The Farmer’s Dog Review: Is Farmer’s Dog Worth It?

Farmer’s Dog Deal: 50% Off For K9 of Mine Readers

• Get 50% off your first order of The Farmer’s Dog (special deal for K9 of Mine readers). Click here to get your discount!

The Farmer’s Dog is one of the most popular fresh dog food brands on the market, and it’s becoming increasingly popular every day.

Owners want to feed their dogs like family, and The Farmer’s Dog promises a fresh and healthy option you can have delivered right to your doorstep. This obviously makes it a great choice for those who don’t mind spending a bit extra to spoil their pooch with the best eats out there.

About The Farmer’s Dog + Major Benefits

The Farmer’s Dog provides human-grade dog food made fresh for your pooch. The food is designed to meet all your dog’s nutritional needs and then some with whole meats and veggies.

Major benefits include:

• Fresh Ingredients. Ingredients are sourced from reputable food suppliers, local farms, and other human food purveyors that meet USDA standards. The Farmer’s Dog doesn’t use feed-grade ingredients.
• Simple Recipes. The Farmer’s Dog food includes protein + produce + canine-essential vitamins and minerals. That’s it!
• USDA Kitchens. The Farmer’s Dog food packs are made in USDA kitchens — the same kind of kitchens your own food is made in.
• Vet-Approved. Board-certified veterinary nutritionists formulate and approve each recipe to be 100% complete and balanced according to AAFCO standards (you should always be feeding your dog AAFCO-certified food, fresh or not).
• Less Processing. The Farmer’s Dog foods are fresh, cooked at low temperatures, and minimally processed, especially compared to kibble. Over-processed foods historically haven’t been too great for humans, so it stands to reason that they aren’t ideal for your pooch either.
• Pre-Portioned. The Farmer’s Dog foods are pre-portioned based on your dog’s size and needs.
• As Fresh As Can Be. The Farmer’s Dog food is delivered within days of being made. It’s never deep frozen (it’s just flash frozen to keep safe during delivery), it isn’t designed to be shelf-stable (for better or for worse), and it gets delivered to your doorstep ASAP.
• Environmentally-Friendly Packaging. The Farmer’s Dog foods come in a cardboard box that can be recycled, and the insulation is biodegradable. The food storage container that comes in each shipment is also biodegradable, and all the packs are made from BPA-free materials and are non-toxic.

How The Farmer’s Dog Works

When you first fill out your The Farmer’s Dog profile, you’ll provide a fair bit of info about your pooch.

The Farmer’s Dog Profile & Customization

On the first page, you’ll start with your dog’s name and where you live.

Next, you’ll provide info on your dog’s age, weight, breed, and body type. I found the body type diagrams particularly helpful, because I think many owners don’t even realize their dog might be overweight. The diagram might really help in this regard.

You’ll also detail any medical issues your dog has, as well as give info regarding your dog’s current diet.

You’ll also provide info about:

• Your dog’s activity level (not active / active / very active / pro athlete)
• Your dog’s eating style (very picky / a little picky / good eater / eats anything)

The Farmer’s Dog Recipes: Beef, Turkey, & Pork (aka the Good Stuff)

After providing all this info, you’ll get your pup’s eating plan, complete with recipes. You can examine each recipe in detail, check out the ingredients, and remove any recipes you are not a fan of.

Just click on any recipe for full info about the ingredients and nutrition stats.

How Much Does The Farmer’s Dog Cost?

It’s probably no surprise that The Farmer’s Dog is pricier than your standard kibble.

The Farmer’s Dog food can cost approximately $2 to $10 per day depending on your dog’s size (smaller dogs, as always, are cheaper to feed). When we input a sample profile for a 10-pound dachshund, pricing came out to $18.50 per week (fill out their questionnaire for personalized pricing details).

However, don’t forget that K9 of Mine readers can get 50% OFF their first order of The Farmer’s Dog, making it much more affordable to try (click here to get the 50% off discount)!

Pros + Cons of The Farmer’s Dog

Let’s talk the advantages and disadvantages of The Farmer’s Dog.

Pros

• Very high quality food. As mentioned in our detailed discussion of The Farmer’s Dog core features, this dog food is very high-quality and is made from really fantastic ingredients. It’s minimally processed, vet-formulated, and fresh.
• Pre-portioned amounts prevent overfeeding. Dog obesity is no joke, and it’s becoming as big an epidemic as human obesity. The pre-portioned packs of The Farmer’s Dog food (which are customized based on your dog’s caloric needs) prevent you from accidentally overfeeding Fido, keeping him slim and trim.
• Customizable (to some degree). While you can’t do quite as much fine-tuning as some other fresh dog foods, The Farmer’s Dog profile questions ensure that you’re getting a customized diet based on your dog’s size, weight, and age.
• Can alleviate some health issues. Of course your mileage may vary with this one, but many owners have testified that The Farmer’s Dog has improved their dog’s coat, skin, health, and overall disposition.
• Delivery is awesome. Going to the grocery store, I usually have to contend with carrying three 12-packs of seltzer, my human groceries, as well as a giant bag of dog food to my car. Having dog food delivered can make life a lot easier.
• Dogs are crazy about it. Dogs really go nuts for this food! Remy actually started visibly drooling as I took photos of his dinner dish (something I’ve never seen him do before).

Cons

• It’s not great for training. This isn’t a downside of The Farmer’s Dog specifically, but of fresh dog foods in general — it can’t really be used for training. Remy and I have been working on a lot of loose leash walking, “leave it” practice, etc. Because we are doing so much training work, I prefer to pour his daily breakfast and dinner kibble into my treat pouch and feed it to him on our walks while we work on training exercises. This just isn’t possible with a fresh dog food.
• It doesn’t work well with some puzzle toys. Sometimes when Remy seems bored, I’ll pour his kibble into a food-dispensing ball and he’ll have tons of fun snuffling around and rolling the ball to get the food out. This obviously isn’t doable with fresh dog food. That being said, you could definitely still put The Farmer’s Dog food into a KONG and freeze it, so fresh dog food is not incompatible with all puzzle toys.
• It’s not a miracle solution. A lot of fresh dog foods make it seem like switching to a fresh option will cure all your dog’s ailments. While it’s true that some dogs do see a tremendous improvement, making a switch to any new high-quality dog food, fresh or kibble-based, can do wonders.
• It’s (very) expensive. All quality dog foods are more expensive than the cheaper Purina variety, but The Farmer’s Dog is a particularly expensive dog food, and not everyone will be able to afford it long-term (this is a problem with all fresh dog food, not just The Farmer’s Dog). Thankfully, you can just use Farmer’s Dog for a month or two, see what kind of improvement you witness in your dog, and then decide if it’s worth sticking with or not.
• It’s not very portable. The Farmer’s Dog food needs to be refrigerated once it arrives, so it isn’t very portable. This can be tough if you travel a lot with your dog or if your dog spends time at multiple houses (such as with a dog sitter).

My Experience With The Farmer’s Dog

We tried The Farmer’s Dog for the week and here are my two cents.

What I love:

• How excited Remy was to eat. (I mean, he always loves food, but he seemed especially excited when I whip out the The Farmer’s Dog packets).
• Remy’s poop improvement. Remy’s stools have been pretty wet and loose for a while now. Let’s just say I spend a solid minute or two trying to wrangle his droppings into a bag out on walks, and I’m rarely able to get all of it, inducing quite a bit of dog-mom guilt. After eating Farmer’s Dog for a week, his stools are much firmer and look healthier. They’re also much easier to pick up!
• The personalization. I know it doesn’t really mean much, but I thought it was so cute seeing my and Remy’s name right on the packaging. It just made us (OK, mostly me) feel special.

My only disappointment is that Remy has been quite itchy, and I was hoping a change to a higher-quality diet would help. Unfortunately, after a week of The Farmer’s Dog, he is still as itchy as ever.

This isn’t the fault of The Farmer’s Dog though. It simply means Remy is likely suffering from an environmental allergy rather than a food allergy (environmental allergies are much more common in dogs than food allergies).

That being said, when I reported my results to The Farmer’s Dog staff, they actually said that they have seen even environmental allergies improve in dogs over long term use. It’s unclear how their food may improve environmental allergies, but maybe I’ll see better results with longer use.

Will I continue with The Farmer’s Dog? Maybe at some point. It is quite pricey and since Remy is a new dog in my life, we are working a lot on training. And for now, kibble is just much easier to use for training.

I also bring Remy to my mother’s house a few days a week so she can watch him when I’m working long hours. It’s much easier for me to just buy two bags of kibble — one to keep at her place and one to keep at my place — than it is to tote cooler packs of fresh dog food back and forth each week.

Who is The Farmer’s Dog Best For?

The Farmer’s Dog fresh dog food is especially great for:

• Picky Eaters. If your pup is a picky eater, there’s slim chance he’ll reject this stuff. It’s completely irresistible!
• If You’re Done With Training. Of course dog training is never completely over, but if your dog has the basics down and you don’t have the constant training sessions we’re working on right now, the inability to use kibble as a training tool won’t be a huge deal.
• If You Want to Share With Fido. I’m mostly kidding, but honestly, this food looks so good that I’m pretty tempted to take a bite out of it. I don’t want to get Remy angry so I haven’t tried, but the truth is that it just looks tasty.
• If You Don’t Move Around a Ton. Fresh dog food isn’t very portable, so it’s best for owners who are relatively stationary and not moving or going on road trips with Fido constantly.
• If Your Dog Has Health Issues. Many owners who have sickly dogs or pups with unusual ailments have witnessed their dogs do a 180° on fresh dog food. If you have a sick pooch and you feel like you’ve tried everything, The Farmer’s Dog is certainly worth a trial run.

Should You Try The Farmer’s Dog?

Yes, I’d say The Farmer’s Dog is absolutely worth trying. Remy absolutely adored it, and I can see from his stool improvement that the food really helped his digestion.

Many owners have even more impressive accounts of their pup’s fur, skin, and even demeanor improving after trying The Farmer’s Dog.

While The Farmer’s Dog is definitely expensive feed for Fido, since you can get 50% off the first box, I don’t see why any pup parent shouldn’t at least try it for a short stint.

Maybe you’ll decide you’re not seeing any remarkable benefits and won’t stick with the deliveries after the first discounted week — no harm, no foul. Or maybe your dog will drastically improve in ways you didn’t even imagine. And in that case, you may find The Farmer’s Dog well worth the cost.

Farmer’s Dog FAQ

Lots of owners have questions about fresh foods in general — and The Farmer’s Dog specifically. We’ll try to answer some of the most common queries below!

Have you ever tried The Farmer’s Dog? We’d love to hear about your experience in the comments.

NOTE: If you haven’t gotten a chance to try The Farmer’s Dog yet, don’t forget that K9 of Mine readers can get 50% OFF their first box when you sign up with this link.