home cooked diet

[Kendall Aliza]

I am thinking about switching my dog from Merrick/Artemis to a home cooked diet. I am wondering what you guys spend a week on food and anything else youd like to share. Any books you reccommend?

[Andre Mendizabal]

A good book is Dr. Strombecks', "Home-Prepared Dog and Cat Diets: The Healthful Alternative". What you spend depends a lot on the size and requirements of your dog, as well as local prices. There are places were they sell homecooked diets for dogs already made, that way you save time, but they are a bit expensive.
Just remember that before you make such a big change in your dogs' diet, you have to research a lot, in order to find the best conjunction of ingredients that will fit your unique dogs' needs. If you want more information you can go to www.petdiets.com, they provide the services of pet nutritionist and can give you a hand... its also a bit expensive, but if you can afford it, its the best way to go!
hugs,
Andrea

[Grace Erick]

Hi,

I feed my dog a chicken stew w/broccoli, potatoes and carrots once a month to give her a break from canned foods and then I know she is getting human quality food, but it is not properly balance which does not make a difference since I give it to her for 3 days at a time.

I think the book I had from the library was called "Better Foods for Dogs" and you can ask the library to find it in their system and bring it to your library. It has many recipes.

Now I see the recipes had brown rice in them which you may want to remove and replace with more veggies and protein if you feel a dog does not need grains especially since you can ommit them when home cooking, but they all contain rice, so I don't know how you would compensate and change the %s of an animal protein with veggies and not serve rice. Veggies have carbs so dogs will get carbs from them and really don't need them from grain. That is the thinking of feeding raw and even feeding the new food by Natura called Evo which is kibble with no grain.

You have to be careful about the bone meal they tell you to give the dog inadditon to vitamin supplements since they feel the diet still does not have all the necessary vitamins and minerals. Too much bone meal is not good. I think a lot of research has to be done to get different ideas. This book mentioned using vitamins for home cooking since your dog would need stronger ones than ones that just supplement commercial dog food that has all the vitamins, just at a minimal level.

It may be good to read books or articles about feeding raw since you will be doing something similar in what you give your dog in their diet in terms of how much protein to what % of veggies and all the different types you can use. Raw feeding claims to have more vitamins from not cooking the food, but you can cook your meat very little where it is just cooked and not over cooked.

Bye, Grace

[Kendall Aliza]

I've ordered Dr. Pitcairn's book and "Better Food for Dogs: A Complete Cookbook and Nutrition Guide" from Amazon and they should be here in a few days! Thanks for the website Andre, I am going to check it out tonight.

[aussiesmum]

Dr. Strombecks', "Home-Prepared Dog and Cat Diets: The Healthful Alternative

we use this as well. Whatever you get, read the whole book, not just the recipes so that you can understand why the diets are as they are...

[Andre Mendizabal]

Other of Dr. Pitcairn's books that can help you through this is "Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats" and this other websites:
www.pet-grub.com/preface.pets, www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/sampleraw.htm#canine .

I give my dogs a 1/2 kibble 1/2 raw diet and they responded perfectly. They get their morning breakfast (kibble) and evening supper (raw meat and veggies), they also get a vitamin supplement and once or twice a week they get raw bones (without the marrow but with a little fat and meat).

Good luck!!!

[Kendall Aliza]

I think I am going to do regular food for breakfast and then cooked for dinner. We'll see... I will definitely read the books thoroughly. I cant wait for them to get here!

[aussiesmum]

Pitcarn and Stombeck are two diets that don't mix :) One is Raw and the other isn't. I will not say whether raw is better or not because I don't know. We chose not to go that route because it is overly complicated from my point of view and also overly controversial.

On a side note, you need to feed your dog more food in the AM than in the PM because they need more calories for the day to come :)