[Updated January 3, 2018]

The idea of cooking for my dogs turns me pale. Not because I think there’s anything wrong with home-cooked dog diets, or because I’m worried about doing it right, but for one simpler reason: I hate to cook.

Had my only option for feeding my dogs a homemade diet been cooking their food, I’m afraid they’d still be eating out of a bag. But the idea of a raw diet, once I wrapped my mind around the concept of feeding bones, seemed, if not exactly simple, at least feasible, given my limited kitchen skills.

I’ve been surprised to learn that there are many people like me: we don’t cook for our families or even ourselves, but we feed our dogs a homemade raw diet, and actually enjoy preparing their meals.

Feeding a raw diet is quite simple, especially once you have a system in place, but like anything else new, it can seem very complicated when first starting out. I hope these sample diets will be helpful to newcomers considering feeding their dogs raw, and that even those who have been doing it for awhile may learn some new tricks to make the process of finding, preparing, and storing raw dog food simpler.

My dog’s diet

In 1998, I began feeding a raw diet to the three dogs I had at the time. While getting started took a lot of planning, the routine I’ve worked out makes it simple for me to manage now. Piglet, my 15-year- old Chinese Shar-Pei, weighs 35 pounds, and is relatively inactive due to her age. She ate more when she was younger, and I gave her more fat. Here’s what I feed her now:

Breakfast (4 ounces, plus dairy and vegetables)

– 1 large egg alternating daily with 1 to 1½ oz liver or kidney

– Muscle meat, heart, green tripe, and/or healthy leftovers, enough to equal 4 oz total food (including egg/organs)

– A spoonful of yogurt or cottage cheese (I use low-fat or nonfat varieties)

– 3 to 4 oz veggies, alternating daily between steamed veggies and pureed “veggie muffin” (described below)

Dinner (5 ounces)
– Mon/Wed/Fri: rotate among chicken necks, chicken backs, and lamb breast (with skin and visible fat removed)

– Sun/Tues/Thurs: rotate among different ground products, ranging from raw meaty bones only to complete diets

– Saturday: canned fish, alternating between jack mackerel and pink salmon, or occasionally sardines

Dietary supplements
– 2 high-potency fish oil gelcaps (I give high doses due to her arthritis)

– Antioxidants (Vetri-Science Cell Advance 880, Thorne Veterinary Small Animal Antioxidants, or Thorne Veterinary Immugen)

– B-50 vitamin complex

– Splash (1 tsp?) of organic apple cider vinegar

– 1/8 tsp green blend (usually Berte’s Green Blend)

I do not package food in meal-sized portions. Instead, I divide food up into amounts that will last around one to three meals, and freeze. I store most food in Ziploc-style freezer bags that I wash and reuse. Each time I feed a meal, I move anything that I will need for the same meal in two days from the freezer to the fridge. When I run out of one food, I start on the next, so meals are often a mixture of several different kinds of food.

“Veggie muffins” are prepared in large batches that last a month or more. I puree a mixture of various fruits (apple and banana, sometimes others as well), vegetables (lettuce, celery, cucumber, zucchini, dandelion greens, arugula, etc.), and herbs (always ginger and garlic, usually along with parsley or cilantro) in a food processor, then spoon the mixture into a muffin tin and freeze (you can use ice cube trays for smaller servings, but Piglet loves veggies). Once frozen, I transfer the veggie muffins to freezer bags.

Steamed veggies are usually frozen broccoli or sometimes cauliflower or winter squash. I save any leftover sauces, gravy, meat drippings, chicken carcass, etc., and add them to the water that I use to steam the veggies, then pour the water over the meal to make “breakfast soup” (any bones are removed first).

Eggs are soft-cooked using microwave egg cups. Pills are given dipped in a bit of cream cheese or peanut butter. The ground mixtures I feed are primarily a source of bones that my dogs would not otherwise get, such as beef, pork, and venison.

I helped to start a raw food co-op in my area that allows us to buy directly from vendors at lower prices and gives us access to foods not normally found in stores (though stores can often order these products for you). I get all my raw meaty bones from the co-op, along with beef, lamb, and pork (ground, trim, heart, cheeks, liver, and kidney). I have a small 5-cubic foot upright freezer that allows me to buy in bulk.

Piglet’s teeth are too worn to chew raw meaty bones (RMBs) properly, as she can’t shear off pieces small enough to swallow, so I cut her RMBs into small pieces using Joyce Chen scissors. I weigh all of her food using a postal scale, as otherwise she gains weight.

I used to give Piglet beef rib bones for recreational chewing, but she eventually broke a couple of teeth, so now I use chicken feet and bully sticks. Bully sticks, also called beef, steer, or macho sticks, or pizzles, are made from beef penises. Dogs love them, they last a long time, and they’re readily available.

At the time I made the switch to feeding a raw diet, my oldest dog was 13, and had suffered from allergies all his life. He became completely allergy-free within three months of starting the raw diet. A second dog prone to allergies improved, but continued to have some problems. Piglet was also able to come off all arthritis medications for several years, though she is back on them now. All of my dogs have loved raw food and never experienced any problems with it.

Using a grinder
Laura Fulton, who lives in Diablo, California, grinds most of the food she feeds her two Weimaraners. She explains:

I began feeding Violet, now 10 years old, a diet from Dr. Pitcairn’s book (see Resources) after she had a horrible reaction to vaccinations as a puppy. She did well on that diet, which included raw meat, cooked grains and supplements, for five years.

When I got a new puppy, Dozer, I wanted to start both dogs on a raw diet that included bones, but I was concerned because Violet is a “gulper” – she prefers to swallow her food whole, no matter the size or shape. After removing a pork bone lodged in her throat, I knew I could not continue to feed her whole bones. I decided grinding raw meaty bones would be better then just feeding meat, as I liked the idea of them getting the natural balance of nutrients, including calcium, from the meat and bones.

I tried several small, mediocre grinders before I got my American Eagle ¾ horsepower grinder. It grinds everything I need to feed my dogs a varied diet. It weighs 75 pounds, so it usually stays on my kitchen counter.

I do give my dogs bones to chew when I can supervise them. Dozer gets more whole RMBs, as he is a very thorough chewer. I believe that chewing on bones provides good exercise and helps clean their teeth more than the ground bones do.

Violet (who weighs 76 pounds) and Dozer (84 pounds) each eat about 2 pounds of food daily, though I adjust the amounts depending on how they look.

In the morning, they each get 1 pound of ground meat, usually hearts or trim from beef, pork, lamb, turkey, or ostrich, mixed with ¼ cup of veggies three times a week. They also get whole, raw eggs without the shell two or three times a week, and I give each dog 2 tablespoons of yogurt or kefir after their breakfast.

In the evening, they each get 1 pound of ground RMBs, such as chicken necks, backs, or wings; lamb breast; turkey necks; or rabbit. Once a week they get canned salmon.

For veggies, I rotate through a mixture of celery, kale, beets, beet greens, romaine lettuce, spinach, sweet potato, apple, carrots, broccoli, string beans, snap peas, bok choy, collard greens, parsley, avocado, dandelion greens, and mustard greens. I blend these with enough water to make a thick liquid in my blender and freeze them in muffin tins, then transfer them to Ziploc bags to stay in the freezer. They also get whatever fruits I eat, such as bananas.

If either dog seems hungry or has a growly tummy in the evening, I will feed a grain meal, such as oatmeal, before bed. I also use canned pumpkin and slippery elm as needed for upset stomachs. Each dog gets the following supplements daily or as noted:

– 400 IU vitamin E

– 1 Tbsp wild salmon oil

– 1,000 mg Ester C 

– B-complex vitamin

– Liquid trace minerals (1 drop three times a week)

– Probiotics (two or three times a week)

– Alfalfa tablets or a teaspoonful of liquid chlorophyll (three times a week)

– Wheat germ (just a sprinkle now and then)

– Zinc supplement: one capsule with 15 mg zinc and 2 mg copper split between the two dogs once a week

I purchase my meat monthly in bulk through a dog food co-op. I also buy meats on sale at various grocery stores. I typically grind most of the meat when I get it and then put it into 2-pound plastic yogurt containers that are easily frozen.

I use between 90 and 120 pounds of meat per month. I have a freezer in my garage as well as an extra refrigerator that comes in handy when I need to defrost food in bulk, for repackaging. My dogs are very healthy – their coats shine and they smell good. Their teeth stay clean, and typically the only time they go to the vet is for regular check-ups.

Comments: I have seen the American Eagle grinder in action, and it is awesome. The more powerful, stainless steel grinders are expensive, but they make the job of grinding much easier, particularly if you have a lot of food to process. Try to find one with a reverse switch, as this one has, which also makes a big difference.

The right tools
Shari Mann, of San Francisco, has fed her dogs a raw diet since 1993. She has an active Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Meg, who just turned five years old – and she just got a Bull Terrier puppy.

Meg weighs a lean 25 pounds. She eats 9 to 10 ounces of food daily, divided into two very unequal portions: about 1 ounce for breakfast, and 7 to 8 ounces for dinner, with the rest coming from snacks and treats.

Breakfast is home-ground beef, pork, or lamb rolled into balls containing pills: 500 mg vitamin C, and 100 to 200 IUs vitamin E. She loves to work for her food, so these are fed as training rewards.

After her three- to five-mile daily exercise, she gets a quarter-ounce cube of cheese or meat, or maybe raw beef liver.

For dinner, we work in variety. The one constant is a chicken foot with each evening meal, which she eats first. She gets at least two different kinds of animal protein (meat, meat mixes, raw meaty bones, eggs, or fish), and either goat milk yogurt or green tripe. I add 1 gram of salmon oil with each dinner.

I’m fortunate to be able to order most food from the SFRaw co-op. I buy some items from the grocery store as well, such as canned mackerel. Eggs come from my friend’s organic chickens.

Raw meaty bones are turkey, duck, chicken, or pork necks; chicken backs; or pork ribs. She does not like large chunks of food, so I cut them up with a meat cleaver, or I use my Estwing kindling axe and a chopping block for pork neck bones. When chopping, I keep my unused hand behind my back, and make sure there are no dogs around. Any sharp bone edges can be smashed with the flat backside of the axe.

The main meats I use are beef, lamb, and pork, cut into half-inch cubes, as well as turkey heart and gizzard, and canned jack mackerel. She gets bones in the evening meal only once or twice a week (she doesn’t really like them that much, unlike prior dogs I’ve had); the rest of the time we use powdered eggshell calcium, about ¼ teaspoon per meal. She gets tiny snippets of raw beef liver or Organ Blend from greentripe.com.

I grind mixes for the dogs that include meat (beef heart, pork roasts, London broil, or leg of lamb) and organ meat (beef liver or kidney). This is especially convenient to feed on trips to our vacation cabin.

I chunk or grind meat when I get it, and freeze in Ziploc containers. I buy whole beef livers and kidneys from the co-op, which I partially freeze for slicing ease. I use my Tilia FoodSaver for the organs, since it preserves the food value longer.

Meg gets no grains or veggies on a regular basis, as she doesn’t like them (I fed veggies to prior dogs who enjoyed them). I add a tiny sprinkle of kelp powder to her evening meal. Now and then, I’ll add fresh crushed garlic, herbs or bury some veggies under her yogurt.

Treats are most often dehydrated meats, such as turkey heart, London broil, or beef liver, which I make myself in my L’Equip dehydrator. I also mix an equal amount of beef liver and canned pumpkin in the food processor, then bake it, and serve that as treats.

My new puppy has been fed Halshan’s ground chicken and ground turkey (with bone), and Honest Kitchen Embark (approved for puppies) by her breeder. I’ll continue with similar foods, plus fresh raw goat milk. After a few days I’ll start gradually adding my usual variety, including small amounts of veggies and fruits (apples, bananas). I’ll start her on chicken feet to see how she handles raw bones (whether she is a chewer or a gulper). If she can’t handle bone just yet, I’ll grind it for her. I’ll give salmon oil, vitamin E (100 IU), and a B-complex vitamin every couple of days.

Comments: Having the right tools can make the job much easier. Shari’s grinder, dehydrator, hatchet, and Tilia FoodSaver simplify preparing and storing healthy meals and treats.

Lacto-fermented what?
Whole Dog Journal’s longtime contributor CJ Puotinen, who lives in New York, describes the diet she uses for Chloe, her 3-year-old, 75-pound Labrador Retriever:

I feed Chloe pasture-fed organic meat, poultry, and eggs from farms here in New York and New Jersey, with occasional raw goat milk cheese from the farmer’s market or health food store and goat milk kefir that I make at home. I also make lacto-fermented vegetables with finely shredded carrots, sweet potatoes, ginger, and other root vegetables.

Lactofermentation predigests vegetables, increases their vitamin content, and provides both probiotics (beneficial bacteria) and prebiotics (foods that feed beneficial bacteria).

My first pet nutrition mentor was Juliette de Bairacli Levy, whose Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat introduced her Natural Rearing philosophy. I started following her guidelines 20 years ago with our cats and then with our first Lab, Samantha.

Levy believes that meat fed in large pieces exercises stomach muscles and helps prevent bloat and other digestive problems, so Chloe never gets ground meat. Whenever we buy a side of beef, we have it cut to order with the maximum amount of bone on the meat, whole or cut into large chunks, and wrapped in 1- to 2-pound packages.

Chloe gets more chicken and beef than other meats because we have such good local suppliers. She also gets lamb, goat, turkey, venison, or bison. Once in a while she gets wild-caught Pacific salmon, and I do cook that to prevent salmon poisoning. Chloe’s recreational bones are usually beef, lamb, goat, or turkey.

I try to provide raw meaty bones at least every other day because if Chloe goes for several days without any, she will have a loose stool with mucus when bones are reintroduced. Many people say that they can’t give their dogs raw bones because they get diarrhea. This is not unusual – it takes the digestive tract a while to adjust, which is why it makes sense to start with small amounts of bone, or to take the bone away after a few minutes and give it back to the dog the next day for a few minutes more.

Whenever we run out of raw bones and then get a new supply, Chloe has loose stools for a day, and then they become small, hard, and chalky, like plaster. In my experience, bone-fed dogs seldom have anal sac problems.

Chloe’s dinner usually starts with 2 or 3 tablespoons of lacto-fermented veggies, 1 to 2 tablespoons coconut oil, a tablespoon of shredded dried coconut, a teaspoon of cod liver oil, and a little fresh organ meat, such as liver, if available. If she’s getting an egg or cheese that day, it gets mixed with the veggies.

The meat or poultry comes next, fed in her crate on a towel because of the mess it makes. She gets raw meaty bones at least three or four days a week. If she gets meat without a bone attached, she’ll get an after-dinner bone to chew on. I use raw marrow bones for that – once she cleans them out, I fill them with raw goat cheese.

I put Willard Water concentrate in her drinking water and often add a splash of it to her dinner. Her other supplements are Standard Process Canine Whole Body Support powder and Seacure powder, both of which help the vegetables taste better.

Chloe gets between 1 and 1½ pounds of meat and raw meaty bones per day, usually fed in a single evening meal. Lately I’ve been giving her a cup of fresh goat kefir for breakfast, which I plan to continue as she has become fond of kefir, and it’s so good for her. I generally feed a light evening meal with eggs and/or raw dairy or kefir on Saturday, and then fast her (water only) on Sunday.

Chloe was weaned on kibble, but it didn’t take long to switch her to raw food. Less than a week after we brought her home at eight weeks, she was eating 100 percent raw and has ever since. She sometimes gets grain-based treats from friends or vets or trainers, but most of her training treats are freeze-dried liver, lamb lung, turkey hearts, or other low-carb or no-carb fare.

Comments: I find it fascinating to see how CJ integrates many of the things she has written about in her Whole Dog Journal articles into Chloe’s diet, including lacto-fermented vegetables (“It’s All in How You Make It,” March 2001), coconut oil (“How Coconut Oil Benefits Your Dog’s Health,” October 2005), Seacure (“Securing Seacure,” April 2003), and Willard Water (“Willard Water,” June 2006). She also wrote more about Juliette de Bairacli Levy in “Grandmother Nature,” July 2006 and about using pasture-fed meat in “Upgrading to Pasture Fed,” July 2003.

Even toy breeds eat bones
Randall Mackie, of San Francisco, has fed his 7-pound Yorkshire Terrier, Pumpkin, a raw diet for eight years. He explains why and how:

I started feeding a raw diet when Pumpkin, who was a puppy at the time, just wouldn’t eat kibble, canned, or any other processed foods. She also had several bouts of serious gastrointestinal problems, one of which landed her in the pet hospital for several days. Within a month of switching to raw, she had gained weight, was more active, and she had no further digestive disorders – ever!

I feed muscle meat for her morning meal, and raw meaty bones for dinner. I don’t worry about balancing each day’s meals, but believe in the concept of “balance over time.”

A typical morning meal is one ounce of meat, usually beef stew meat or beef heart, but I vary this with chicken or pork meat, chicken hearts, chicken or duck gizzards, and whatever else I can find at the Asian markets here. Every few days, I add a small amount of cooked beef liver (she gets the runs with raw liver, even in tiny amounts).

Her favorite evening meal is a 1- to 2-ounce piece of pork neck bone. She loves these, and even if she can’t completely consume them, they give her lots of chewing pleasure. I used to use a meat cleaver to chop them up, but I found an Asian market nearby where the bones actually come cut up in the perfect size for her. I find that she can generally consume about ¼ to ½ of the bone. Some nights, she gets chicken necks or chicken backs instead, and about once a week, she gets jack mackerel for her RMB meal. Pumpkin is good about not gulping, but I still split the chicken necks lengthwise, then split them again, and I hold onto them while she eats them. I also mince up the chicken backs before I give them to her.

A couple of days a week, Pumpkin is fed pre-made raw medallions from Nature’s Variety, when other family members are caring for her.

Finally, she gets table scraps, cottage cheese, yogurt, cheese, etc. – almost anything I eat, she will eat, except for veggies and eggs. I’ve tried and tried to get her to eat those, but finally gave up. Sometimes she’ll eat bits of fruit (apple, melon, etc). And she loves vanilla ice cream!

For treats, I primarily use EVO kibble. I’ve even fed EVO at times when I didn’t have anything thawed for her. The only supplements she gets right now are fish oil and sometimes vitamin E, both of which I mix in with the cooked beef liver she gets in the morning.

When I first started feeding raw meaty bones, Pumpkin didn’t quite know what to do with them, but she picked up on it quickly. In the beginning, I held the bone to help her get started, and now that’s part of our routine. I’ll hold the bone for a while, then after a few minutes I’ll let her take it away from me, and she’ll go and chew on it for a good long while.

Comments: Many people think that toy breeds cannot handle bones, but Pumpkin would beg to differ! Small dogs seem to be more susceptible to esophageal damage from bones, so be sure your dog chews them up well, or help out by holding onto the bones (if your dog doesn’t object), cutting them up into pieces too small to cause choking, or grinding them.

Mass production for big dogs
Bridget Moran, of Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, is a Rottweiler breeder and Bravo! retailer who feeds a whopping 12 pounds of food a day to her six dogs, ranging in age from 2 to 11 years old, and weighing from 67 to 115 pounds. She reveals her system for feeding so many big dogs:

I feed raw meaty bones (RMBs) in the morning and muscle meat in the evening, for a total of 6 pounds of food each meal:

Morning meals may be composed of:

– Pork rib tips

– Chicken quarters, or chicken necks with added chicken hearts or gizzards

– Venison, lamb, or duck necks

– Turkey necks, or turkey backs with added turkey hearts

– Chicken breast meat with bone

Evening meals:

– Chunked pork heart (cheaper than beef heart, which one dog doesn’t like)

– Ground turkey, beef, venison, or buffalo

– Tripe, always mixed half and half with another protein

– Chicken hearts and gizzards, or turkey hearts

– Jack mackerel (canned)

Supplements:

– 50/50 mixture of Berte’s Immune Blend and Berte’s Green Blend

– Salmon oil

I buy pork rib tips, chicken quarters, chicken necks, and pork heart in bulk from a restaurant food supplier that delivers near my house. I purchase turkey backs from the local grocer. The rest of my products are from Bravo.

I split the food unevenly between my six dogs, adding muscle meat to RMB meals when needed to get the proper amount of food for each dog, or if stools seem too dry. I weigh all my dogs’ food, to help me get the amounts right, and mix and match proteins at will. I have been very lucky and have never had a choking incident (a friend lost her dog, a full sister to one of mine, to a turkey neck).

I use Bravo! Blends, which contain meat, bone, organ meat, and veggies, a few times a week to supply the bulk of my organ meat, or I add a handful of Bravo beef liver cubes to either meal. Once every month or two, I feed the more expensive exotic ground raw meaty bones from Bravo, such as elk, ostrich, or quail, for variety.

Here is my system. At an office supply store, I buy unscented garbage can liners for around $10 for 10,000 bags. These bags are not freezer-weight, but the food does not stay in the freezer long.

I split each case of food into bags containing enough for a meal for each of my dogs, plus a little extra. If I have time, I cube pork heart or beef heart, or grind muscle meat, and put about five pounds each into rectangular Glad or Ziploc containers (this shape works best for maximizing freezer space).

I have a 22-cubic-foot chest freezer. With chest freezers, it’s helpful to know approximately where everything is, so I made a wooden divider that splits the lower half of the freezer into thirds, allowing me to put 40-pound bulk cases on top. The divider also lets me stack and retrieve Bravo rolls more efficiently. When I put food into the freezer, I alternate between muscle meat and RMBs, making it easier to get to what I want. I’m also careful to shift older food to the top when I fill my freezer up again.

The first dog I switched to a raw diet was my 11-year-old male who was very lame, but could not handle any pain medications. After a few weeks on the raw diet, he started putting weight on his bad leg, and was soon trotting around and retrieving balls. He lived almost another year before I lost him to cancer of the spleen. The vet and I were totally amazed, and I was a convert from that point on.

Comments: Feeding a raw diet to so many large dogs can seem overwhelming, but once you have a system worked out, it goes quite smoothly.

Weaning pups onto raw food
As a breeder, Moran explains how she feeds her Rottweiler pups:

The first solid food I feed puppies at about four weeks of age is a very soupy mix of goat milk and ground turkey, gradually adding more turkey and less milk (all meals followed by nursing on the dam).

After a few days, I add whole, skinless chicken drumsticks and thighs, with the meat scored. Chewing meat helps relieve teething pain and saves the dam’s nipples – most dams do not want to nurse during this stage, but I have found this helps tremendously (I’ve also found a raw diet increases the amount of milk the dam has at this point).

At five weeks of age, I give the puppies a meal of ground raw meaty bones (usually from Bravo!). The second meal of the day is whole RMBs (skinless chicken), and the third meal is ground turkey and goat milk.

The puppies soon begin chewing the edge of the chicken bones. When this starts, I introduce chicken backs (I still give larger chicken pieces as well, as there is not much meat on the backs). I like to use chicken backs as they are too big for the puppies to swallow whole, and they learn to hunker down and chew through the backs until they have pieces they can swallow. I found that if I started with chicken necks first, there was always one puppy that would swallow the necks whole. I had a 5-week-old puppy who swallowed three chicken necks whole, then pitched a fit when I took him from the food bowl, wanting even more! He was fine, but it’s better that they learn to chew their food first before swallowing it.

Once the puppies are doing well with their chicken backs, I add in another protein. I use ground RMBs from Bravo!, starting with the beef blend. I continue to add one new food every few days.

I recommend to their new owners that puppies be fed three meals a day, as follows (the order does not matter):

– Meal one: whole raw meaty bones

– Meal two: meat meal (no bones), eggs, organs, cottage cheese and yogurt, along with veggies, if desired

– Meal three: ½ meat, ½ raw meaty bones (ground or whole)

This diet is half RMBs and half meat and other animal products. The emphasis is on the “meat” in RMBs as well. If chicken necks or backs are the RMB of the day, I recommend adding more meat to this meal to improve the meat to bone ratio. I also suggest the same supplements I use for all my dogs (see above).

With my Rottweiler puppies, I feed 5 percent of their body weight at seven to eight weeks of age daily, divided into three meals. I then monitor their condition at least weekly, increasing each meal by one ounce when I see a puppy start to look thin. The timing will vary depending on each puppy’s activity level and genetics.

By 12 weeks of age, pups need their food increased every one to two weeks, and by six months, usually only monthly increases. By ten months, I am feeding 2 to 3 percent of their estimated adult weight, and no further increases are needed.

I find the body structure of my raw-fed puppies seems to be more solid. I believe they are a little more muscled from putting their front feet on the raw meaty bones and pulling the meat off. Muscles work out while eating!

Comments: This feeding approach can work for any puppy, but it may be best to wait a week or two after bringing a new puppy home before changing his diet, so that if digestive problems develop due to parasites, disease, or the stress of a new home, you’ll know diet is not the cause.

A “prey-model” diet
One style of raw feeding called “prey model” advocates feeding a diet based on whole prey and excluding anything else. This is based on a desire to mimic the diet of the wolf in the wild. Ginny Wilken, of Alameda, California, describes the prey-model diet she has fed Tomo, her 11-year-old, 85-pound American Staffordshire Terrier, since he was four years old:

Tomo had three surgeries for hip and knee problems when he was young, prompting me to seek options to help him. I started with a Billinghurst-style raw diet, which soon morphed into a prey-model approach.

“Prey model” is a concept with wide latitude. Tomo is not fed a strict prey-model diet; I’ve tailored it to meet his individual needs. I think this diet is well suited to folks with moderately good access to meat sources.

Tomo is a low-activity senior, an easy keeper with definite preferences. He enjoys food, but sees a meal as a social event, and is always happier to eat if someone is watching or sharing. This is sometimes a challenge, as he will turn down “difficult” meals at home alone that he will gladly tackle in “public.”

Here are his diet items:

– Pork neck bones (whole split necks), ribs, shoulder, and shanks

– Turkey parts, including unattached necks

– Chicken and duck (whole or half)

– Lamb necks (whole), heart, and kidney

– Goat (six-way cut)

– Meaty chunks of beef, lamb, pork, and venison

– Raw eggs, free-range (home grown)

– Organic or natural beef liver, heart, and kidney

– Green tripe, cow gullets, and tracheas (from greentripe.com)

– Chicken feet

– Pork brains, spleen, and pancreas

– Whole small fishes, like smelt or sardines

– Intact heads or whole animals, when available

– Homemade soups from all varieties of bones

– My table scraps or “shares,” just meat, fish, and vegetables (only broccoli and greens, and only with fat on it)

– Timberwolf salmon oil

I buy food from butchers, Asian markets, or wholesale from packers and ranchers. All our food is from quality sources, and much of it is organic or naturally raised.

These days, Tomo can’t skip meals, as he needs to take a number of supplements twice a day, including antioxidants for his heart, anti-inflammatories for arthritis, and thyroid medication. He gets pills in slices of meat or handfuls of tripe or ground beef, usually when I am eating, to make a treat out of it.

Tomo is a very careful chewer, but large pieces may come up and go down a few times to get chomped just right. He has never choked on food. I don’t fast him, but I do feed a bountiful day, followed by one or more lean days. He averages 1½ pounds of food a day, with a higher percentage of bone than is common with a prey-model diet. This regulates his digestion, which tends toward quick and loose.

I saw lots of positive changes. First, he ate, without being picky! Then I noticed that fleas no longer bothered him. His skin and ear problems cleared up quite a bit, though not entirely. His breath and coat improved, and his digestion became much more consistent. He became less manic, and easier to train and handle. His hips seemed to bother him less. Eight years later, I’m still very happy with his diet.

Comments:
It’s important when following the prey-model style to feed a wide variety of foods, as shown here, not just meat and bones, and not just one or two meat sources. Tomo’s diet also demonstrates how supplements can be used appropriately.

Getting started
All those who shared their diets with us have fed a raw diet for a long time, and we’ve become quite relaxed about it. Believe me, we all suffer anxiety attacks the first time we hand our dogs a raw meaty bone. It’s hard to overcome the warnings we’ve received all our lives about giving bones (especially chicken bones) to dogs. Remember, though, that those warnings apply to cooked bones.

Most dogs handle raw bones without a problem, especially if they are careful chewers. However, if you have a dog who tends to gulp his food, or if you just don’t feel comfortable feeding whole bones, you can still feed ground or cut-up raw meaty bones, and can give recreational bones instead for chewing pleasure and dental health.

Most of us who feed a raw diet have seen a variety of health improvements in our dogs, including cleaner teeth, healthier coat and skin, less problem with fleas and allergies, better muscle tone, and increased vitality. As always, however, if your dog has any problems, it’s a good idea to try changing what you feed. If you see an improvement after making a change, that points to a nutritional problem, either due to excesses or deficiencies in the diet, or to an allergy to one or more ingredients. No matter what style of diet you feed, the cardinal rule is to always do what works for your dog.

Mary Straus does research on canine health and nutrition topics as an avocation. She is the owner of the DogAware.com website. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her 15-year-old dog, Piglet.

Over the past three months, we’ve provided rules and guidelines for feeding a homemade dog food diet, but getting started can still seem overwhelming. The recent pet food recallshave left many people wanting to switch their dogs quickly to a homemade diet, at least short-term. Despite their fears about commercial pet food products, however, many have hesitated to start feeding a home-prepared diet, concerned that their diet would be less than perfect.

Our advice? Don’t worry about achieving the ideal diet from day one. Adult dogs will do fine on a limited diet for two or three months. If you want to continue to feed a homemade diet for longer than that, or if you are feeding a puppy, it becomes more important to ensure that you are feeding a wide variety of different foods in appropriate proportions to meet all nutritional needs. As you become more experienced with shopping for and preparing your dog’s food, and especially as you observe your dog’s response to his new diet, you can improve and adjust your recipes as necessary.

This month and next, we’ll hear from owners who feed their dogs a homemade diet, and learn from them how they go about it, including tips and tricks for finding, preparing, and storing food.

Since cooked dog food diets are less intimidating than raw dog food diets for most newcomers, we’ll start with owners who feed their dogs cooked foods. Next month, owners who feed their dogs raw foods will describe their protocols.

Pet Food Recall fears spurs switch
Karen Engman, of Murrieta, California, has four Boston Terriers and one Pug, ranging in age from 5 to 12 years old. She decided to switch her dogs to a home-cooked diet due to fears about the recalls. Below, she describes her protocol in detail:

I began feeding my dogs a home-cooked diet a few weeks ago, after reading a number of diet-related books and websites and joining a dog nutritionlist. My dogs weigh about 25 pounds each, so I feed them each 10 ounces of food (2.5 percent of their body weight) daily divided into two meals. Each day’s ration consists of the following:

■ 75 to 80 percent animal protein (7½ to 8 oz), consisting of 5½ to 6 oz meat (beef, chicken, turkey, canned salmon, or sardines) and 2 oz yogurt, cottage cheese, kefir, or one egg

■ 5 to 10 percent organ meat, consisting of ½ to 1 oz kidney or liver

■ 15 percent veggies, consisting of 1½ oz broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, sweet potato, zucchini, carrots, dark leafy greens, and/or cabbage

I also give the following supplements to each dog daily:

■ 1 fish oil softgel (EPA 180/DHA 120)

■ ¼ tsp Berte’s Immune Blend, ½ tsp Berte’s Ultra Probiotics, and ½ tablet Berte’s Zyme (digestive enzymes) with each meal

■ 500 mg calcium (¼ tsp dried, ground eggshell). Note that I do not add calcium when feeding canned fish with bones.

I cook, mix, and freeze one to two weeks’ worth of meat, organ meat, and veggies; I add dairy and supplements right before feeding. I puree the veggies in a food processor, and stay away from white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers, as my older girl has arthritis. I have elected to feed no grains or legumes.

When I make up the food, I cook the meat first, then puree the veggies, and then prepare the organ meat (my dogs will not eat raw liver, so I now braise the liver and then puree it in the food processor).

I bought a number of 9½-ounce and 14-ounce stackable plastic containers. I put a container on my kitchen scale and start measuring in the different portions of meat, organs, and veggies until it totals 8 ounces. Most meals will fit in the 9½-ounce containers, but occasionally I use the larger ones for the bulkier chopped-meat meals. Each container has one day’s food for each dog, which I feed half in the morning and half at night. I store food for two days in the fridge and pop the rest in the freezer.

I buy fresh meat (chicken, turkey, beef) and canned salmon at Costco. I buy veggies at Costco as well, usually splitting whatever I get between the dogs and the humans in the house, so one unexpected benefit is that we are eating a greater variety and quantity of vegetables than we have in the past. I get organ meat from my local Stater Brothers, which has a wonderful butcher department. I’ve had trouble finding kidney, so I’m just feeding 5 percent liver right now.

Two dogs had some problems with the diet change, despite my doing a slow transition. One developed loose stools for a few days, but is now doing fine on 100 percent home cooked. The other has always had a sensitive stomach and has had problems with regurgitation. She is still on half kibble/half home cooked while I try to figure out what part of the new diet is not agreeing with her.

In the short time I’ve been doing this, I’ve noticed less gas and firmer stools, and my oldest girl’s skin seems less flaky (she has had dry, flaky skin since she came into rescue last August). They all love the new food (other than the raw liver!) and “dance” for their dinner now. It really is not that difficult; in fact, once I figured it all out and went through the process of doing it, I thought it was too easy and that I must be doing something wrong!

Our comments on Engman’s diet:
Probiotics and digestive enzymes may help prevent digestive problems when switching diets. Probiotics are also helpful for dogs who have been on antibiotics, or have had diarrhea. It’s not necessary to continue to give digestive enzymes unless your dog does better with them added. It’s better to split the calcium dosage and give half with each meal rather than giving it all at once.

Cooking food for big dogs
Brenda and Joe Carriere, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, have been cooking for their two German Shepherds, eight-year-old Sarge and two-year-old Nikki, for about a month due to the recall. Brenda describes her preparations:

I feed a diet that includes both grains and legumes. Here is my basic recipe:

■ 3 lbs meat (ground turkey, beef, or pork; chicken thighs; or jack mackerel and sardines)

■ 6 eggs (scrambled)

■ 1 or 2 cups whole milk cottage cheese or yogurt

■ 6 ounces organ meat (beef liver, pork kidney, chicken hearts, etc.)

■ 2 cups cooked brown rice plus 2 cups veggies (carrots, sweet potatoes, yams, broccoli, peas, spinach, etc.), OR 4 cups legumes (2 cups each green beans and either lentils or pinto beans)

I cook everything separately, on the stove or, in case of the chicken thighs, on the grill. After the thighs are cooked, I take the meat off and throw away the bones. I steam the veggies or cook the sweet potato in the microwave.

I prepare food a few times a week, usually in batches of two or three days, then portion them individually for each dog and store them in the fridge. Everything is mixed together and ready to be served. I feed each dog one and a half to two cups twice a day. I microwave it for 30 seconds to take off the chill, and then add supplements at mealtime.

I give each dog 1,000 mg fish oil and 400 IU vitamin E daily, as well as one teaspoon organic apple cider vinegar. When not feeding canned fish, I add one teaspoon crushed eggshell daily. They occasionally get fruit, such as bananas, strawberries, pineapple, and mangos, in addition to their regular diet. They also get recreational femur bones two or three times a week, and I estimate that at least 10 percent of their calories come from training treats, usually chicken or cheese.

We plan to continue home cooking (there may be a dog coup d’état in my house if we go back!). Even in this short time, Sarge’s coat has become glossy with no more dandruff, and he no longer scratches and nibbles at himself. He has also lost a few pounds, something we weren’t able to accomplish while on kibble because he always seemed hungry. Nikki has become enthusiastic about meals, while before I had to coax her to eat. Both dogs love their new diet: every time we go to the fridge or microwave something, they are right there, waiting expectantly for their new food.

Comments: Legumes combined with grains provide more complete protein then either does alone, so it is better to feed them together, rather than alternating them between meals. Legumes (including green beans) should always be cooked due to a toxin they contain when raw (though small amounts would not be harmful).

Using a spreadsheet
Lynn Byrd lives outside Marceline, Missouri. She developed her diets with a spreadsheet to ensure that they meet the canine nutrition guidelines established by the National Research Council (NRC). Byrd has fed the following diet to her dogs for 12 years, because, as she says:

I didn’t like the idea of processed kibble and my Bull Terrier was really gassy. We now have two Bull Terriers: Teddy, three years old, and Triumph, about 11 years old, a deaf rescue who earned her CGC (Canine Good Citizen) using sign language.

We also foster rescues. These dogs are usually in pretty rough shape and I always switch them to homemade diets as soon as they arrive; none of them have had any problems with the switch. One foster dog, Kobe, had terrible mange and deep secondary infections; he was skinny and terribly weak. I doubt he would have made such a complete recovery without his easily digested homemade diet. Another foster, Joe, had terrible teeth when he arrived, but he was also infected with heartworms so the teeth cleaning was put off until the heartworms were treated, and by then his teeth looked great!

The diet I feed combines raw meat with cooked eggs, veggies, and rice. Here is my basic diet for a 65-pound dog; the amounts here are for a three-day supply.

■ 1 lb ground turkey

■ 1 lb ground beef (80 percent lean)

■ 1 can jack mackerel

■ 4 large eggs

■ 2 oz beef liver

■ 1 cup (uncooked) rice

■ 4 medium potatoes

■ 1 cup/can vegetables (any)

■ 2½ Tbsp NOW bone meal (this provides 3,500 mg calcium)

■ ½ tsp NOW potassium (provides 1,460 mg potassium) optional

■ 2 Tbsp sunflower or safflower oil

For variety, a 24-ounce carton of cottage cheese can be substituted for a can of mackerel or a pound of meat. And of course other meats such as venison, pork, chicken, etc. can be used instead of the beef or turkey.

This recipe makes enough food for three days. It can be frozen in meal size portions. It’s easy to prepare:

1. Cook the rice. Then mix in the oil, potassium, and bone meal.

2. Bake the potatoes and chop them up in their skins.

3. Lightly fry or scramble the eggs.

4. Mix all ingredients and place in a plastic shoe box.

5. Score into six equal portions if feeding twice a day.

To feed the liver, cut it with scissors into several small pieces, freeze, and feed one piece several times a week (it doesn’t do well mixed with the other items, as it goes bad quickly). Give a human One-A-Day-type multi-vitamin/mineral daily (I used One Source Advanced Multivitamin & Mineral from Wal-Mart. It provides 15 mg zinc, 3 mg manganese, and 45 IUs vitamin E used to meet NRC guidelines).

Comments: This diet uses a little less organ meat and a little more carbohydrates than I think is ideal, but it’s still a great diet. Increasing the amount of organ or muscle meat just a little would meet zinc requirements without the use of a supplement.
The diet provides the required minimum amount of potassium without the supplement, but Lynn feels that adding more is preferred based on her nutritional studies.
Note that Joe’s teeth improved even though his diet did not include bones!

Feeding a thin, picky dog
Jennifer Kuhlman, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, began cooking for Echo, her five-year-old male standard Poodle (50 pounds), and Cayenne, her five-year-old female mixed breed (40 pounds), about a month ago. Here is Kuhlman’s home-prepared plan:

Echo has always been quite thin, and a picky eater despite my adding fresh foods to his kibble, while my rescue dog, Cayenne, is a little chubby, and will eat anything! I had considered feeding homemade several times, but the recall pushed me over the edge. I will definitely continue, as I’m really enjoying it.

In the morning, they each get 4 ounces of ground beef, chicken, or turkey, plus 1 to 2 ounces of chicken liver, and the larger dog gets 6 ounces of cottage cheese, the smaller 4 ounces.

I add an egg about once a week; Echo does not love them, but will eat them occasionally.

In the evening, Echo gets 12 ounces of meat (beef, chicken, turkey, or canned jack mackerel), and Cayenne gets only 4 (due to her weight issues). Then they each get about 4 ounces of a variety of cooked veggies (mostly sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli, and canned green beans, but occasionally whatever we are having for dinner), and a quarter cup of brown rice.

I supplement each dog with a teaspoon of Solgar Bone Meal Powder (1,000 mg calcium) and a fish oil capsule daily. Cayenne gets a teaspoon of Berte’s Immune Blend but Echo doesn’t like it, so he gets a vitamin E capsule.

All the meats are lightly cooked, either sautéed, or cooked (in patties) on a George Foreman grill. I try to leave a little pink in the center. I prefer to use free-range, antibiotic-free, and usually organic meat.

I cook four or five day’s worth of meat patties for breakfast, but usually I cook their evening meal right when I serve it, as Echo gets more interested when he knows his dinner is getting cooked. In the beginning, I tried to prepare a week’s worth of meals at once, and he stopped eating it after three days. He is better about eating his breakfast though; he really likes liver and cottage cheese. It’s great to finally see Echo excited by meals, with no need to be coaxed to eat. They are both doing great and I’m having lots of fun cooking for them. Their condition has not changed much in such a short time, but the enjoyment they get from eating has hugely increased.

Comments: It can be a challenge to get a picky dog to eat a proper diet. It’s important not to give in and feed only a few foods. Experiment with different ways of preparing and serving foods in order to learn the tricks that work for your dog, such as Kuhlman has discovered with Echo.

Using a pressure cooker and including bones
Dee Davidson, of Redondo Beach, California, began feeding her 16-month-old, 61-pound Labradoodle a home-cooked diet in early March.

I’m using a pressure cooker for the bony meals and regular pots for the other meat meals. I feed two meals a day, one of meaty bones and one of meat, organs, eggs, dairy, etc. I’ve also started giving my dog a raw meaty bone three days a week to help keep her teeth clean.

I pressure-cook whole chickens, turkey drums, or wings, or meaty pork necks for about an hour, which results in most of the bones becoming crumbly soft. The large turkey leg and wing bones may still be firm in the center, so I crumble the ends and scoop out the marrow of the firm ones, throwing the rest away. I throw out the part of the pork neck bones that are not soft enough to crumble as well. I also cook other meaty beef or pork bones in the pressure cooker, but most of the bones aren’t soft enough to crumble and feed, so I throw out the bones and feed the meat with a half a teaspoon of ground eggshells.

I usually add a cup of either brown rice or barley, along with a can of green beans, a couple of carrots, and leftovers of any other vegetables, plus two chopped cloves of garlic, to the pressure-cooker.

I cook other kinds of meat in a regular pot, including any large cuts of meat, such as those intended for pot roasts, or tongue, heart, and ground meats. I lightly braise liver and boil kidney. Vegetables may be added if the cooking is going to be long enough to make them digestible.

I add a couple of tablespoons of cottage cheese, plain yogurt, or grated cheese four days a week to either her meaty meal, or as an evening snack. I feed one egg scrambled with spinach and cheese four days a week as part of the meaty meal.

I’m giving her about a can of salmon weekly. I give her small amounts in several meaty meals because larger amounts seem to cause a bit of loose stool.

After cooking and cooling, I put the cooked food in 8-ounce portions into sandwich bags. I keep four or five in the refrigerator and put the remainder in the freezer. I have an average-size refrigerator/freezer, but so far this has worked satisfactorily.

I hope this helps someone who is just starting and feels overwhelmed with the process. It’s very easy. With the exception of breads, crackers, and desserts, I’m feeding my dog almost exactly what I feed myself.

My dog loves this new diet. She knows all the signs and sounds of her food being prepared and does her “perfect doggie” routine so I won’t find any excuse to delay feeding her! After three months on the new diet, I took her to a new vet last week and his first comments were, “I’ve seen other Labradoodles, but she definitely looks the best of them all. She’s in perfect health.”

Comments: Remember that when you feed cooked bones, they must be completely soft, and you must be sure there is plenty of meat or other foods added, as otherwise the cooked bone can cause constipation or even impaction.

Cooking for a puppy and an adult dog
Pam Richard, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, cooks a diet for her two Eurasiers: two-year-old Ruq and five-month-old Tika. She’s been cooking for her older dog for about a year and a half, after losing a dog to gastrointestinal cancer and starting to wonder if nutrition might have been a factor. She was hesitant to feed her puppy a homemade diet, but when the recalls started, she decided to jump in:

The “big dog” (55 pounds) gets about 9 ounces of protein per meal (this varies between chicken, turkey, beef, pork, eggs, and fish, mixed with liver and/or kidney), plus calcium (¼ teaspoon ground eggshell). She gets a vitamin (Thorne Basic Canine Nutrients) and salmon oil with both meals. In the morning, I give her one spoonful each of canned tripe and yogurt with the protein. In the evenings, I add about 3 ounces of veggie mix: sweet potato or carrot, various “above ground” veggies, and herbs (alternating between mint, parsley, and dill). I recently stopped adding grains on a regular basis but previously used brown rice, oatmeal, and pearled barley.

The puppy gets three meals a day, of 6 ounces each. I am slowly adding the same variety of protein sources, along with tripe and yogurt one meal, a tablespoon or so of the veggie mix one meal, and a spoonful of grains one meal. I split a teaspoon of Solid Gold Bonemeal between the three meals. I also supplement with Berte’s Daily Blend and salmon oil at two meals.

The meat is usually boiled, sometimes roasted, then chopped up and frozen in portions that last a couple of days.

Once I really got into home cooking, I bought a chest freezer that has been wonderful both for freezing the cooked food and storing pre-cooked meat. I cook sweet potatoes in the microwave for five minutes, while some of the other veggies are cooked (steamed), and then all are chopped up fine in a food processor. I keep the meat and veggies separate so I can mix and match per meal/dog.

Tika, my puppy, was a slow eater with kibble and needed encouragement to finish. Now she is eager to eat and gobbles it all down! I think that my pup’s eyes look much clearer and brighter after changing from kibble, and I was using high-quality brands. Both dogs just look overall healthy to me, and they certainly eat with great gusto!

Comments: The amount of calcium added to a puppy’s diet is very important. The teaspoon of bone meal that Pam adds supplies 1,368 mg of calcium to balance out 18 ounces of food, so that’s around 1,200 mg of calcium per pound of food. The vitamin supplement she uses contains vitamin D, which enhances the uptake of calcium, so this amount looks just about right.

Help for food intolerances
Sally Gutierrez, of Long Beach, California, has been feeding a homemade diet to her dogs, who have many food intolerances, for almost two years. She started feeding a home-prepared diet when her 15-year-old Dachshund was diagnosed with pancreatitis. He lived another 18 months – well past his veterinarian’s prediction – and the improvements in his health helped him enjoy a good quality of life in his final months. That experience led Gutierrez to home-prepare all of her dogs’ food.

Currently, I have two rescue dogs: Smokey, a 7-year-old Chow/Lab, and CC, a 13-year-old Eskimo/Lab. Smokey gets 16 ounces of food twice a day, and CC gets 14 ounces twice a day.

Typically their meals consist of slow-cooked meat (e.g., pork, turkey, chicken, or beef, cooked in a crockpot for about 12 hours), or Evanger’s canned Game Meats (duck, pheasant, buffalo, rabbit), or canned fish with bones, such as pink salmon and sardines. I try to give them the fish once a week, and rotate the meats as much as possible. Smokey has one poached egg with his food every day. I don’t give CC an egg because, for her, it triggers diarrhea.

Along with the meat I give them about 40 to 50 percent vegetables. I feed a wide variety of veggies: creamed winter squash (their favorite! – I buy it frozen and already cooked and creamed, I just heat it in a microwave), summer squash, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, peas, carrots, and occasionally spinach and cucumber.

I usually buy the veggies frozen and nuke them till they are barely warm (to retain most of the nutrients). I then blend them with a meat broth left over from the slow-cooked meat. Occasionally I grate fresh produce and add it to a broth soup.

The only organ meat that they get is beef liver (organic or grass-fed), usually small amounts for about five days, every other week. I give them small amounts to limit the vitamin A that is found in liver. On occasion, I add variety, such as beef marrow gut, chicken hearts, and chicken gizzards. I would like to add more organ meats but have a hard time finding them.

I originally added rice to their meals but discovered that it gave them both diarrhea. I tried wild rice and Minute rice and had the same results. They both appear to be lactose-intolerant, so they get no dairy products.

I provide them a vitamin supplement (rotating between brands) and also add ½ teaspoon Kal Bone Meal Powder per meal. I recently began wrapping their vitamins in a blob of nut butter – it serves as a sneaky treat!

Their diets are almost identical to my diet (I have severe food allergies). CC has several food allergies and may have undiagnosed inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). I have seen about a 95 percent reduction in scratching from my dogs since starting to feed them a homemade diet. CC’s formerly watery stools are now firm, and her stiffness and muscle weakness in the rear are now gone as well.

Comments: The amount of food these dogs are fed may seem like a lot, but almost half of it is vegetables, which are lower in calories. Both dogs are also quite active, going on hikes in the mountains with their owner regularly. The amount of bone meal in this diet is high, and Gutierrez plans to adjust the amount to provide around 1,000 mg of calcium per pound of food.

A low-fat diet for a dog with health problems
Janet Hughes, of Greenbelt, Maryland, has been feeding a low-fat cooked diet for the past 18 months to her elderly Collie-mix, who suffers from chronic pancreatitis.

Scampers is 18 years old and weighs 50 pounds. Here is her typical daily diet, split between breakfast and supper:

■ 1 cup chicken breast, boiled, with all visible fat removed

■ ¼ cup heart (usually beef, occasionally turkey or chicken), boiled, fat removed

■ ¼ cup lean ground meat (beef, pork, or turkey), boiled and rinsed; beef kidney; or chicken gizzards

■ ¼ cup liver (pork, chicken, or beef)

■ ¼ cup cottage cheese, nonfat or low fat

■ ½ cup boiled veggies (approximately one part summer squash to one part collard or turnip greens, kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, or spinach)

■ ½ cup starchy carb (sweet potato, oatmeal, or barley)

■ 1½ Tbsp coconut oil

■ ½ tsp ground eggshell

She also gets lunch, which is a scrambled egg with yogurt, or occasionally jack mackerel (she can’t tolerate much of it, and doesn’t care for whitefish).

I supplement daily with two or three fish oil softgels, Berte’s Digestion Blend, and a geriatric vitamin tablet (Geri-Form), along with 400 IUs vitamin E three or four times a week. She also gets medications for pancreatic insufficiency and arthritis.

I cook, package, and freeze about once a month, using an assembly-line production over a few days. I boil the veggies all at once, then cook the starchy carbs. I package the half-and-half mixture of the two with the coconut oil and eggshell so that her eggshell and coconut oil for one day are in one cup of the veggie/starch mix. I then boil the chicken, cool and chop, then boil the heart and cut it into cubes. I cook the ground meat or gizzard, then the liver, and cube them.

I package each day’s ration into a single GladWare container, stacking chicken, other meat, liver, and cottage cheese, with the veggie mix on top.

I’ve tweaked her diet over several months to suit her. Too much broccoli or too little summer squash in her veggie mix and she gets burpy and spits up, for example. She doesn’t care for white potato, and lamb is too fatty for her.

I found the addition of the Digestion Blend keeps her settled. Prior to starting that, she’d have almost monthly flare-ups of inappetence and diarrhea. The coconut oil also was a major boon for maintaining overall bounce. She’s been eating this home-cooked diet for over 18 months (after a couple of years of trying to resume a normal diet, then trying Hill’s and IVD prescription diets, which she hated).

Comments: This is a great example of how a homemade diet can be modified to meet an individual dog’s needs. Whether specific ingredients need to be avoided, fat levels need to be adjusted, or ratios need to be tweaked, you have complete control and can feed what works for your individual dog. Coconut oil supplies a form of fat that is more easily digested by dogs with fat intolerances.

Just share your own meals
Carol Boyle, of the greater New York City metropolitan area, has cooked for her Great Pyrenees for more than two decades!

I started with Pitcairn (Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats) as my guide, but thought he did not use as much variety as I would like to use, so I began adding more and different vegetables. I realized that I would make chicken thighs for the dogs one night, and then roast breasts the next night for my family, and the light went on. I began cooking whole chickens and we share them.

When I cook for my husband and myself, we always start with a salad, followed by a protein source, a vegetable, and a carbohydrate. I serve the same or similar foods to the dogs. I cook as though I am cooking for a large family.

Sunday was a typical meal. I put two 5-pound chickens in the oven to roast. They were lightly sprinkled with garlic salt and lots of dried rosemary. I made rice pilaf and broccoli. The dogs got the giblets (liver and heart, etc.) of the chickens, as well as the dark meat. We ate the breast. We had a salad and the dogs got some shredded carrots and cucumbers in with their food too. There is one chicken and some rice left for another meal for them.

Last night we had London Broil, baked potato, cauliflower, and some salad.

Sharing meals has taken the drudgery out of feeding something special to the dogs. Basically, we all eat the same food. The dogs get a higher percentage of meat (⅔ meat to ⅓ veggie and carbo combo) than we do, and they do get some meals that are different from ours. Three times a month they get liver; once a week they get canned salmon or sardines. We go out or call out for dinner when they get the different foods (neither of the dogs like Chinese food, but pizza is another story!).

The dogs have done remarkably well on this diet. My old Patou was five years old when I started this diet, and he lived to be almost 15, an unheard-of age for a Great Pyrenees. Our current crew consists of Cajun, 11 years, and my new Patou, three years. I make certain that everything is as fresh and wholesome as possible. We eat all different kinds of meats and vegetables, cooked simply and seasoned liberally with herbs and spices (not hot). And that’s it: 20 years and three dogs. And lots of roasted chicken, steaks, pork roasts, and all kinds of vegetables. The only supplement I give routinely is calcium in the form of eggshells (½ teaspoon ground eggshell per pound of meat). I believe that most of the nutrients we need are best supplied in the variety from a natural diet.

Comments: Dogs don’t digest vegetables very well unless they are either cooked or pureed, to break down the cell walls (grating isn’t enough), though whole, raw veggies will do no harm (they just won’t contribute their full nutritional value). I would feed liver more often than this, simply because it is so nutritionally dense, though you can see that dogs can thrive with less. Oh, and don’t assume your dogs won’t like something like Chinese food – mine have always loved it!

Using pre-mixes
Dawn Lange, of Duluth, Minnesota, feeds commercial dog food pre-mixes to her senior Sheltie and four-month-old miniature Poodle, Spike.

Lange describes her protocol:
I have fed a mixture of homemade and pre-mixes to my older dog for several years. I currently rotate between The Honest Kitchen Embark (which is approved for all life stages) and Urban Wolf with their Dietary Balancer for Puppies added. I occasionally mix in some Innova EVO dry and use that as training treats. I add ground beef, turkey, or chicken, and rotate oils, using peanut, olive, canola, sunflower, etc. I have a grinder so I do use organ meat occasionally and usually grind chicken myself or just use chunks. I cook the meat, as that is what I am comfortable with. I add salmon oil caps to each meal.

I don’t like the idea of using kibble exclusively, but when I got my pup, everyone kept telling me not to risk doing homemade and to use a puppy kibble for the first year. That just seemed wrong. How could it be better than fresh food? I chose to use pre-mixes as a safe compromise.

I am happy with my dogs’ coats and their enthusiasm at mealtime. My vet is happy because the pre-mixes meet AAFCO standards and that makes me feel more comfortable, too.

Comments: Pre-mixes can offer peace of mind for those who worry about the completeness of a home-prepared diet for puppies. Like Lange, be sure to use only those that are specifically formulated for puppies or for “all life stages” according to AAFCO guidelines.

Remember that the right diet for your dog is the one that he does well on, and that you are comfortable with. Each dog is an individual, so what works for one may not work for another. If your dog has problems with what you feed – if he doesn’t enjoy his food, or shows signs of digestive upset – then try something else. Just make sure you’re feeding a variety of different foods, not just his “favorites.” The beauty of a homemade diet is that you can change any part of it to fit your dog’s needs.

Mary Straus does research on canine health and nutrition topics as an avocation. She is the owner of the DogAware.com website. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her 15-year-old dog, Piglet.

Those of us who feed our dogs a raw diet that includes bones believe that this is the healthiest, most natural diet dogs can eat. But not everyone is comfortable feeding such a diet to their dogs. You may worry about bacteria or parasites in raw meat, or about feeding your dog bones, or you may have a dog who doesn’t enjoy or do well on a raw dog food diet.

If you prefer to feed your dog a cooked diet, or a diet that includes raw meat but no bones, that’s fine. Your dog will still benefit from a variety of fresh foods in proper proportions, regardless of how they’re prepared. For simplicity’s sake, these diets are often referred to as cooked diets, but the meat portion may be fed raw if you choose.

Cooked diets that do not include bone are a little more difficult in terms of making sure that all of your dog’s nutritional needs are met. We can supply the calcium that bones provide from other sources, but it is hard to know exactly which other nutrients present in fresh bone might be missing in a bone-free homemade diet.

In addition, cooking destroys or reduces certain nutrients, such as vitamins C and E and taurine. Cooking in water also leaches out minerals, though this can be resolved by feeding the water the food was cooked in. Light cooking at lower temperatures has less effect on nutrient value than cooking foods until they are well done.

While dogs (particularly adult dogs) can survive on a wide variety of diets, this article will give you guidelines for optimal nutrition, to help your dogs live the longest, healthiest lives possible.

Review: three basic rules
As discussed in the first two installments of this series (“Home-Prepared Dog Food,” April 2007 and “Create a Nutritious Raw Dog Food Diet,” May 2007), the three most important rules of home-prepared diets apply to cooked diets, too:

–Variety: A homemade diet must include a variety of different foods, not just meat and grains. It’s best to feed many different types of meat (beef, lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, fish, etc.), as well as other foods such as organs, eggs, yogurt, and healthy leftovers.

Most people who feed cooked diets also feed grains or starchy veggies. If you do, make sure that meat and other animal products make up at least half the diet, and preferably more. Remember that dogs do not require carbohydrates, and they do not supply as much nutrition to dogs as animal products do.

–Balance over time: When you feed a wide variety of different foods, there is no need to make each meal “complete and balanced.” Think of how you eat yourself, and how you feed your children, providing different foods at different meals and on different days. Make sure your dog gets everything he needs over a week or two, not at every meal.

–Calcium: One of the most common mistakes that people make when feeding a home-cooked diet is the failure to add calcium. You must add calcium when you feed a diet that does not include bones.

Adult dogs need around 800 to 1,000 mg of calcium per pound of food fed. They also require the calcium to be supplied in a proper proportion to phosphorus.

The ideal calcium:phosphorus ratio in the canine diet is between 1:1 and 2:1. Meat contains a lot of phosphorus, so the more meat a diet contains, the more calcium will be required to reach the correct calcium:phosphorus ratio. Adding 800 to 1,000 mg of calcium will provide the correct calcium:phosphorus ratio even for a high-meat diet, unless you use a calcium supplement that also contains phosphorus. In that case, moderately higher amounts of calcium may be needed to balance out the additional phosphorus contained in the supplement.

Ground eggshell can be used as a calcium supplement. Rinse eggshells and dry them on a counter overnight, or in the oven, then grind them in a clean coffee grinder. One large eggshell provides one teaspoon of ground eggshell, which contains 2,000 mg of calcium, so add ½ teaspoon ground eggshell per pound of food fed. Don’t use eggshells that haven’t been ground to powder, as they may not be absorbed as well.

You can use other types of calcium supplements (any form of calcium is fine). Calcium from seaweed, such as Animal Essentials’ Natural Calcium, also supplies other minerals (including magnesium, iodine, and selenium) that are beneficial.

Bone meal is frequently used as a source of calcium in diets that don’t include raw bone. However, bone meal contains calcium and phosphorus. Different brands of bone meal supplements contain different amounts of calcium and phosphorus, but the calcium:phosphorus ratio is always the same: 2:1. To balance a canine diet that contains lots of phosphorus, then, such as one that contains mostly meat, you will need to give an amount of bone meal that will provide 1,000 to 1,200 mg calcium per pound of food to keep the ideal calcium:phosphorus ratio in the diet correct.

Look for bone meal supplements that are guaranteed to be free of lead and other contaminants. You can also use a purified bone extract called Microcrystalline Hydroxyapatite (MCHA), but most of these supplements also contain vitamin D in high amounts, which would not be appropriate to use (see supplements section further on in the text).

Another option is to use a supplement designed specifically to balance a limited diet, including supplying the proper amount of calcium. Wysong’s Call of the Wild supplement is meant to balance an all-meat diet that does not include bone. Call of the Wild derives some of its value from whole foods. Balance IT is another supplement created to balance a limited, incomplete homemade diet.

One last option is to use a dog food pre-mix to which you add meat, eggs, dairy, and other healthy foods. These pre-mixes will include calcium and other nutrients to balance out the fresh foods that you add. (“Home-Prepared Dog Food,” April 2007, has more information on pre-mixes.)

If you feed meat with ground bone, there is no need to add calcium. (See “Create a Nutritious Raw Dog Food Diet,” May 2007, for more information about diets containing ground bone.)

When you use supplements or pre-mixes designed to balance a limited diet, you should restrict the amount of liver you feed to no more than half the amount recommended below, due to high levels of vitamin A. Also, do not add cod liver oil (or other source of vitamin D) or kelp (due to the risk of excess iodine, which can interfere with thyroid function), unless the pre-mix instructs you to do so.

Remember that you should never feed cooked whole bones, unless they have been cooked into mush in a pressure cooker or by boiling for many hours. (This will only work with some chicken bones; other bones remain too hard no matter how long you cook them, though you can add some vinegar to the water to help leach out some of the calcium into the food.)

You can cook meat-based foods that contain ground bone, but this is not ideal. Cooking food that contains a large amount of ground bone can lead to constipation or even impaction. That’s why cooking ground-up necks, backs, wings, etc. – or commercial blends that contain ground bone – is inadvisable. Either feed this ground food raw, or add in an equal amount of meat (without bone) to lower the percentage of bone in the mix.

Again, when bones are fed, you don’t need to add calcium to the diet.

Types of foods, proportions
When feeding a homemade diet, it is essential that different types of foods be fed in appropriate proportions. Meat, eggs, dairy, and other animal products should make up at least half of the diet, and preferably more. The diet needs to include organ meats as well as muscle meat.

Liver and kidney should make up 5 to 10 percent of the total diet. It’s best to feed small amounts daily or every other day, rather than large amounts at one time. Because these organs are so nutrient-dense, use the raw weight to determine the amount to feed. For example, if you feed a total of 20 ounces of food daily, use 1 to 2 ounces of raw liver/kidney, even though the cooked weight will be less. If possible, make heart (nutritionally, more of a muscle meat) another 5 to 10 percent of the diet, or even more, though too much may lead to loose stools in some dogs.

Eggs are an excellent source of nutrition. They can be soft-boiled, hard-boiled, gently scrambled, etc., or fed raw, if your dog likes them that way. You can feed as many eggs as you want, as long as you still feed lots of variety.

Dairy products, such as yogurt, kefir, and cottage cheese, are well tolerated by most dogs and offer good nutritional value. Yogurt and kefir have the added advantage of providing beneficial bacteria (probiotics). These products should be added after the food is cooked. Goat’s milk may be tolerated by dogs who have problems with cow’s milk.

Muscle meat from a variety of sources such as beef, lamb, pork, chicken, and turkey should make up most of the rest of the diet. It can be fed ground or in chunks. You can also feed canned fish, such as jack mackerel, pink salmon, and sardines, once or twice a week. (There is no need to add calcium to those meals since the bones are included.)

Vegetables are optional, but provide many benefits. Leafy greens are among the healthiest veggies to feed; other good veggies include broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, bok choy, cabbage, turnips, rutabaga, celery, cucumber, bell peppers, zucchini and other summer squashes, carrots, and more. Spinach and swiss chard can be fed in limited amounts.

These veggies provide few calories, so I usually advise adding them on top of the amount of food you feed, rather than calculating them as a percentage of the diet.

Steaming is the best way to cook vegetables, as it removes fewer nutrients than boiling. You can add the water used to steam or boil veggies to the meal, as it will contain the minerals that were leached out during cooking (add leftover meat drippings, gravy, soups, sauces, etc., to make a savory broth). Some vegetables may cause gas if fed to your dog in large portions.

Grains, legumes (beans), and starchy vegetables (such as potatoes, sweet potatoes and winter squashes) are usually included in cooked diets, but remember that dogs do not require carbohydrates in their diet, and plants supply incomplete proteins for dogs. If you do feed them, it’s best if they’re a small percentage of the diet, around one quarter or less. At a maximum, carbohydrates should never make up more than half the diet, with the other half coming from animal sources.

Grains that can be fed to dogs include white rice, brown rice, oatmeal, barley, amaranth, quinoa, and bulgur. Just as with other foods, feeding a variety of different grains and carbs is better than always feeding the same kind. Remember that grains contribute to weight gain and sometimes other health problems. If your dog is overweight or suffers from allergies, arthritis, seizures, urinary incontinence, IBD, or other digestive disorders, you may want to try feeding a diet without grains or starchy carbs to see if your dog improves.

Fruits can be added to the diet in small amounts. Overripe fruits are easier to digest. Don’t feed grapes or raisins, which cause kidney damage to some dogs if too many are eaten. Good fruits to feed include apples, bananas, papayas, mangoes, berries, and melon. Remember that you can also include healthy leftovers (foods you would eat yourself) from your own meals in the diet you feed your dog.

Putting it together
While meals can be prepared individually, you may find it easier to cook up large batches at one time, and then divide the food into meal-sized portions and freeze. Because variety is important over time and not necessary at every meal, you can feed the same foods for a week or two, and then switch to something else when you make the next batch.

It’s best to add most supplements at the time of feeding, rather than mixing them in ahead of time, since many vitamins and other nutrients are affected by freezing or by exposure to light or air. The probiotics found in yogurt and kefir will also not survive the freezing process.

You can add herbs and spices if your dog likes them, but not onions, which can cause anemia in dogs. The small amounts in leftovers shouldn’t be a problem.

Amounts to feed
One of the first questions that comes up when anyone wants to switch to a homemade diet is, how much should I feed? There are guidelines that can help you figure out a starting amount, but remember that each dog is an individual. The amount of food needed by each dog will vary considerably depending on his activity level and metabolism, and such factors as the amount of fat in the diet. Keep a close eye on your dog’s weight whenever you switch diets and adjust the amounts you feed up or down as needed, increasing or decreasing no more than 10 percent at a time.

It’s healthier for dogs of all ages to be lean rather than plump. If you have a dog who is relatively inactive, or tends to gain weight easily, you can reduce the amount of fat in the diet by removing skin and visible fat from poultry, and by feeding leaner meats and low-fat dairy products. For dogs that need a very low-fat diet due to chronic pancreatitis or fat intolerance, boiling meat will remove most of the fat.

As a general rule, dogs will eat around 2 to 3 percent of their body weight in fresh food daily (use cooked weights for foods that are cooked). Large dogs will tend to eat a lower percentage and small dogs a higher percentage of their body weights. Toy breeds may need as much as 4 to 5 percent of their body weight daily, while giant breeds might eat as little as 1 ½ percent, or even less.

I start with around 2 pounds of food a day for a 100-pound dog (2 percent of their body weight), 1 to 1 ½ pounds of food for a 50-pound dog (2 to 3 percent of body weight), ½ to ¾ of a pound (8 to 12 ounces) of food for a 25-pound dog (2 to 3 percent of body weight), and 5 to 6 ½ ounces of food for a 10-pound dog (3 to 4 percent of body weight). When making your calculations, remember that ounces are not the same as tenths – 1.5 pounds is not 21 ounces (1 pound 5 ounces), it is 24 ounces (1.5 x 16).

If you feed two meals a day, divide the total amount in half for each meal. If you know your dog is very active, tends to be on the thin side, or eats more now than would be expected for his age and size, then start with higher amounts and feed fattier foods. If you have a couch potato, or a dog who is overweight or gains weight easily, start with less and feed lower-fat foods. Again, watch your dog’s weight closely, using a scale if possible, and adjust as needed.

Note that leafy green veggies supply few calories, so don’t count them in when calculating the amount of food to feed, but add them on top of the rest of the diet. If you have a dog who is overweight and likes veggies, this is one way to increase the amount of food that she can have without causing weight gain.

The fat content of the diet will affect the amount you feed. Most dogs should have a moderate amount of fat in their diet, which means limiting meats that are really high in fat, such as 75 percent lean ground beef and some ground lamb and pork products. When feeding poultry (e.g., chicken, turkey, duck), remove visible globs of fat, and maybe some of the skin as well, particularly if your dog isn’t very active.

If you find you need to feed less than the amounts recommended above to keep your dog at a healthy weight, try reducing the amount of fat, so that he can have more food in order to get the nutrients that he needs (but don’t feed a really low-fat diet, as that will cause your dog to feel hungry all the time).

On the other hand, if you find yourself having to feed more than would be expected for your dog’s size, you can increase the amount of fat. Working dogs and those who are very active and have trouble keeping weight on will benefit from a higher-fat diet. Keep in mind that dogs do not have problems with high cholesterol, so that is not a concern if you need to feed a high-fat diet.

Grains and starchy carbs can also affect weight. Dogs who have trouble maintaining their weight on a normal amount of food may benefit from added carbohydrates, while reducing them can help those who need to lose weight.

Making the switch
Most dogs have little problem switching to a home-cooked diet. If your dog is prone to digestive problems, you may want to make the change gradually. Add just one new ingredient at a time and wait a few days to see how your dog does before adding something else new, gradually increasing the amount of new food and decreasing the amount of the old.

If you add a lot of new ingredients at one time and your dog develops problems, it’s harder to tell what the cause might be. If your dog vomits or has diarrhea, return to his prior diet and make the change more carefully once his digestive system is back to normal. That may include feeding the new food separately from the old (at least a few hours in between meals), and feeding only one new food at a time, to see if your dog reacts to any of the new ingredients.

Supplements
The choice of whether or not to add supplements is an individual one. Healthy dogs fed a wide variety of fresh foods in appropriate proportions should have no need of supplements, though they may still benefit from them. The less variety you feed, the more necessary supplements become. Cooked diets are more likely to need supplementation, since cooking destroys or reduces some nutrients. Dogs with health problems may also benefit from certain supplements regardless of their diet.

The most important supplement is fish body oil (not liver oil), such as salmon oil or EPA oil. This supplies omega-3 fatty acids, which provide a variety of benefits and are hard to find in any diet, whether homemade or commercial. The recommended dosage for healthy dogs is around 1 gram (1,000 mg) of fish oil per 20 to 30 pounds of body weight (dogs with certain health problems may benefit from higher doses).

When fed in doses high enough to supply the recommended amount of EPA and DHA, fish liver oil would contribute too much vitamin D. Restrict the amount of fish liver oil you feed your dog so that it does not contribute more than 100 IUs of vitamin D daily for a small dog (400 IUs daily for a large dog). Do not add cod liver oil or other sources of vitamin D to any commercial diet, as most are already high in vitamin D.

Note that flaxseed oil and carmelina oil are not good choices to replace fish oil, as the form of omega-3 fatty acids found in plant oils (alpha linolenic acid, or ALA) must be converted in the body to the forms that dogs can utilize (EPA and DHA). At best, dogs probably convert 15 percent of ALA to EPA and DHA; at worst, none of it. Fish, grass-fed meats, and eggs are also good sources of omega-3 fatty acids.

Whenever you add oils of any kind, you need to supplement with vitamin E, or the body will become depleted of this vitamin over time. Give around 100 IUs to a small dog (under 25 lbs), 200 IUs to a medium-sized dog (25 to 60 lbs), and 400 IUs to a large dog (more than 60 lbs), anywhere from daily to once a week.

Minerals are tricky to supplement, as they can be dangerous at excessive levels, or if they are not balanced properly with other minerals. For example, zinc binds with copper, so if you give a supplement that includes zinc but not copper in proper proportions (10:1), eventually this can lead to a copper deficiency.

Minerals are most safely supplemented in whole food form. Green blends that contain foods such as kelp, spirulina, Irish moss, fenugreek seed, and alfalfa are an excellent source of trace minerals. (Note that it is important not to give too much kelp, as it is high in iodine and too much can suppress the thyroid.) It’s best to give kelp in very small amounts – ¼ teaspoon or less for a large dog.

Organic apple cider vinegar, nutritional or brewer’s yeast, and dark molasses also supply trace minerals. Other fresh food supplements that may provide benefits include raw honey, ginger (especially good for digestion), and fresh crushed garlic (no more than 1 small clove per 20 pounds of body weight daily; more can cause anemia).

You may want to add probiotics, especially if your dog is stressed or ill, has been treated with antibiotics, or has had diarrhea. Supplements with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria are preferable to plain acidophilus. Digestive enzymes are also helpful for some dogs with gastrointestinal problems.

Puppies
The nutritional requirements of puppies vary from those of adults, and deficiencies (or excesses) are more likely to cause harm. Puppies need more protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorus than adult dogs do, but too much calcium can lead to serious orthopedic problems. This is especially true for young (prior to puberty), large-breed puppies. These increased needs continue as long as your puppy is growing, and are highest during periods of peak growth.

The exact amount of calcium that puppies require is a matter of endless debate among nutritionists. I’ll outline the most prominent recommendations, and suggest an approach that should result in your home-prepared diet falling into the middle of these ranges.

The 2006 National Research Council (NRC) guidelines recommend that puppies receive 3 grams (3,000 mg) of calcium per 1,000 kcals, which is four times its recommended amount for adult dogs. The minimum requirement was changed to 2,000 mg/1,000 kcals from its 1985 minimum of 1,600 mg/1,000 kcals.

The nutrient guidelines published by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) express the recommended amount in a different way, suggesting that puppy diets include between 1.0 and 2.5 percent calcium on a dry matter (DM) basis.

Some nutritional research suggests that large-breed puppies have optimal skeletal development and mineralization when fed a diet that contains between 0.8 and 1.0 percent calcium (DM), as long as the diet uses high biological value protein (from animal products) that provides 420 kcals per 100 grams of food. The percentage of calcium needed increases when caloric density is increased (higher-fat diets), so that the total amount of calcium per calorie remains the same. The percentage of calcium needed also increases when more grains are fed, since the phytates in grains bind calcium.

Studies have shown that skeletal abnormalities and lameness can result in large-breed puppies fed more than 2.6 percent calcium (DM), or more than 6,500 mg calcium per 1,000 kcals. Minimum amounts are less well-defined, but problems may occur when diets contain less than 0.6 percent calcium (DM). The amount of vitamin D in the diet will also have an effect, since it increases the absorption of calcium. Small-breed puppies can tolerate a much wider range of calcium than large-breed puppies without developing problems.

Here’s my suggestion: If you add an amount of bone meal that provides between 1,000 and 2,000 mg of calcium per pound of food fed (not counting any low-calorie veggies), this should provide adequate but not excessive calcium. If you cook the meat, use the cooked weight to determine how much calcium to add.

The higher amount of calcium in that range (2,000 mg per pound of food) will meet both NRC and AAFCO guidelines, providing between 2,000 and 4,000 mg of calcium/1,000 kcals and 1.6 to 2.0 percent calcium DM based on the diet recommendations I’ve given.

The lower amount (1,000 mg per pound of food) will provide between 0.8 and 1.0 percent calcium, which some feel is most appropriate for large breed puppies. This is lower than NRC and AAFCO minimums, but not low enough to cause deficiencies. Remember, you need to add more calcium per pound of food fed if you use a high-fat or high-grain diet.

Because puppies also need more phosphorus than adult dogs, I suggest using bone meal for a calcium source, rather than a calcium-only supplement. (Again, bone meal contains calcium and phosphorus in a ratio of 2:1.)

If your dog’s diet provides calcium in amounts that fall at the low end of the ranges suggested by experts, it’s advisable to supplement the diet with vitamin D, which enhances calcium uptake. (Don’t use calcium supplements that contain vitamin D, though, as the amounts will be too high). If you want to do your own calculations, you can analyze the diet you’re feeding using a nutrition analyzer (see “Resources for a Homemade Diet,” next page).

Remember that if you feed a diet that includes ground bone in appropriate amounts, there is no need to add additional calcium or phosphorus, as bone supplies both minerals in the right proportions. (Isn’t nature wonderful?)

Puppies also require more protein than adult dogs. Remember that there is no danger in feeding high-protein diets to puppies. The best thing you can do for large- and giant-breed puppies is to keep them lean and slow-growing by limiting the total amount fed, not by limiting the percentage of protein in the diet.

Most puppies will do well on a diet that has a moderately high amount of fat. Puppies need more fat than adult dogs, but too much can lead to rapid growth (if they get too many calories), or limit nutrition (if you have to feed less than the normal amount to control growth). If you have a very active puppy who eats more than would be expected for his age and size, then you can increase the amount of fat in his diet. Don’t feed a low-fat diet to a puppy.

Figuring out how much to feed a puppy will depend on the pup’s age as well as current weight and anticipated adult weight. Puppies eat much more for their weight than adult dogs do, and young puppies eat more for their weight than older puppies do. That’s one of the reasons why it’s important to feed younger puppies three to four meals a day.

The amount fed to puppies should gradually increase from a little over half of the appropriate adult serving (when the puppy is very young) to close to the adult ration (for older puppies). Here’s what that would translate into based on percentage of current weight:

1/4 grown:
4.5 to 6.5 percent of current body weight (55 percent of adult diet)

1/2 grown:
3.5 to 5.25 percent of current body weight (88 percent of adult diet)

3/4 grown:
2.75 to 4 percent of current body weight (100+ percent of adult diet)

Fully grown:
2 to 3 percent of their body weight daily (100 percent of adult diet)

Small-breed puppies reach their adult weights more quickly than large breeds do. A small-breed puppy will eat as much as an adult by the time she’s around three months old. A large-breed puppy will eat as much as an adult by the time she’s around 5 months old. In both cases, they’ll eat a little over half that amount at 8 weeks of age. Small breeds will eat a higher percentage of their body weight daily than will larger breeds.

Keep in mind that the appetite of puppies is notoriously varied – they eat more when they’re in a growth spurt and less when they’re dealing with hormones and teething – so it’s important to pay attention to the individual dog and adjust as needed. It’s best for puppies to be lean, not chubby, especially the large breeds; keeping them lean will decrease the likelihood of hip dysplasia and other orthopedic problems developing. Adjust the amount of food as needed to keep your puppy at the proper weight, with ribs easily felt and not covered in fat.

The rewards
Feeding a cooked diet takes time and may cost more than feeding packaged foods (though it’s possible to keep costs down by shopping sales and ethnic markets, and buying food in bulk), but the rewards are many. Dogs fed properly prepared homemade meals are usually healthier than dogs on commercial kibbled or canned diets, and you may find your vet bills are reduced. There is much joy in watching our dogs eat fresh, healthy meals we have prepared ourselves, knowing the quality of the ingredients and the value they provide, as well as the obvious enjoyment our dogs get from their food.

Carol Morgan of Mauldin, South Carolina, expressed the feeling very well. “I home cook for my two dogs, both Australian Shepherds,” says Morgan. “Six-year-old Rowdy gets 100 percent home-cooked, and eight-year-old Tillie gets kibble supplemented with home-cooked. Both dogs also get some raw fruits. Getting started was a very big undertaking; I spent a lot of time on the Internet and reading books while designing their diets. When my vet next saw my dogs, she called everyone into the office to see them because of the obvious improvement in their health. I will never go back to 100 percent commercial dog food again.”

Mary Straus does research on canine health and nutrition topics as an avocation. She is the owner of the DogAware.com website. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her dog Piglet, a 15-year-old Chinese Shar-Pei.