Cheap training treats for Border Collies

Training a young Border Collie intensively is brilliant — they thrive on it — but it burns through treats fast, and most shop-bought training treats are mostly cereal filler dressed up with marketing. The best treats are high in protein, low in additives, and small enough that your dog isn't filling up mid-session. Single-ingredient dried meat or fish skin is ideal nutritionally, but at volume that gets expensive. For budget training, you want something soft, smelly, and cuttable into tiny pieces. What's your dog's weight roughly, any allergies or sensitivities I should know about, and are these purely for training reps or do you want them to double up for anything else?

Got it — that's real volume, probably 300+ treats a week minimum. At that rate, premium single-ingredient treats will cost you a fortune, so you need to be strategic. The move here is a large bag of Forthglade Soft Bite Training Treats — they come in 500g bags, chicken or liver flavour, and they're soft enough to tear into thirds or quarters easily. That stretches one bag a very long way. They're not single-ingredient, but the ingredients list is short and decent — real meat is first, no artificial nasties, and the protein content is solid for a training treat. At around £6-7 for 500g, torn into small pieces, you're looking at well under a penny per reward. That's the honest budget answer for your situation.

Yes, and Border Collies actually respond well to variable reward schedules once they know a behaviour — meaning you don't need every treat to be the good stuff. A solid tactic is to use the Forthglade treats as your high-value reward for new or difficult behaviours, and mix in something like plain cooked chicken breast or even small pieces of plain rice cake for the easy, familiar reps. Cooked chicken from a supermarket basics range is genuinely one of the cheapest high-protein training treats you can buy. Just avoid anything salted, seasoned, or with onion. That two-tier system keeps her motivated on the hard stuff without burning through your budget.

Worth keeping an eye on, yes. At 18kg and the volume you're doing, treats could easily add up to 10-15% of her daily calories if you're not careful. The fix is simple: cut her main meals back slightly on heavy training days — not drastically, just trim 10-15% off her kibble. Border Collies at this age are usually burning plenty of energy, but they can still put on weight if the treat count is high week after week. Weigh her monthly rather than eyeballing it. If you're tearing treats into quarters, the calorie impact stays manageable even at high rep counts.