The Benefits Of Preparing Own Dog Food

Creating your own homemade dog food can be a reward experience for you while also providing ideal nutrition for your canine companion. You have options to choose from such as raw, cooked, grain free and more. It gives you the ability to fully control what you feed your pet, which can be especially helpful if your dog has sensitivities or allergies to certain foods.

Furthermore, you can actually see a physical difference in your dog when you make the switch to a homemade diet. Shinier coat, slimmer build, higher energy level and better attention span can all be attributed to a quality diet.

Cooked

Cooking a homemade meal for your dog has wonderful benefits. You can obtain top quality meats, organ meats and produce from your local grocer, butcher or even farmer’s market. Cooking the food eliminates any bacteria that could infect you or a dog that may have a depressed immune system. You can choose the meats your dog loves best like chicken or beef. You can even take it a step further and go for more exotic meats like elk or bison!

The possibilities for ingredients are truly limitless when you cook up you own dog food. Make a giant batch and freeze the rest for easy to serve meals that you can feed frozen or warmed in the microwave!

Raw

Raw feeding has a larger learning curve than cooking your dog’s food at home. You can create raw meals use muscle meat, organ meat, bone and supplements. In raw feeding, you quite literally feed nothing cooked!

A major part of raw feeding is called raw meaty bones. These are edible bone items that are covered in meat. Chicken drumsticks or leg quarters, pork ribs and neck bones, turkey necks and so much more are available for this. These meals can be up to 50% of your dog’s diet!

If buying and mixing up your own raw food diet for your dog is too difficult, start by cooking and adding raw items a little at a time until you become more familiar with it.

Grain Free

Ideally, all dog meals should be grain free. However, sometimes individual dogs actually do better with ingredients like cooked rice or barley added to their food. Make sure they are thoroughly cooked before feeding to your dog! Rice, corn, soy and wheat mostly act as a bland filler for dog foods. They do offer some proteins and carbohydrates, however dogs are not built to digest these foods.

When you create your own homemade dog diet you can eliminate these fillers so that your pup gets a meal full of nutrients and proteins that his body needs.

Educate Yourself

Before you dive headfirst into cooking or raw feed, read everything you can about the subject! Talk to vets, nutritionists and even trainers about your plans to make your own dog food and their opinions on it. Take all advice with a grain of salt, and watch your dog transform into a healthier, happy companion!