to $500 a month for one dog’s food is not a food decision. It is a rent decision.

So my answer is: worth it for a small number of people, not for most handlers with a big dog, and a half plan is the middle road worth pricing out before you decide either way.

The cheapest number on the page belongs to the smallest dog. It is true. It is just not your dog.

What it actually costs for a 50 to 80 pound dog

The Farmer’s Dog does not publish a price list. You get a price after you fill out a sign-up quiz about your dog. That makes the price hard to compare, so I am using the most careful outside test I could find: Petful ran the quiz more than a hundred times across dog sizes and published the results, first in February 2026 and updated in August 2026.

Here is what that test found for adult dogs, rounded:

Dog size About per day About per month
Extra small, 1 to 10 lb $2 to $4 $70 to $125
Medium, 25 to 60 lb $8 to $9 $240 to $260 for a 50 lb dog
Large, 60 to 100 lb $10 to $17 $300 to $500

Petful’s own example of a 75 pound Lab mix came out at about $10.40 a day. Over a 30 day month that is a little over $300, and over a year it is about $3,800. That is the low end of the large band, for a dog that is not especially active.

Four more things about the price that matter if your dog works:

  • The intro deal is one box. The 50 percent off is for the first box only. Petful notes that box lasts about 14 days for a big dog, and the second box is full price.
  • Big dogs get billed often. Boxes ship every 2 weeks for larger dogs and up to every 8 weeks for small ones, so a big dog’s charges come around fast.
  • Your zip code does not change the price. Weight and calorie needs do.
  • Puppies cost more. Petful’s example of a 15 pound medium-breed puppy at two months old ran about $14 to $19 a day.

One thing I could not do: run the quiz myself for a 65 and a 75 pound Lab and give you a quote from today. The numbers above are from Petful’s testing, not from my own checkout page. Run your own dog through the quiz before you trust anyone’s number, including mine.

Who benefits from you seeing “$2 a day”

The smallest dogs on the chart really do come in around $2 to $4 a day. That is the number that fits in an ad, and it is the number most people remember.

Nobody is lying when they print it. But a 9 pound dog and an 80 pound mobility dog are not on the same bill, and the second one is the dog most of the people reading this site live with. The gap between those two numbers is where a lot of handlers find out what they signed up for, usually on the second box.

Is the food any good?

Here is what can be checked, and how strong each piece is.

The AAFCO claim

The company says its recipes are formulated to meet AAFCO standards and that they were developed by board-certified nutritionists on staff. Its homepage lists “AAFCO Complete & Balanced” and on-staff veterinarians.

That is a good sign and it is also the floor. “Complete and balanced” can mean a recipe was built on a spreadsheet to hit the numbers, or that it went through a feeding trial. I explain the difference, and why it matters more than the ingredient list, in what “complete and balanced” actually means on dog food.

The Cornell study

This is the company’s strongest claim, so I read their own write-up of it. The partnership with Cornell University’s veterinary college started in August 2023. Ten adult dogs ate The Farmer’s Dog as their main food for one year. A control group stayed on the dry food they were already eating. The dogs had weight and body condition checks, blood panels at several points, and exams before and after. Two board-certified veterinary nutritionists oversaw it.

The company reports that all ten dogs stayed healthy, with no signs of nutritional inadequacy.

What I could not find: a published, peer-reviewed paper. The summary is on the company’s own site, and it does not give the control group’s results. Ten dogs for a year is more than the minimum feeding trial asks for. It is still ten dogs, reported by the company that sells the food. Hold it at that weight, no heavier.

Recalls

Dog Food Advisor, updated October 7, 2026, lists no recalls for the brand. That is worth something. It is not a promise about next year, and if you want to know what recalls have and have not caught across the industry, what the dog food recalls actually tell you goes through it.

The recipes

Dog Food Advisor lists four fresh recipes, with these first five ingredients:

  • Beef: beef, sweet potatoes, cooked lentils, carrots, beef liver
  • Turkey: turkey, chickpeas, carrots, broccoli, spinach
  • Chicken: chicken, chicken liver, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts
  • Pork: pork, sweet potatoes, potato, green beans, cauliflower

The company’s homepage now also shows a dry line called Instant Fresh, which you mix with water. This page is about the frozen fresh meals. I have not looked into Instant Fresh and I am not covering it here.

The heart question people ask about lentils and chickpeas

Two of the four fresh recipes have a legume in the first five ingredients: lentils in the beef, chickpeas in the turkey. If you have read anything about grain-free food and heart disease, that is the first thing you will notice.

Here are the facts without the fear. In 2019 the FDA reported that 93 percent of the diets named in canine dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) reports contained peas and/or lentils, and over 90 percent were grain-free. It also said no causal link had been found. In December 2022 the FDA said it “does not intend to release further public updates until there is meaningful new scientific information,” and that report counts by themselves “do not supply sufficient data to establish a causal relationship.” By then it had 1,382 reports from January 2014 to November 2022.

I went through the whole history, including the studies on both sides, in is grain-free dog food bad for dogs. The short version is that nobody has settled it.

If your dog is a breed with a known risk of heart disease, or your dog already has a heart condition, ask your vet before you pick a recipe. The chicken recipe has no legumes in its first five ingredients. That is a fact about a label. It is not advice about your dog.

What changes when your dog works for a living

A working dog’s day is different from a house dog’s, and a few things about this food land harder.

Travel days

The Farmer’s Dog’s own feeding instructions say thawed packs keep in the fridge for up to four days, and that food left out of the fridge for 2 hours should be thrown away. Above 90°F, that drops to 1 hour.

On a road trip, a hotel stay or a long day out with a working dog, that means a cooler, ice and a plan. A bag of kibble rides in a backpack. Plenty of handlers solve this by packing kibble for travel days and feeding fresh at home, which is a fine answer, but it is one more thing to plan before you leave the house.

Freezer space

For a big dog on boxes every two weeks, the food takes real freezer room. If your freezer is already full, count that before the first box shows up.

You cannot run to the store

It is a subscription. Petful found a starter set at Walmart, about $30, but there is no full-size bag on a store shelf if a box is late. A sudden switch to whatever food you can find is the last thing you want before a workday.

Fresh cooked is not raw

This food is gently cooked, so the rules about raw and air-dried food in hospitals and therapy settings do not apply to it the way they apply to raw diets. If you are weighing fresh against raw for a working dog, raw feeding and service dogs covers the public access side of that choice.

Who it is worth it for, and who it is not

It may be worth it if:

  • your dog is small, where the daily cost is close to a premium bag;
  • your vet wants your dog on a cooked diet and you cannot cook it yourself;
  • your dog has stopped eating what it used to, and you have already talked to your vet about why;
  • the monthly number for your dog fits your budget without taking from vet care.

It is probably not worth it if:

  • your dog is a healthy adult doing well on a complete and balanced kibble, at a lean body condition;
  • the money would come out of vet visits, bloodwork or joint care;
  • you travel a lot with your dog and do not want to manage a cooler;
  • you have more than one big dog.

If the food bill is taking money from the vet bill, the expensive food is not the healthy choice.

The half plan: the middle road

You do not have to feed it as the whole meal. Plenty of people feed fresh food half and half with kibble or as a topper, and Petful’s testing found that halving the fresh portion roughly halves the subscription. For a large dog, that puts you somewhere near $5 to $8.50 a day, about $150 to $250 a month, plus whatever your kibble costs.

That is still real money. But it gets your dog the fresh food it likes, keeps a shelf-stable food in the house for travel and late boxes, and keeps the bill closer to something a fixed income can carry. If you go this way, the calories in the fresh part have to come off the kibble side, or your dog gains weight. The dog feeding calculator gives you a starting number, and your vet gives you the real one.

The thing that matters more than the brand

The one feeding change with strong evidence behind it for adding years to a dog’s life is not a fresh food, a topper or a premium bag. It is keeping your dog lean. I wrote that up in how much should I feed my dog, and it is the reason I keep saying the amount matters more than the logo.

A dog at a lean body condition on a good kibble is in better shape than an overweight dog on the most expensive fresh food on the market. You can check your dog’s ribs tonight for free.

The kitchen counter test

Before you sign up, do this with a pencil:

  1. Take the price of the food you feed now and divide it by the number of days a bag lasts. That is your daily cost today.
  2. Run your own dog through The Farmer’s Dog quiz and write down the daily price it gives you for full meals and for the half plan. Ignore the first-box discount.
  3. Multiply the difference by 365.
  4. Ask one question: is there something my dog needs more than this that the yearly difference would pay for? A dental cleaning, joint X-rays, bloodwork, a better harness, a savings cushion for the emergency vet.

If the answer is no, and the number fits, fresh food is a fine choice. If the answer is yes, you already know which bill comes first.

Questions people ask

How much does The Farmer’s Dog cost per month for a large dog?

Petful’s 2026 testing put adult dogs from 60 to 100 pounds at roughly $10 to $17 a day on full meals, which works out to about $300 to $500 a month. Their 75 pound Lab mix example came in near $10.40 a day. Your own price depends on your dog’s weight and calorie needs, so run the quiz.

Is The Farmer’s Dog cheaper than kibble?

No. For a large dog it costs more than most complete and balanced kibbles, and the gap is smallest for tiny dogs. The kitchen counter test above shows you the real gap for your own dog and your own bag. A half plan, used alongside kibble, roughly halves the fresh food bill, but you are still paying for two foods.

Does The Farmer’s Dog meet AAFCO standards?

The company says all of its recipes are formulated to meet AAFCO standards, and its homepage lists “AAFCO Complete & Balanced.” AAFCO is not a regulator, and complete and balanced is a minimum, so treat it as the floor rather than proof the food is better.

Has The Farmer’s Dog ever had a recall?

Dog Food Advisor, updated October 7, 2026, lists no recalls for The Farmer’s Dog. A clean record so far is a good sign, but a clean history is not a guarantee about future batches, so it is worth checking the FDA’s recall list now and then for any food you feed.

Does The Farmer’s Dog cause DCM?

Nobody has shown that it does. Two of its four fresh recipes list a legume in the first five ingredients, and the FDA has said report counts alone cannot establish a cause. If your dog’s breed has a known heart risk, ask your vet before you choose a recipe.

Can I feed The Farmer’s Dog to my service dog when we travel?

You can, but it takes planning. The company says thawed packs keep in the fridge up to four days and should be thrown out after 2 hours out of the fridge, or 1 hour above 90°F. Many handlers pack a shelf-stable food for travel days instead.

Is The Farmer’s Dog worth it for a service dog?

For most handlers with a 50 to 80 pound dog, the full plan costs more than the evidence can justify. The food looks sound on paper. A half plan, or a good kibble fed to a lean body condition, costs far less, and keeping a dog lean is the part with the strongest evidence behind it.

I am a service dog handler, not a veterinarian or a trainer by profession, and nothing here is professional advice. Every link above goes to the study, the agency or the source document itself, so you never have to take my word for it.

Sources

Every source below was opened and re-read on 20 October 2026.

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