Chicken-free dog food?

Screech is my foster dog. He has alopecia and his hair fell out of his face and sometimes it thins elsewhere. When we first got him, we fed him regular cheap dog food and his fair fell out a lot. I read something that said he might have a grain allergy, so I got him turkey based grain free food, I think Rachael Ray Nutrish brand. His hair didn't grow back in his face, but the rest of his coat started to look healthy. One roommate bought that kind twice more, and still it was fine. Then I read Please Stop Buying Your Pets Grain-free Food in Slate which said most animals aren't actually allergic to grain but to a protein. Around the same time, my roommate bought a new bag of the Nutrish, but chicken-based instead of turkey. Screech just finished that 25 pound bag, and his hair is thinning everywhere again.

I went to Ozzie's (formerly Associated), Bravo, C-Town, and Key Food. All the dog foods have chicken except fancy grain-free kinds. So I ended up buying a salmon and rice bag that was $16 for 4.5 lbs. That is more money per pound than I spend on my food! But I don't know what kind of food to get him. Maybe back to the old Nutrish with turkey.

Everyday With Rachael Ray Magazine values its readers' time at about $2.40 an hour

Everyday with Rachael Ray features a "showdown" between two similar products in every issue. In this one, it's canned dinner rolls (e.g. Pillsbury) against the rolls you'd buy premade from the bakery. I can't find a link to this on their website, but the page looks like this.

The relevant info they provide is that the canned rolls are $0.23 each and the bakery ones are $0.29 each. Six cents is what you save! And prep times are 12 minutes and 5 seconds (essentially 0. If I'm going to count 5 seconds of prep time, I might as well count the extra second to put the roll in my mouth and the extra 15 to chew.)

You get 8 rolls in a can. They take 12 minutes to bake, so you could bake 5 batches and get 40 rolls in an hour. This would cost you $9.25. And you worked for an hour.

Using the price they provided for the bakery rolls, $3.49 for 12, you'd pay $11.67 for 40 rolls. So for your hour of work, you save $2.42. Which means that is how much your time is worth, all else (meaning quality of rolls) being equal.

When comparing the 8 to 12, they favor 8 because with the bakery rolls, "you're usually committed to to buying a bigger batch." I had to gloss over that to figure out how much your time is valued per hour to make the canned cheaper. But I'll still accept and address a quantity argument.

The bakery rolls are bigger. You don't need as many. And at all the grocery stores I go to, the rolls are loose. I can buy as many as I want. I usually do not want 8. 8 is either too many or too few if I'm feeding 5 people. The bakery buns and rolls let me have control.

In summary, the canned rolls are better if you have infinite time or don't value yours and if you have infinite oven space. Otherwise, they are a good example of being penny wise and pound foolish.