Freeze dried pet food in Australia

This is the one food category on this site where the label is doing real work, and where a shopper comparing prices will reach exactly the wrong conclusion. A widely stocked product headlines a freeze dried raw claim and is cooked kibble with a topping. A major retailer sells two different processes under one shelf heading. And the trap underneath both of them is that price cannot tell you which process you are buying, in either direction.

Prices and product copy checked 10 September 2026

One product is not what its headline says

Ivory Coat's Raw Boost range is returned by freeze dried dog food searches and headlines 100% freeze dried raw protein. The body copy on the same page says something different: the recipe is cooked and topped off with 100% freeze dried raw lamb, described elsewhere on the page as meat injected kibble plus freeze dried raw. No freeze dried inclusion percentage is published anywhere on the listing, so there is no way to know how much of the bag is the thing the headline names.

Worth saying plainly: none of this makes it a bad food. Coated kibble is a legitimate product and plenty of dogs do well on it. The objection is narrower and it is about the shelf, not the recipe. A shopper searching for freeze dried food is being shown a product whose headline claim describes a topping, at a price that only makes sense because it is a topping, with no inclusion percentage published to settle it.

Two processes, one shelf heading

The same retailer merges freeze dried and air dried into a single browse category, with the identical treatment for cats and for dog food. They are different processes with different economics: across the treats we priced there, the dearest freeze dried treat costs 3 times what the cheapest air dried one costs per gram. Every tile we could see in the dog treats category on the day we checked was air dried, not freeze dried. A shopper filtering for one process is shown the other as a matched result.

The part that makes this honest: price cannot identify the process

It would be convenient to say that cheap means fake. It is not true, and the same dataset that exposes the headline claim above also demolishes that shortcut.

• An openly air dried food sits alongside a freeze dried one. Ziwi Peak Air Dried Beef Adult Dog Food 454g says air dried in its name, its heading and its description, and at $11.23 per 100g it is within 5 per cent of K9 Natural Freeze Dried Beef Feast Adult Dog Food 500g at $11.80 per 100g. Same shelf, same price bracket, different processes, and nothing hidden by either brand.
• The same single ingredient runs 2.8 times between the two processes. Freeze dried beef liver at $18.50 per 100g against air dried beef liver at $6.50. One ingredient, one species, one organ, two processes, and a gap you would never guess from the shelf.

Put those two together and the conclusion is unavoidable: there is no price at which you can infer the process. The label is the only reliable guide, which is why the mislabelling matters and why a merged shelf category is worse than an honest expensive one.

Every pet listing we priced

Cheapest per gram first, with the process recorded from the product's own copy rather than from the category it was filed under.

What genuine freeze dried pet food costs

Across the eight genuinely freeze dried listings, the median is $10.77 per 100g, against $6.50 for the air dried and coated products that turn up in the same searches. Set that next to the rest of the freeze dried shelf and something surprising falls out: at $10.77 per 100g, pet food is the cheapest genuinely freeze dried food an Australian can buy, below freeze dried meat for people at $16.41, camping meals at $18.48 and fruit at $20.75.

The reason to be careful with that number is the same reason the category is confusing. It is a dry weight. One Australian maker states that a 300g pack rehydrates to roughly 1.2kg of food, so comparing $10.77 per 100g with the price of wet food or kibble per 100g is comparing two different things. Compare dry against dry, and work out your own dog's daily grams before deciding anything.

Two more patterns worth knowing before you buy the big bag. The pack size discount is shallow: the same recipe falls only 14 per cent per gram for 8.3 times the volume, and the cat line falls just 4 per cent between its smallest and largest pack. And the cat version of an identical process carries a 27 per cent premium over the dog version at the same pack size, which is a recurring pattern in this category rather than a one-off.

Making your own

A home machine will freeze dry raw meat and organ perfectly well, and at the ingredient level it is cheaper than anything in the table above. Two cautions sit on top of that, and neither is about the machine. The first is that freeze drying does not sterilise: pathogens present on raw meat survive the process and can reactivate on rehydration, which matters for the animal and for whoever is handling and storing the food. The full sourcing on that is on the meat page.

The second is nutritional completeness. The commercial products in that table are formulated to be complete diets; a tray of freeze dried mince is not one, and balancing a homemade diet is a job for a veterinary nutritionist rather than a price register. Whether the machine pays for itself on pet food alone is arithmetic, and it is worked through on the cost per kilo page.

On raw feeding, we take no side

Raw feeding is genuinely contested and we are not going to pretend otherwise in either direction. Veterinary bodies are on record with concerns, principally about pathogen exposure to pets and to the people preparing and storing the food. Advocates point to other considerations. We hold no data of our own on the clinical question, and manufacturing a position from price research would be exactly the sort of thing this site exists to avoid. What we will say is narrower and we are confident in it: whatever you decide to feed, you are entitled to know which process is in the bag, and on the evidence above you cannot work that out from the price.

Common questions

How much does freeze dried dog food cost in Australia?

Genuinely freeze dried pet food runs a median of $10.77 per 100g of dry product across the eight listings we priced, with complete foods from $7.48. That makes pet food the cheapest genuinely freeze dried food you can buy in this country per gram, below fruit at $20.75 and camping meals at $18.48. Remember it is a dry weight: one brand states that 300g rehydrates to roughly 1.2kg of food, so the per-gram figure is not comparable with wet food or kibble.

How do I tell freeze dried from air dried?

Read the label, because the price will not tell you and the shelf category may not either. In our data an openly air dried complete food sits within 5 per cent per gram of a genuinely freeze dried one at the same retailer, so they are effectively the same price. Yet the same single ingredient, beef liver, runs about 2.8 times more as a freeze dried treat than as an air dried one. Price is not a signal in either direction. The ingredient panel and the process word in the product name are.

Is "Raw Boost" freeze dried dog food?

Not as a food, no. The range headlines a claim about freeze dried raw protein and appears in freeze dried dog food searches, but the same product page states the recipe is cooked and topped with freeze dried raw lamb, and describes it as meat injected kibble plus freeze dried raw. No freeze dried inclusion percentage is published. At $1.54 per 100g it sells for a fraction of genuinely freeze dried raw food at the same retailer, which is what a topper rather than a whole food implies. It may be a perfectly good kibble. It is not priced, or made, like a freeze dried food.

Should I feed my dog a raw diet?

We are not going to tell you, and we would be the wrong source. Raw feeding is genuinely contested: veterinary bodies are on record with concerns, principally about pathogen exposure for the animal and for the people handling and storing the food, while advocates argue other benefits. We hold no data of our own on the question and we are not going to manufacture a position from price research. Ask your vet, and treat any site that answers this confidently while selling you something with suspicion.