Food: Home prepared v High Quality Commercial

[Caraline]

It is known that some and perhaps even much of the excessive amounts of vitamins/minerals taken in pill form are simply excreted in urine in humans, especially if you drink tea or coffee within a short time of taking the supplement.

Oh yes, here in Australia, as I am sure other affluent countries, it is said our sewers are flowing with vitamins & minerals.

With cavaliers, I find I can actually feed the dogs cheaper on homecooked stews than on kibble or tins

Well I was comparing prices yesterday & here is something quite sobering:

premium grade dog food @ $11 per kilogram
raw chicken necks @ $1 per kilogram
assortment of vegies @ around $1 - $2 per kilogram
dry rice @ 0.70c per kilogram

I can post a couple of useful books later on for anyone interested in trying some fresh food diets -- am very behind on my 'real' work at the moment and don't have time to find them.

Would love to see some recommendations thanks Karlin.

He would actually hold out for those necks

Oh Linda, my Sonny is exactly the same with his necks. But I am a mean mamma and the rule in my house is "if you don't eat the dinner offered to you, you don't get to eat at all"

Well yesterday we started the transition from primarily kibble, to primarily home prepared. I'm slowly going to cut back on the kibble & increase the other. You should have seen the look of glee on the faces of the Boxers (food: now you see it, now you don't), while Sonny the CKCS looked at it as if to say "what's this muck you are serving up". He did eventually eat it.

[Caraline]

I though I'd give you all an update on this. Since my original question, about 7 weeks ago, my dogs have made the transition of primarily getting kibble to now getting almost exclusive, home prepared foods. I still have a small bag of kibble in the pantry for emergencies but we haven't touched it in weeks.

I must admit that when I started out I was a bit nervous as I was wondering whether it was going to be too time consuming, expensive, complicated & cause my dogs to become fussy eaters. I am very pleased to say that none of that happened.

It takes me about 20 minutes to prepare 3 days worth of food (that is for 2 Boxers & 2 Cavaliers). If I wanted to prepare a weeks worth & freeze it, it would probably still only take about 30 minutes to do that volume.

Mostly the meats are cooked (either dry fried or stewed) and most vegetables are left raw with the exception of potatoes & pumpkin of course. It is just so easy to prepare & now that I have worked out what ratios of what I want to feed, I feel very confident about the nutrition my dogs are getting. They are still getting some raw meats in the form of chicken necks, lamb shanks & other big bones for chewing on.

I have found that it costs much less to home cook, as opposed to buying in kibble.

Some of the benefits we are enjoying are:

control over exactly what goes into the dogs food;
less food gets wasted;
tear stains have gone;
doggy body odour is gone;
Boxer flatulence has decreased dramatically (thank the gods!);
nice smelling breaths;
no scratching;
nice shiny coats;
huge enthusiasm at meal times;
empty plates at the end of meals

[Denise G.]

O.K., Caraline--give it up. What exactly are you feeding? Recipe please...

My dog food bill has skyrocketed since I've pinpointed some of my Golden's food allergies. He's now on 75% NV raw and 25% Solid Gold Barking at the Moon. He seems to be allergic to chicken and grains--and it looks like even some veggies. Sounds crazy, but his ears (my allergy gauge) get irritated/red when I put veggies in his food. So far, the only dish he has no reaction to is 100% NV Raw. I haven't added up my monthly dog food bill because it's just too scary.

Do you use any meat besides chicken? Beef might work--though he seems to have "snobbish" allergies that don't like "common" meat. Right now he's on lamb, venison and rabbit NV raw. I don't think any of these would be cheap to buy at the store. I'm rotating meats/protein to avoid development of another allergy. Mia is also on raw, but I'm slowly adding a bit more kibble to her raw, as she looks to have outgrown her tummy problems with kibble--but I'll never quit giving her raw. She's just done too good on it.

Thanks for the update! Glad to hear your home cooking is getting the "paws up" from your babies!

[Karlin]

Fish based foods tend to be good for dogs with protein allergies.

Also: there are meat clubs all over the US for people who raw feed or cook, and these usually get in a wide range of meats. Or if you have a freezer, you can get and prepare large volumes of meat.

I'd recommend getting Monica Segal's book K9 Kitchen (and/or her pamphlets) for anyone trying homemeade raw or cooked or supplemented diets.

[Caraline]

O.K., Caraline--give it up. What exactly are you feeding? Recipe please...

Hey Denise

Wow, I am sorry to hear about all the allergies your dog has. That sure must make it tough. I am very lucky (touch wood 3 times) that so far none of my dogs seem to suffer from allergies.

I don’t use menus as such but I’ve got a ratio worked out that I am happy with, but will probably still tweak to perfect. This ratio by volume is

1 part meat (cooked)
1 part grain or starchy vegetable (cooked)
1 part raw vegetable/fruit (raw)

So I just pick say 1 cup of ingredient from each of the 3 groups. Here are some of the foods I have tried with success

MEAT

Skinless Chicken minced or diced (ie breast or thigh minced at home as purchased mince is too fatty)
Beef minced or diced (as above, not butchers mince that has too much fat in it)
Lamb minced or diced
We haven’t tried fish yet

VEGETABLES/FRUIT (raw & grated)

Carrot
Apple
Pear
Broccoli
Beans
Peas
Spinach
…Almost anything but not onion or grapes


GRAIN & STARCHY VEG (cooked)

Rice
Barley
Potato
Pumpkin
Wheat-bix (my dogs are not allergic to wheat)
Rolled oats
Egg noodles

SUPPLEMENTS

I am not doing supplements yet. I want to read up more about it. My feeling is that if the diet is well balanced you shouldn’t need to supplement, but I want to educate myself more about this before the jury is out.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

At the moment I am mincing all meats & dry pan frying them. I find that if I dice up the meats, the Cavaliers pick it out & leave their veggies. The Boxers woof everything down. Again, because of the Cavaliers’ penchant for picking things out, I am grating all raw vegetables, rather than dicing. Potato & pumpkin can be left diced. So once the meat is browned, I turn the stove off & then just add the raw grated veggies & stir it all together. I then bag it up in daily parcels.


So the above forms the basis of their diets but we do also have “chicken neck day”, while sometimes they get raw beef & lamb & vegetables served separately, sometimes as treats etc. Apart from the known foods that are a problem in humans, I am basically just feeding my guys the same foods you would feed to humans provided it is healthy foods. We don’t do fried in oil, battered, pizza, pies & stuff like that, but we don’t eat that stuff ourselves, so it isn’t a problem. They also get offered a small amount of cheese, eggs, milk & yoghurt.

One of the things I really like, and that makes this an inexpensive way of feeding the dogs, is that I can look in the fridge at the veggies that I know should be used in the next couple of days & utilize that into the dogs’ food. I was forever wasting vegetables as I would buy too much & we would end up not eating it. Nothing gets wasted now.

So none of what I am doing is particularly scientific & I still want to get some books on dog nutrition. I may yet alter what I am doing a bit, but as far as we have gone I am really pleased with the results, and so very happy that I don’t have to fret about the contaminants & other nasties that seemingly are in the pet foods.

I'd recommend getting Monica Segal's book K9 Kitchen (and/or her pamphlets) for anyone trying homemeade raw or cooked or supplemented diets.

I was going to order this, but shipping to Australia is outrageous & far outcosts the book.

[Karlin]

The postage is really high for Ireland as well. I am going to order when I am next going out to the US and collect it then.

Kymythy Schultze has a book of recipes as well.

[Caraline]

I've just ordered these two books from Amazon. Their postage to Au is quite reasonable.

The Holistic Dog Book: Canine Care for the 21st Century - Denise Flaim

Dr. Pitcairn's New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats - Richard H. Pitcairn

When they have arrived & I've read them, I'll post up a book review. Karlin is there a section on the board for book reviews? I had a quick poke around & couldn't fine one.

[Cathy Moon]

Caraline, just one thing I thought I'd mention - this may or may not be the same Dr. Pitcairn - but I'm fairly certain that someone on this forum gave their cav garlic tablets (per a Dr. Pitcairn) and the cav got very sick. Garlic has the same chemical as onion, which causes hemolytic anemia.

[Mary]

Caraline

How much in quantity do you feed the boxer and the cavalier?

TIA

Mary

[Karlin]

Garlic seems to suit some dogs and not others. A lot of the raw and homecooked diets recommend adding garlic but starting out with just a small amount and gradually increasing. A lot of people use garlic in the diet to stop fleas without any bad side effects. This was just discussed on the L-list because sometimes garlic appears on lists of foods that shouldn;t be fed, whereas it also appears as a recommended item on many lists too! A few of the breeders said they'd fed garlic for fleas for years and never had a problem. Probably the same holds for raisins/grapes -- vets say for some dogs, just a few could be toxic, but we probably all know people who have fed grapes as treats for years without any problems.

I've mixed garlic into cooked and raw diets without any problems in my crowd mainly as I'd always had it recommended before one day seeing it on a list of things not to feed. I wish I could find a better explanation somewhere on feeding garlic as it seems there are both pro and cons. Maybe it needs more caution than many have used...