I’m sure lots of people guesstimate (feed an amount that seems right, and adjust if dog appears to be gaining/losing weight or seeming unusually hungry), but the canine nutrition book I have has calorie charts for both growing and adult dogs, so I was able to use those to come up with a target number of calories per day my dog should be getting. From there, I used the USDA’s Nutrient Database to figure out how many calories are in the foods I am feeding and came up with the amount I needed to feed from that. Kibble tends to be nutrient-dense, so you will generally feed a greater volume of homemade food.
Anyone planning to use that recipe for this thread’s stated purpose needs to be aware of the dangers and adjust the ingredients accordingly.
My dog has become increasingly fussy as she’s gotten older. I don’t cook for her, but I will usually nuke her dog food to warm it up, so it will have more smell. Grosses my wife out.
If you’re cooking bones, then add some vinegar to the cooking liquid and some calcium will dissolve into the liquid.
I don’t advise boiling up your dirty socks and adding that to the cooking liquid, though, no matter how tasty the dogs seem to think they are.
Yeah, I think it’s better to save the socks for an occasional treat.
Romansperson, thanks for those links and all the info.
StGermain, I can’t believe I didn’t even think of eggs! They love eggs.
This morning I added some mixed veggies to the chicken and oatmeal. They seemed to enjoy it.
Paging Renee! I know she cooks for her dogs. And apparently it’s so delicious that her former neighbor used to visit to sneak bites!
Note that, while aruvqan’s recipe with the garlic wasn’t intended for dogs, StGermain’s was. So the point about not feeding garlic to dogs is well-taken.
Though I think in practice, it tends to be more toxic to anyone in the same room as the dog, than it is to the dog itself. The first symptom is that it gives them horrendous gas.
Back in the day, our German Shepherd’s hip dysplasia was getting increasingly worse when the vet said that while there are medical treatments, in his experience, the best treatment was a special homemade meal.
So, we cooked up some rice and ground beef, threw in a bunch of broccoli (for the joints), carrots (for nice breath), and an egg or two (shiny coat). We’d do this in a giant stew pot that we’d feed the dogs with for just about the entire week, each batch. For our dogs, we mixed it with kibble, but I suppose you could do it either way. Oh, if we had other non doggy killing veggies that were about to go bad, we’d toss those in too.
Within a very short period of time, that dog started kicking his leg up when he walked less and less. And after a while, any sign of the hip problems were gone completely. We started mixing less “stew” with more kibble-- or alternated kibble one day with kibble stew mix the next, but I can tell you: that dog never again had a hip problem. It was amazing.
Diosa - that’s good to know, actually. Bulldogs are at risk for hip dysplasia as they get older. I guess a lot of purebreds are.
Since George and Frank seem to be loving the homemade food so much I’m going to keep cooking for them. There’s a butcher shop I’ve always meant to check out, so I think I’m going to go there & ask for suggestions on cheaper meat and how to prepare it. It hasn’t even been a whole week yet and they’ve put on weight, which is good. They get a lot of exercise, so they’ve always been on the thin side. It’s nice to see them looking more normal. Less exercise isn’t really an option, since Frank is the most hyper bulldog I’ve ever met. Well, about 50% of the time - the other 50% he’s asleep.
Doggie Oats:
Boil 16 cups of water with 2 lb of meat (ground turkey, lean ground beef, cut up chicken, whatever cuts are cheap and not too fatty) and 2 or 3 cups of mixed vegetables (no garlic or onion)
Add 1/2 large container of quaker quick oats
Take off the burner and let soak
This made about 9 containers of food for BooziDog, and I fed her twice a day. She weighed about 55 pounds and was a shepherd mix.
I’ve heard others say you shouldn’t cook the veggies, but BooziDog lived to 14 and wasn’t overweight, so she seemed to be doing fine.
I just wanted to update and thank everyone again for the help. This was a good starting point, but I ended up buying a couple of books on dog nutrition and despite conflicting opinions between them, I’ve gotten a better idea of what they need to eat and the supplements they need (essentially bonemeal for calcium/phosphorous and a dog multivitamin). If anyone else is interested in more reading plus super-fun dog nutrition math, the 2 books that’ve had the most information (as opposed to the other books I’ve checked out that seem more like cookbooks) are “Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats” and “Better Food for Dogs,” by David Bastin, Jennifer Ashton and Dr. Grant Nixon, D.V.M. The main conflict between these 2 books is raw meat vs. cooked meat. Both are helpful, though. “Better Food for Dogs” also has a picture of a bulldog puppy on the cover, so it’s worth owning just for that.
The upsides of cooking for them are that they seem happier & healthier, they’re eating much more of their food than they used to, and it’s not as much extra work as I expected. I think they care about variety more than I thought.
The downside is that it’s more expensive (although I used to give them Royal Canin dry food, so not THAT much more expensive) and because they’re sloppy eaters, there’s f&!$#ing brown rice EVERYWHERE. I sweep at least 3 times a day (I sweep because George is afraid of the vacuum).
They seem to be so much happier with it that I’m going to keep cooking for them and looking for cheaper protein. Rice & oatmeal are plenty cheap, and I buy SOME vegetables especially for them, but they also keep me from wasting the fresh fruit and vegetables I buy for myself - if it’s getting close to going bad before I can finish it, the dogs are DELIGHTED to finish it for me. This morning they had some green beans that I wasn’t going to get around to eating mixed in with their oatmeal & scrambled eggs. They also got to try bananas for the first time. Big hit.
Here is a contented, fat George after dinner the other night.
…and if anyone just wants to look at more pictures of adorable bulldogs, here are a few recent ones.
Valerieblaise - What protein are you using, and how much does it cost?
StG
I’ve been buying frozen 10- lb bags of chicken hindquarters for around $8, ground beef (3 lb packages, I can’t remember the price off the top of my head), and eggs. I just started buying the 18-egg cartons because they need 4 each per meal.
I’ve been shopping at my regular grocery store, but I just joined Costco, so as soon as my card arrives I’ll see if they have any better options. I’m not sure I’m giving them enough variety, protein-wise.
Nutritionally, the chicken or beef either one would be enough variety by itself, and the eggs are pretty close. The only variety you really need to worry about is in taste, and if your dogs are happy with it, there’s your answer. Plus, of course, that’s already a lot more variety than store-bought dog food.
We use Vegedog when we cook for our dogs. It’s designed for vegan dogs, but unless extra calcium could be a problem, I don’t think it would hurt non-vegan dogs. It’s supposed to be a complete nutritional supplement.
I used to cook for my dogs and cats. Now I feed them 100% raw animals, usually in large pieces. The difference in my two elderly dogs health has been amazing since I moved to prey-model raw.
rhubarbarin - Interesting! I think the main reason (if I’m being honest with myself) that I’ve been cooking rather than feeding them raw meat is because it oogs me out.
Do you mean 100% raw animals as in 100% of the meat you give them is raw, or 100% raw animals as in you don’t give them any grains, vegetables etc?
Chronos - thanks, they’re VERY happy. They’re definitely getting a lot of variety with the fruit & vegetables, so I think you’re right.
Sailboat - thanks for the link. I’ll get out the books & compare their lists to the Vegedog. I don’t know that extra calcium would be a problem, because dogs apparently need a LOT of it.