[trainingjunkie]

I am a little nervous about raw but very interested in Homemade.


Anyone have any good links or recipes for home-prepared food?

With all of the recalls, I would rather be preparing food myself.

 

[Mama Of 3]

I have a picky eater and tried this for awhile. She ate it for awhile but she preferred a little variety so I had to find a brand of canned she would eat that came in different protein sources. The one that I did find that she will eat is the Ol Roy Healthy Mix. It's not the typical ol roy food as it doesn't contain by-products, wheat, soy or corn, artificial color, flavor or preservatives. Seems basic and decent. The canned varieties were not affected just the dry kibble. Sadly I also found that canned was also cheaper than making this as well just because the cost of the meats. Not to mention my time needed to make the food. So cost is another thought to keep in mind if you can buy canned cheaper than making it yourself. Canned is also better than kibble according to this vet. http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/choosing-dog-food/karen-becker-choose-dog-food-1/



But this is the recipe that I posted here on the forum. Some said it looked good while one thought I should reduce the liver a little. I find the liver and the kidney in the frozen isle of my grocery store.

Here is the recipe written in percents but I do weigh each ingredient used when I make it. I feel the weight of the ingredient is more accurate since you can tightly or loosely pack a measuring cup but you can't argue with the weight. Also it's easier to measure out and easier cleanup. No measuring cups to wash out!

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2486970/2

20.9% - 700g chicken breast, raw weight then cooked
17.9% - 600g ground beef 80/20 raw weight then browned and fat drained
10.4% - 350g water
9% - 300g frozen peas and carrots, cooked and pureed
9% - 300g white rice (cooked weight) pureed
7.5% - 250g whole eggs (about 5), scrambled
6% - 200g liver, raw weight, pureed
6% - 200 old fashioned oatmeal, ground into a powder in food processor
6% - 200g canned salmon with skin/bones juice drained
6% - 200g cottage cheese whole milk
1.3% - 50 kidney, raw weight, pureed

weight of ground beef and chicken is 1300g which is 46.4 oz which is 2.9 lb so I add in 3 teaspoons of ground up egg shells (in a coffee grinder) to meet the calcium needs.

I do grind the oatmeal first and then all the other items are pureed in the food processor with the water. All of that is then mixed and cooked with the eggs and then that's mixed in with the ground burger, chicken chunks, salmon and cottage cheese until it's well combined. Divided into four containers and freezing it until I need it. Keeping one container out in the fridge that is used to fill her dish twice a day with her serving size.

I used the nutrition data website to figure
48 calories per ounce
2 grams of fat

contains by weight
65.6% protein (chicken, beef, eggs, liver, salmon, cottage cheese and kidney)
15% carbs (oatmeal & rice)
9% veggies (peas & carrots)
10.4% beef broth


I hope that helps......

 

[odiesmom]

I simply cook the meat of choice in some rice with eggs, usually salmon here but when my bf hunts I keep the organ meats and other scraps for the dogs and fresh bones . I havent thought about putting veggies in it but might just try that next time i make up a batch ...

 

[Fuzzy Pants]

Another option is picking up a bag of base mix by Sojos or Honest Kitchen that you just rehydrate with water and add your own meat to. If you don't want to include raw meat then you can just lightly boil the meat of your choice to add to it and just use the remaining broth instead of plain water to rehydrate the base mix with.

 

[trainingjunkie]

I am wishing there was some sort of well-researched "formula" to follow as far as carb/protein/fat ratios and some understanding of calcium needs. In the bird world, this is easily done and I can feed a homemade mash/prepared food/fresh food combination with pretty high confidence that I am on the right page.

With dogs, I am struggling to find any decent information about ratios. I want to feed half home-prepared and half kibble so that if I take it on the road, my dogs have a high tolerance for the kibble. Mine prefer my home-prepared food to kibble, paws down, but I would love to know that I am somewhere near right with it. I am certain that my dogs would love the Mamaof3 recipe, but is seems incredibly high in protein. I know that dogs are carnivores, but most dog foods come in at about 1/3 of that protein content. Can the dogs utilize protein levels that high or do they just flush the excess? I guess most raw feeders feed protein in that range. Are any carbs added by raw feeders?

Any informational resources out there?

 

[Kathyy]

Here are the old NRC numbers from 1985.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309034965&page=44
This looks to be a current AAFCO list of nutrients as it is dated 2008.
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=2&cat=1661&articleid=662

I would rather figure out what MY dog needs rather than make up a kilo of food by dry weight that is in the ballpark of both of those charts. Unless I want to pay $300 for the current NRC book I can rely on Monica Segal's books, Optimal Nutrition and K9 Kitchen that have the basic charts included along with directions for calculating it all out for your dog.

Packof3's recipe is a good start. Max would get about 50 grams of protein a day eating that, about 1.3 grams per pound of dog. It is too low in calcium and phosphorus for him [I know that from my Optimal Nutrition chart] so I would use bone meal instead of egg shell. It may well be perfect for some dogs, Max doesn't get as many calories per pound of dog as some dogs do. If he ate 800 calories a day instead of 600 it would have the right amount of calcium for instance.

1190 grams dry weight. 41% protein, 17.5% fat, ~3% ash and 37.5% carbs. Dogs are carnivores and do best with generous amounts of protein. Max gained 15% of his previous healthy weight in muscle when he went from eating 22% protein kibble to eating ~40% protein raw. Sassy could hold good amounts of muscle when she was young on low protein kibble but as a sick geriatric dog she kept her strength up on 29% protein food.

I suggest going through dogaware's pages on feeding fresh food to dogs. Make a list of the books suggested. Perhaps some are at your library and some can be partly read online at Amazon or Google books. Perhaps one fits with your particular needs and biases.
http://www.dogaware.com/diet/homemade.html

Prey model raw fed Max gets a few carbs as treats but does quite poorly on them. I discovered his sensitivity to wheat when he was the dog that got giant eye goobers when a large piece of toast went missing. Rice, same, corn, same. Poor guy, he loves bread and all that. I didn't think he had any food issues. It turns out he is allergic to sardines too, major ear gunk if he gets it.