Making/Cooking your own dog food-Ridiculous?

Brittanykay15

This might be a totally stupid idea, but just curious! I met a lady at the pet store today that said she cooked for her dog. He looked super healthy and she said she saved a lot of $ doing that. She fed him liver and rice, and other things.

 Is that ridiculous? I mean I wouldn't mind actually cooking it if I could make like a weeks worth or a few days at a time, but is that healthy or harmful?

Has anyone done this? If so what do you cook/feed?

justaname

Raw food would actually be more beneficial for your dog than cooking food. There are a lot of ladies who feed raw on this board and there are a lot of resources out there on the topic. I plan to try someday but I need to buy a freezer first. I am sure someone else will chime in here  

boylema

JustaName:

Raw food would actually be more beneficial for your dog than cooking food. There are a lot of ladies who feed raw on this board and there are a lot of resources out there on the topic. I plan to try someday but I need to buy a freezer first. I am sure someone else will chime in here  

Yup, ditto this! 5 years ago before I became an avid Pestie, I would have thought that lazy was crazy too, but now that I know what I know, its really not that crazy of a notion!

KatelynS07

We feed a prey model raw diet, mimicking what the dog would be eating in the wild. 

10% bone

5% liver

5% other organs

80% muscle meats

We feed a raw diet rather than a homecooked diet because cooking destroys a lot of the nutrients found in raw meats. It may sound complicated at first, but feeding raw has become second nature and not time consuming.

We have three dogs and four cats that all eat this diet, and they are much healthier for it. They don't smell like dogs or feel grimy, their teeth are clean, they are at a healthy weight, and they have much smaller and less frequent bowel movements.

If you are interested in hearing more, you can PM me your email, and I think I have a detailed email saved that I could send to you. 

nital

feeding homecooked is very time consuming and expensive if done properly.  i'm concerned for her dog if liver makes up a large portion of her dog's diet.  liver should only be about 5% of a rawfed dog's diet.

if you're interested, dr. pitcairn has a book on raw feeding and homecooked, and i would recommend reading that before trying.

Kaiene

JustaName:

Raw food would actually be more beneficial for your dog than cooking food. There are a lot of ladies who feed raw on this board and there are a lot of resources out there on the topic. I plan to try someday but I need to buy a freezer first. I am sure someone else will chime in here  

We feed raw to our 5 cats and are frequently complimented at the vet about their healthy weight and soft fur. It is actually cheaper for us to feed raw than kibble. We follow the same proportions KatelynS07 does. We get our raw food through a supplier and order 3 months at a time.

bbyprincesss

I use to go to a place in my town who sold home-made dog food and treats. One of the treats were made from yogurt or something and on of their sellers that they food/treats were made from things that humans can eat too. Not going to lie, I ate one of the treats and it was really good lol