Need Home-cooking advice, please

[k&s]

I feed Canidae, but want to add a bit of home cooking. Could really use some advice on ratios and quantities.

My rotties are

(1) ~80 lbs, does well on 3 cups of Canidae per day (1.5 c 2X per day)

(2) ~ 115 lbs, does well on 4.5 cups of Canidae per day (2.25c 2X per day)

They also get a few high-quality (mostly Canidae) biscuits, and about 1/6 can each of moist Canidae or California natural stuffed in a bone and frozen, per day.

I would like to keep feeding Canidae, but augment with the home cooking. Tonight I made a batch of chicken (2 breasts), rice (about 4 cups cooked), broccoli and carrots cooked and blended (about 4 cups when raw), and about 1 cup of yogurrt. I put this all together and it made about 10 cups of food.

Then, I gave them about 1/2-2/3 of their Canidae meal and about 2 cups each of the home-cooked mixture.

I have no clue as to whether or not this is a reasonable amount to feed.

Also, I tried to more-or-less follow ratios in Goldstein's book (but he does not say whether it is by weight or volume) and those of a veterinarian whose home-cooking recipe was referred to me by a rottie person I respect,, but I did not follow to the 'T'.

I am hoping I can get some basic ratios to work with for veggies, meat, yogurt, and carbs, and then work with that.

Thanks for any help!

[CarolineS]

I tend to figure out the amount of food my dog needs by calories. Your 80 lb rott is getting 1400 calories from his/her Canidae kibble. If you're taking away half of the kibble, then obviously you're going to have to replace it with 700 calories worth of the home made. As far as ratios go, for an adult dog, I've always used 1/3 meat protein to 2/3 carbs, by weight.

The only reservation I'd have about doing it with this amount of home-made food is whether or not your dogs would end up getting the required amount of vitamin/minerals they need, since your home-made is not supplemented.

[k&s]

So, are you saying Canidae would be better than home-cooked, unless I add vitamins and minerals? So far I;ve been very happy with Canidae, but was thinking perhaps I could do even better with home-cooked. Perhaps not.

[CarolineS]

Whatever you feed has to be nutritionally complete. Kibble usually is already. If you feed home-cooked without adding the supplements, it is not nutritionally complete, so therefore is not as good for your dog as the kibble. When appropriately supplemented, and therefore as complete as the kibble, home-made is probably better than kibble because it is fresher and digests better.

Let's take the 80 lb dog as an example. What I meant was that if 3 cups of Canidae falls in the range recommeded for a dog of this weight, then the 3 cups contains all the protein, minerals, vitamins, calcium, etc your dog needs. If you take away half the food and give unsupplemented home-cooked instead, then your dog will be missing some of the nutrients he/she needs. Over the short term, this wouldn't make a difference, but long-term, it will.

If you want to replace as much as half of the food with home-cooked, I'd advise adding appropriate amounts of canine vitamin/mineral tablets and bonemeal to your food. This would have to be added separately for each dog as the amounts vary according to the weight of the dog.

I think it gets tricky to make sure you've got calories, supplements, meat/carb ratios, etc all correct if you mix feeding kibble and home-made. Not saying you can't do it, just that it's easier to figure out if you go home-made all the way.

[k&s]

CarolineS,

thank you for the info.

Would this work? --
I would be willing to start with fully home-cooked meals a few times per week. For example, I could give Canidae for breakfast and dinner most meals, but perhaps 3 times per week I would give home-cooked for breakfast. As long as the Canidae is complete and the home-cooked is complete, I would be giving complete meals at all times, correct?

Do you have a fairly simple home-cooked recipe you can recommend? Especially with regard to vitamins and minerals?

[CarolineS]

If you're only going to be feeding a couple of home-cooked meals per week, you can probably get away without supplementing. Just to cover all bases, most kibble has excess amounts of a dog's daily nutritional requirements in it, so a few home-cooked meals wouldn't upset the balance. If you were to feed home-cooked on a daily basis, even one meal a day, then it would important to supplement.

Here's an example of a nutritionally complete home-cooked meal with approximately 700 calories which would do your 80 lb dog for one meal.

3 oz cooked ground chicken, turkey or beef
8 oz cooked rice or pasta
1 TB canola oil
veggies - cooked or raw, whatever amount you want
1 Vi-sorbits tablet (or other complete dog vitamin/mineral tab)
1 3/4 tsp bonemeal powder (that has 660 mg calcium/tsp)
or 7 bonemeal tablets (with 160 mg calcium each)

You might want to start with less than the TB of oil and build it up gradually, just to make sure it doesn't cause diarrhea.

For your larger dog at 1050 calories per meal:

5 oz cooked ground chicken, turkey or beef
12 oz rice or pasta
1.5 TB canola oil
veggies as above
1.5 Vi-sorbit tablet
2.5 tsp bonemeal powder or 10 tablets

I'm assuming both your dogs are full grown and that is what the supplements and amounts are based on. A healthy adult dog should have a ratio of 1/3 to 1/2 meat to 2/3 to 1/2 carbs and these recipes fall within this.

For the calorie counts, I took half of the dogs' ration of Canidae and figured the calories. Since your dogs are doing well on the amount of Canidae they get, those calorie counts are a good place to start. I've found that dogs seem to utilize the home-cooking better, so sometimes you find you need to reduce the amount fed.

The veggies add little in the way of nutrition and calories, but do add some fiber, so that is why I left the amount you want to add up to you.

Dogs need much more calcium than people and if you're feeding a diet with no bones, they need to be supplemented which is why the bonemeal is included. It also contains phosphorus in the correct ratio to the calcium. An adult dog needs 600 mg of calcium/20 lbs/day. You will need to change the amounts of bonemeal I quoted if what you buy has differing amounts of calcium in it. It depends on the brand you get. This is bonemeal for human consumption you get at the health food store, not bonemeal for your garden.

The Vi-sorbits tablet and the bonemeal are added right before you feed it to the dog. Don't freeze or heat these supplements as that can reduce their potency.

Once you get into a rhythm with this, it doesn't take long to make up. I usually cook up a couple of weeks worth of meat, divide into packages of 2 days each and freeze. I defrost and keep in the frig as needed. I cook up a bag of pasta at a time and keep it in the frig because I go through it fast enough it doesn't go bad.

I've been feeding Maggie with a variation of this type of diet for 2 1/2 years (she can't have the oil and gets less meat because of her allergies) and she's doing really, really well on it. With her I have no choice of how I feed her, she can't tolerate any commercial food of any kind. She's now having to eat buffalo meat which is very expensive. Because of the high cost of Maggie's diet, my other dog Dresden eats Canidae and is doing quite well on it. Only downside is, I find with any kibble there is more to clean up outside.

[k&s]

Thank you! This is just what I needed to know!