Home cooked dog/cat/other meals

[punk-a-doodle]

Heya, I've seen a lot of threads about raw feeding, but none on home cooked pet meals. Anyone cook up food for their pets? How do you go about it and making it balanced?

 

[GoldenSparrow]

Making pet food, is hard. just because you must have just the right nutrients.
Her is a link on how to make Cat food.
http://www.catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood

 

[naturalfeddogs]

To me, home cooked is harder because you are cooking out all the nutrients and then have to use supplements to try to balance it all out. Its homemade kibble IMO.

 

[Mrs. Feathers]

With raw or cooked it is very important to have a balanced diet. Here is some information on supplements as part of your learning journey...I am at that stage too. Lots of info out there and lots of diversity in opinion. I am respectfully listening to it all until I decide what to do myself.
.
http://www.completeandbalanced.com/

 

[naturalfeddogs]

Thats what I did. I read about homecooked, prey model and BARF. To me, prey model raw made 100% more sense to me than anything. Prey model raw is pure, uncooked nutrition no supplements needed. (except fish oil. mine won't eat enough fish, and we don't have access to all grass fed meats). Otherwise, no supplements.

 

[Oregon Blues]

I cook for my dogs.

10 pounds raw weight meat, 2 cups of grain, whatever veggies I have on hand, and usually fruit. All cooked together like stew. Meat, grain, veggies differ with each batch.

There is a book on home cooked diets, written by a PHd, DMV, professor who specializes in nutrition at one of the better universities. I don't have it readily to hand to look and see what it is called. Something like Home Cooked Diets for Dogs and Cats. Maybe the author's name will come to me. It's well worth the money, if you plan on cooking for your dogs.

He recommends a crushed children's multivitamin pill, if you are worried about vitamins.

If you feed home cooked with good quality meat, the amount that you feed your dogs is miniscule compared to the volume of kibble that you are used to feeding. I added up all the calories, looked up how many calories my dogs should be eating, and my Papillons stay in good weight at 1 Tablespoon of food fed twice a day. (2 T total for the day). It sure doesn't look like much, but if I increase it, they get fat.

Edit; I like to use pumpkin or sweet potato for the carb component, when I can get it, instead of the grain.