Análise de custos de alimento seco comercial industrializado, alimentação natural caseira e alimentação natural comercializada para cães adultos em manutenção na cidade de Uberlândia-MG

Abstract

The growing advance in dog nutrition has made the market have several possibilities of diets for the consumer to choose. The cost is a factor that directly affects this choice. Thus, the costs of two homemade natural foods, three industrialized commercial complete foods and three natural foods commercialized by a specialized company in the city of Uberlândia-MG were compared. It was considered an adult dog, small, healthy, in maintenance, with a body weight of 6 kg, and the costs were calculated per day and also per 1000 kcal of metabolizable energy. Two homemade diets were formulated, one based on beef and the other based on chicken, in the NutroVet® software, and the costs of this diet were composed of food costs, cost of gas consumption, cost of the professional animal nutritionist and opportunity cost. tutor time. The prices of commercial complete dry industrialized foods of the superpremium segment were obtained from pet food retailers' websites and the prices of natural foods were obtained directly by a specialized company from the data of the dog used in the research. It was observed that the homemade diets had the highest daily cost in relation to the other diets, with the beef diet costing R$ 10.95/day and the chicken diet costing R$ 10.59/day. When removing the cost of tutor time from this value, the bovine diet and the chicken diet decrease to a cost of R$ 7.84/day and R$ 7.25/day, respectively. For tutors who have difficulty with the preparation time, commercialized natural food is an option, with a cost of R$ 8.49/day. Dry industrialized commercial foods had the lowest costs, with an average of R$ 6.48/day, however, there were significant differences between the values and also in the guarantee levels, with a variation of R$ 13.78 in cost and 171.22 kcal/kg in metabolizable energy, showing that even within a segment there are differences between the rations. The results in 1000 kcal of metabolizable energy were R$ 30.09 for the beef diet, R$ 29.06 for the chicken diet, R$ 23.32 for ready-to-eat natural food and R$ 17.70 for commercial dry industrialized complete foods. Thus, in relation to costs, commercial dry industrialized complete foods presented as more accessible options for the consumer, however, the intensification of the human-non-human animal relationship may lead to decisions that go beyond price, but which carry a sentimental aspect., health and philosophy of life.