Beef and Rice Dog Food Recipe by Patricia Schenck

HOMEMADE Dog FOOD: OVERVIEW

i. Feed your dog a wide variety of foods from unlike food groups.

2. Make sure you supplement your dog'due south homemade diet with calcium unless you lot feed raw meaty bones.

3. Stick to lean meats and remove skin from the poultry you feed unless your dog is highly active.

iv. Keep in heed that the less diverseness of foods you feed, the more important supplements become.

5. Review your homemade dog food nutrition plan with a veterinarian for approving.

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In the past few issues of Whole Dog Periodical, I take offered critiques on homemade domestic dog food diets in gild to address the domestic dog's wellness concerns – or simply to optimize the dog'southward diet programme. To do this, I analyzed the cooked and raw bootleg canis familiaris food diets and compared them to the National Enquiry Council's guidelines for canine nutrition. I want to be clear, though: I don't believe this is a requirement for feeding home-cooked dog food. Just every bit with the diet you feed yourself and your family unit, feeding a wide variety of healthy foods in appropriate proportions should see the needs of near healthy dogs. The best diet for dogs, in upshot, is a diverse nutrition.

Problems ascend with how salubrious dog food is interpreted. Also often, people recollect that they're feeding healthy homemade dog food, when key ingredients may be missing or are fed in excess. Here's how to make dog nutrient at domicile, and specific guidelines to assistance ensure that the canis familiaris food diet you feed meets your individual domestic dog's requirements. You lot do not want just one dog nutrient recipe to follow – you need several, and need to exist comfortable mixing and matching ingredients, for reasons explained below.

Complete and Balanced Canis familiaris Nutrient Diets

It'due south important homemade dog food is "complete and balanced," pregnant it meets all of the dog's nutritional needs. Information technology is not important, nonetheless, that every meal be complete and balanced, unless you feed the aforementioned repast every day with little or no variation.

Home-prepared dog diets that include a wide variety of foods fed at different meals rely on residual over time, not at every meal. Similar to the way humans consume, every bit long as your dog gets everything he needs spread out over each week or two, his diet will be complete and balanced.

A human nutritionist would never await someone to follow a single recipe with no variation, as veterinarian nutritionists routinely do. Instead, a human would be given guidelines in terms of food groups and portion sizes. As long as your dog doesn't accept a wellness problem that requires a very specific diet, homemade domestic dog food should exist the same fashion.

For more on homemade dog treats, run into "DIY Gifts for Dogs: Homemade Dog Treats & Healthy Recipes."

Go along in mind that puppies are more than susceptible to problems caused by nutritional deficiencies or excesses than adult dogs are. Big-breed puppies are particularly at take a chance from too much calcium prior to puberty. See "Puppy Food: Nutritional Guidelines to Maximize Wellness," for more on puppy nutrition.

GUIDELINES TO CREATING BALANCED HOMEMADE DOG FOOD RECIPES

Following are guidelines for feeding a raw or cooked home-prepared nutrition to salubrious dogs. No unmarried type of food, such as craven, should ever make up more than one-half the nutrition.

Except where specified, bootleg food for dogs can be fed either raw or cooked. Leftovers from your table can exist included as long as they're foods you would eat yourself, non fatty scraps.

Meat and Other Animal Products: Should always make up at least half of the diet. A raw diet for dogs can be excessively high in fatty, which can atomic number 82 to obesity. Another potential hazard of diets containing too much fat: If an owner restricts the amount fed (in order to command the dog's weight) too much, the dog may suffer deficiencies of other required nutrients.

Unless your dog gets regular, intense exercise, use lean meats (no more than than 10 per centum fatty), remove skin from poultry, and cutting off separable fat. It's improve to feed dark meat poultry than breast, however, unless your dog requires a very low-fatty nutrition.

Raw Compact Bones (optional): If you choose to feed them, RMBs should make up one third to one one-half of the full diet. Use the lower end of the range if you feed bony parts such as chicken necks and backs, just you tin feed more if you lot're using primarily meatier parts such as chicken thighs. Never feed cooked bones. Read a full report on raw meaty bones here.

Boneless Meat: Include both poultry and red meat. Middle is a proficient option, as information technology is lean and ofttimes less expensive than other musculus meats.

Fish: Provides vitamin D, which otherwise should be supplemented. Canned fish with bones, such equally sardines (packed in water, not oil), jack mackerel, and pink salmon, are good choices. Remove bones from fish you lot cook yourself, and never feed raw Pacific salmon, trout, or related species. You tin can feed pocket-size amounts of fish daily, or larger amounts once or twice a calendar week. The total amount should be about one ounce of fish per pound of other meats (including RMBs).

Organs: Liver should brand upwards roughly 5 percentage of this category, or about ane ounce of liver per pound of other animal products. Beef liver is specially nutritious, but include chicken or other types of liver at least occasionally equally well. Feeding pocket-sized amounts of liver daily or every other twenty-four hour period is preferable to feeding larger amounts less often.

Eggs: Highly nutritious addition to any diet. Dogs weighing about 20 pounds can take a whole egg every twenty-four hour period, but give less to smaller dogs.

Dairy: Apparently yogurt and kefir are well tolerated by well-nigh dogs (try goat'due south milk products if you see bug). Cottage and ricotta cheese are as well good options. Limit other forms of cheese, as most are high in fat.

Fruits and Vegetables: While non a pregnant part of the evolutionary nutrition of the dog and wolf, fruits and vegetables provide fiber that supports digestive health, as well as antioxidants and other beneficial nutrients that contribute to health and longevity. Deeply colored vegetables and fruits are the virtually nutritious.

Starchy Vegetables: Veggies such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and winter squashes (including pumpkin), as well as legumes (beans), provide saccharide calories that can be helpful in reducing food costs and keeping weight on skinny and very active dogs. Quantities should be limited for overweight dogs. Starchy foods must be cooked in lodge to exist digestible.

Leafy Green and Other Not-Starchy Vegetables: These are depression in calories and can be fed in whatever quantity desired. Too much tin can crusade gas, and raw, cruciferous veggies such as broccoli and cauliflower can suppress thyroid office (cook them if you feed large amounts). Raw vegetables must be pureed in a nutrient processor, blender, or juicer in order to be digested properly past dogs, though whole raw veggies are non harmful and can be used as treats.

And while y'all're preparing these nutritious foods for your dog, consider boosting your own health by adding more than veggies to your diet besides!

Fruits: Bananas, apples, berries, melon, and papaya are practiced choices. Avoid grapes and raisins, which tin cause kidney failure in dogs.

Grains: Controversial, as they may contribute to inflammation caused by allergies, arthritis, or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD); every bit well as seizures and other bug (it's not clear whether starchy vegetables exercise the same). Some grains contain gluten that may crusade digestive bug for certain dogs. Many dogs do fine with grains, yet, and they can be used to reduce the overall cost of feeding a bootleg diet.

Grains and starchy veggies should make upwards no more half the diet. Expert choices include oatmeal, chocolate-brown rice, quinoa, barley, and pasta. White rice can exist used to settle an upset tum, particularly if overcooked with extra h2o, but it's low in nutrition and should not make up a large function of the diet. All grains must exist well cooked.

DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS FOR Dwelling house-FED DOGS

Some supplements are required in addition to natural food for dogs. Others may exist needed if yous are not able to feed a variety of foods, or if you go out out one or more of the food groups above. In add-on, the longer food is cooked or frozen, the more nutrients are lost. Hither are some canis familiaris supplements to consider:

Calcium

Unless you feed RMBs, all homemade diets must be supplemented with calcium. The amount found in multivitamin and mineral supplements is not enough. Give 800 to 1,000 mg calcium per pound of food (excluding non-starchy vegetables). You tin use whatsoever grade of apparently calcium, including eggshells ground to pulverisation in a clean java grinder (ane/2 teaspoon eggshell powder provides well-nigh 1,000 mg calcium). Animal Essentials' Seaweed Calcium provides additional minerals, as well. And here is a adept list of calcium-rich foods your dog may like. Just please note this list is for humans and includes orange juice, which is not a good affair to give your canis familiaris as the acidity can crusade stomach upset.

Oils

Well-nigh homemade diets require added oils for fat, calories, and to supply particular nutrients. It's important to use the right types of oils, as each supplies different nutrients.

Fish Oil: Fish oil for dogs provides EPA and DHA, omega-3 fatty acids that assistance to regulate the immune organisation and reduce inflammation. Give an amount that provides about 300 mg EPA and DHA combined per twenty to 30 pounds of body weight on days you don't feed fish. Note that liquid fish oil supplements oftentimes tell you to give much more than this, which can issue in too many calories from fat.

Cod Liver Oil: Provides vitamins A and D as well as EPA and DHA. If you don't feed much fish, requite cod liver oil in an amount that provides about 400 IUs vitamin D daily for a 100-pound domestic dog (proportionately less for smaller dogs). Can be combined with other fish oil to increment the amount of EPA and DHA if desired.

Found Oils: If you don't feed much poultry fat, establish in dark meat and skin, linoleic acid, an essential omega-6 fatty acid, may be insufficient. Yous can utilise walnut, hempseed, corn, vegetable (soybean), or high-linoleic safflower oil to supply linoleic acid if needed. Add together nigh ane teaspoon of oil per pound of meat and other animal products, or twice that corporeality if using canola or sunflower oil. Olive oil and high-oleic safflower oil are low in omega-6 and cannot be used equally a substitute, although small amounts tin can be added to supply fat if needed. Coconut oil provides mostly saturated fats, and tin can be used in addition to only non as a replacement for other oils.

Other Vitamins and Minerals

In addition to vitamin D discussed in a higher place, certain vitamins and minerals may exist brusk in some homemade diets, specially those that don't include organ meats or vegetables. The more limited the diet that y'all feed, the more of import supplements get, merely fifty-fifty highly varied diets are likely to be light in a few areas.

Vitamin Due east: All homemade diets I've analyzed take been curt on vitamin E, and the demand for vitamin Due east increases when y'all supplement with oils. Too much vitamin Due east, yet, may exist counterproductive. Give ane to 2 IUs per pound of body weight daily.

Iodine: Besides much or too little iodine can suppress thyroid role, and it's hard to know how much is in the diet. A l-pound canis familiaris needs about 300 mcg (micrograms) of iodine daily. Kelp is high in iodine, though the amount varies considerably among supplements.

Multivitamin and mineral supplements: A multivitamin and mineral supplement will help to meet most requirements, including iodine and vitamins D and E, but it's important not to over supplement minerals. If using the one-a-solar day type of human supplements, such as Centrum for Adults under 50, give one per 40 to l pounds of body weight daily. Notation that most supplements made for dogs provide a reasonable corporeality of vitamins but are low in minerals, and so won't brand upwardly for deficiencies in the nutrition. Be cautious with minor dogs; I've seen some supplements that recommend the same dosage for 10-pound dogs as for those weighing 50 or even 100 pounds. In those cases, the dosage is unremarkably too high for the pocket-size dogs and should be reduced. Products made for humans are also inappropriate for modest dogs.

Dark-green Blends: Ofttimes containing alfalfa and various herbs, green blends may be particularly helpful if you don't include many green vegetables in your dog's diet. You can also use a pre-mix that includes alfalfa and vegetables, such as The Honest Kitchen's Preference. Note most pre-mixes also supply calcium, so you should reduce or eliminate calcium supplements, depending on how much of the pre-mix you use.

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Mary Straus is the possessor of DogAware.com. Contact her via her website if you would like to submit a diet to be critiqued.

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Source: https://www.whole-dog-journal.com/food/home_prepared/how-to-make-your-own-dog-food/

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