Homemade Doggy Dessert Dinner
As mentioned previously, fruit is good for dogs. While they dont normally enjoy citrus and they should not be fed grapes, there are many other fruit choices that are very palatable for dogs. Your dog might even like to snack on fresh frozen fruits just as a simple treat. Blueberries are perfect for that!
Feed entire fruit meals sparingly, since too much may give your dog a case of diarrhea.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups cooked rice , cooked lentils, or quinoa
Directions:
Simply mix the ingredients together and serve. Refrigerate for up to five days. This will only yield a small batch, since you dont want to overdo it on the fruit intake.
Is It Okay To Swap Out Ingredients
Just like experimenting with the recipe, swapping out ingredients is a bad idea. There are certain foods that your dog cant eat or might have trouble digesting. Even an innocent-seeming swap can totally throw off the whole recipe and possibly even make the food dangerous for your animal. Stick to the recipe in its entirety.
Turkey Egg And Rice Cakes
This recipe makes small cakes. You can easily portion out your dog’s meals. It uses turkey as a base. Ground turkey is a great alternative to chicken or beef. It’s low on fat but high in protein. For plenty of vitamins and minerals, the recipe utilizes a nice collection of plant-based ingredients as well.
Ingredients
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Best Dog Food For Small And Large Breeds
Small breed dogs and large breed dogs have different nutritional needs. Large breed dogs are more prone to musculoskeletal problems than smaller breeds, and so they often require large-breed dog food with different balances of certain nutrients to promote musculoskeletal health, especially as puppies. Small breed dogs, on the other hand, can choke on large-sized kibble and have their own nutritional requirements that can be accommodated with a small-breed dog food. Research your dogs breed to find out if there are any additional nutritional requirements you should be aware of.
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Please remember when you are adding these extras to your dogs bowl, you are adding extra calories. Your dogs weight is always the best indicator of how much to feed, but as a loose rule I recommend just eyeballing volume. If you add an egg to their food, remove an egg-sized portion from their kibble or raw. Of course this isnt precise, but its an easy way to start until you get your portions right.
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Recommended Serving Size For Homemade Dog Food:
The amount of homemade dog food that your dog will require is dependent upon how much your dog weighs and how active he or she is. This amount varies from dog-to-dog. I suggest talking to your vet and getting their advice on a good starting point.
You can also monitor your dog to make sure they are maintaining their weight and staying happy and active.
This recipe makes about 6 cups of food, which is 3 days worth of food for Charlie who is about 45 pounds. You can easily adjust this amount based on the weight of your dog. Also, feel free to scale this recipe up and double or even triple it, if you wanted to cook less often.
Enhanced Variety Of Dog Food
You might have noticed that offering the same diet, say commercial dry kibbles for the whole month, would be boring for your dog.
Moreover, there are chances of missing some essential nutrients in the same food for a longer duration.
These situations may lead to the deficiency of nutrients that are exhibited by several health problems.
On the other hand, homemade food can be modified easily by changing recipes according to your dogs desire.
You can vary ingredients that offer different nutrients. In this way, you can save your dog from being fed up and developing nutritional deficiencies.
The variety of nutrients, the more healthy your dog.
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Common Mistakes When Cooking For Your Dog
Not Using Trusted Sources
There are many inadequate, and sometimes dangerous recipes, available to owners, says Dr. Larsen. There are now many studies demonstrating that most of these are not balanced.
Some of these may cause deficiencies in your dogs diet, while others may lead to an excess of certain nutrients. To avoid encountering unhealthy or dangerous options Dr. Larsen and Dr. Bartges recommend avoiding generic recipes from books or online sources. Some so-called nutrition experts are without proper training, and may do more harm than good.
Larsen and Bartges also suggest consulting BalanceIT.com, a site run by a board-certified veterinary nutritionist, to help create a semi-individualized diet.
Not Preparing Balanced Meals
When you dont prepare balanced meals that are individualized to your pets needs, it can come at a cost. Nutrition deficiency can lead to diseases, such as malnutrition or obesity, and can ultimately be fatal.
Each of the ~40 essential nutrients required by dogs has a specific role in the body. When they are provided in inadequate concentrations, the function is not optimal and suffering may result, explains Dr. Larsen. Similarly, nutrient excesses can also cause illness. While the impact of an unbalanced diet may be mild and not even noticed or attributed to the diet by the owner, these problems can also be very severe, and pets do not always survive.
Relying On Multiple Diets To Create Balance
Using Unsafe/Unhealthy Ingredients
At The End Of 2019 During Our Yearly Vet Check We Received The Devastating News That Our 11 Year Old Dogs Blood Work Showed That He Was In Stage 4 Kidney Failure
Honestly, I was a basket case, how on earth did we miss this? He seemed like he was just dealing with some symptoms of getting older frequent urination, sometimes excessive water drinking. It definitely didnt feel like life threatening symptoms. As much as the diagnosis was a shock, the price tag of the prescription diet he would need to eat for the remainder of his life was pretty horrifying too!
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Do It Correctly Discuss These Recipes With A Vet
Before changing a dogs diet, particularly if your pet has serious health conditions, always discuss this change with your vet. Show them this list of recipes, let them know what you plan to feed your dog and ask for their input on healthy variations.
There’s no healthy homemade dog food recipe that’s a perfect fit for every dog.
While these recipes can sometimes be a better choice than commercial diets, feeding this way can also be detrimental to your pet’s health if you’re not paying attention to the nutritional content of these meals and comparing them with nutritional requirements.
Well-balanced meals are key. For example, if your homemade dog food meal contains too many vitamins, it could cause vitamin toxicity. On the other hand, if it doesn’t provide the dog with enough nutrients, it will cause nutrient deficiency or malnutrition.
You must also know how much to feed your dog and what portions of these healthy homemade dog food recipes are appropriate, as well as what supplements you’ll need to include to make up for the lack of nutrients that your pet requires.
You Must Provide A Nutritionally Balanced Diet
Dogs nutritional needs are different from our own, so its important to provide a diet that is balanced with the appropriate nutrients needed to optimize your dogs health.
These nutrients include calories to maintain weight or encourage weight gain or loss protein fat vitamins and minerals. Not enough or too many of any given nutrient can lead to diseases, malnutrition, obesity, and even death.
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What Nutrition Guidelines Should You Follow
While there are many benefits that you can get from preparing your dogs food, this doesnt mean that you just give him whatever food that you have at home.
And please, dont even think of giving him table scraps particularly oily and fatty foods. Doing so can increase his risks of health problems like diarrhea and pancreatitis. Worse, he might end up eating toxic foods like onions.
Just like us, our dogs need to have a complete and balanced diet. This means that the food you give to your dogs must meet all of his nutritional needs.
The following is a general nutritional guideline you should follow in feeding your dog:
- 50 percent of his diet should consist of vegetables
- 40 percent should consist of protein from animal meat, eggs/dairy and seafood
- 10 percent should carbohydrates composed of grains and beans
Yet this should not give you the impression that you would feed your dog with the same meal every day. Like people, dogs want variation in their food.
But you may wonderwhat are the ingredients that I can use in making dog food?
For protein, good sources are ground or small strips of beef. I also recommend turkey as it is very easy to digest. It is also widely available and cheap.
You can also give your dog with chicken. Just like turkey, you should have no problems getting it. Lamb is another good source of protein. You may also give beans and eggs, although in moderation.
Can I Experiment With The Recipe
No matter how good of a cook you are, its best not to experiment with the recipe because you could fail to include some important ingredients. Dog food needs to have the perfect balance of fats and protein, as well as some lean carbohydrates. Resist the urge to play around with the elements of the dog food and stick to the recipe completely. This is the best way to ensure that your Yorkie is getting exactly what they need in their diet.
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Get The Latest Recipes Right In Your Inbox:
Keep your dog healthy and fit with this easy peasy homemade recipe its cheaper than store-bought and chockfull of fresh veggies!
I never thought I would be one of those dog owners who made homemade human food for their pups. Not in a million years.
But when Butters recently fell sick with an upset stomach, our vet advised us to feed him a bland diet chicken and rice without any kind of seasoning. So thats what we did we poached a chicken, shredded it in a food processor, and mixed in some white rice and fed him this bland diet for 3 days.
Thats when I started to do some research on homemade dog food, and I have been so amazed as to how many different kinds of vegetables dogs can have. And with the help of Balance IT, you can create so many different recipes for your pup!
Now the best part about making homemade dog food just like making anything at home is that you know exactly what is going into the dog bowl, and not any of that questionable gelatinous gunk from the canned food.
But its important to note that dogs have different nutrient requirements than humans for their proportional body size, such as:
Now this recipe here has a balance of 50% protein, 25% veggies and 25% grains, but the ratios can easily be adjusted to suit your pups breed and/or needs.
Raw Dog Food Recipe Proportions
- 80% meat with fat
- 5% vegetables/fruits
- 5% dairy/supplements
Using those simple proportions, you can pretty much make up your own recipe from whatever you have on hand or find on sale at the store or.
Meat with fat: I will usually buy ground meat of some sort for this just because its easier than breaking down other cuts. Beef, chicken, pork, bison, gamey meats, etc.
Organs: The good news is organs are cheap. The bad news is organs are kind of gross. Nothing like some slimy chicken livers getting pulsed up in your food processor. Liver and kidneys are the two easiest to find in the grocery store.
Vegetables/fruits: Ginger happens to hate vegetables and fruit. Shes literally spit them out before or eaten around them if weve tried to feed her some in her bowl. So I choose sweet things here like apples and carrots and they get processed real fine so she cant tell. Avoid onions, grapes and raisins as they can cause kidney failure in dogs.
Dairy/supplements: Whole eggs are a great source of calcium. Ill also use some plain yogurt to help bind the patties. Supplement wise, ground flaxseed meal, olive oil and fish oil are great additions too.
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Turkey And Vegetable Dinner
This is a dish that should give your dog the protein and vitamins that he needs. Turkey, if you havent known by now, is rich in protein. It also has less fat than beef, so this is a good recipe to follow for pet owners who have dogs that can afford to lose a few pounds.
The vegetables in this food carrots and green beanswill provide your dog with the vitamins and minerals he needs.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of brown rice
- 1 cup of chopped carrots
- 1 cup of chopped green beans
- 1 tablespoon of fish oil
You should not use heavy oil for this as it can lead to your dog having an upset stomach.
Step by step guide
- In a non-stick skillet placed over medium heat, cook the ground turkey. It should take around 5 minutes for the meat to get cooked.
- Add the brown rice and water to a large pot. Bring to a boil.
- Lower the heat and cook for an extra 5 to 10 minutes or until the rice has become soft and tender.
- Add the carrots and green beans. Cook for 5 to 10 more minutes or until the vegetables have become tender.
- Add the carrots and green beans. Cook for 5 to 10 more minutes or until the vegetables have become tender.
- Cool before serving.
This recipe should last for 4-5 days.
Benefits Of Making Your Dogs Food
- You can personally select the ingredients in your dogs food this is helpful if your dog has allergies or if you want to make sure you use or avoid certain ingredients
- You can choose the quality of the food you want to use whether its food from a local farmer, market, grocery store, or from a bulk source you can use organic, free-range, or other kinds of food that you want
- If you buy ingredients in bulk you can often save money and making your dogs food doesnt have to cost any more than buying dog food sometimes it can cost less while being more nutritious
- You know how your dogs food is prepared and can be assured there wont be any dog food recalls
- You can prepare foods in larger batches so you can freeze smaller portions for later use, thus saving time and effort
- Making food for your dog is no more difficult than making food for yourself or your family but it is usually more nutritious than commercial dog food
- Even the pickiest dog usually loves to eat food that you have prepared for him in your own kitchen
- Other benefits include good skin, good breath, clean teeth, and less doggy odor. In addition, dogs usually have smaller, more compact stools. Dogs are more likely to be well-muscled and lean on a home-prepared diet, according to people who feed this kind of diet.
With all of these benefits you might be wondering why everyone doesnt make their dogs meals. Well, there are some downsides to consider.
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Essential Nutrients For Homemade Dog Food
Essential nutrients that play an important role in the normal functioning of the dogs body are
1. Protein
Protein is a source of energy that is the raw material to form different body structures. These structures include muscles, nails, skin, and bones.
You can choose the source of protein according to your dogs taste. Major sources of proteins include poultry, meat, fish and turkey, etc.
2. Carbohydrates
These act as the primary source of energy and well the main source of glucose for your dog. They are not essential in a dogs diet because of their association with minerals, vitamins, and plant-based nutrients.
Major sources are brown rice, barley, grains, and whole potatoes, etc.
3. Fats
Fats play their role in regulating internal body temperature, protecting visceral organs, and promoting a strong nervous system.
In addition, a dogs body needs the provision of essential fatty acids to maintain an optimum health level.
Therefore, you need to be conscious of quality, quantity, and source of fat.
4. Vitamins and minerals
Their collective function is to support and regulate a dogs body metabolism and various parts to promote good health status.
These include cartilage and bone formation, oxygen flow, and hormone regulation, etc. Some important vitamins are
Likewise, some important minerals in homemade dog food must include
Bring The Water To A Rolling Boil And Boil The Breasts For 12 Minutes
With your chicken submerged, its time to cook it. Place a cover over the pot and let it boil for 12 minutes.
Youll want to make sure that the stove is in high heat. The 12-minute mark shouldnt begin until the water has started boiling.
Only then should you start the timer for 12 minutes for your chicken to cook.
After those 12 minutes are over, you can inspect the chicken. Take out a breast and split it apart to check the inside.
If its pink or gummy, then it isnt cooked yet. Put it back in the pot and allow it to cook for another few minutes.
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