# Homecooked dog foods



## grjoga (Aug 1, 2013)

I have a 8lb, 6 month old toy poodle. I have put him on homecooked meals and supplements for the last 3 weeks. I use protein of turkey, chicken and some beef, spinach,pumpkin,kale,sweet potatoes, tuna, kidney beans, and some other vegs. I also use supplements: Rx minerals, Rx essentials vitamins, probiotics, and nordic epa and dha oil. He eats great most of the meals but his poop has been loose since I started. I am trying not to use any grains in his food. He seems very healthy. Has anyone else homefed their dogs who can give me some advice as to whether I am doing this right. Will not giving him carbs be harmful to him as most grains are carbs. Anyone with suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I have just started this and do not know a lot about what supplements are enough or too much.











Undo
Redo

Decrease Size
Increase Size


----------



## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

I home cook, with some raw. I don't give my two tinies any carbohydrates in their meals, just a complete mix mince (80% muscle, 10% offal/organs, 10% ground bone) with mixed vegetables, plus occasional meals of sardines, eggs, salmon, etc. They eat such small amounts there is no need for cheap fillers. I would try simplifying your recipe and see if you can find what is causing the problem - I know kale and spinach can give mine diarrhoea if they get too much, as can too much liver and anything too oily, while Sophy reacts badly to turkey in any form. Try feeding one meat, with a very little of one green vegetable and one orange one, and see how he does on that. Add a very little liver, then over a few weeks try other ingredients, keeping track of the effects. The oily supplements you are using may be causing it - a very little of those goes a long way!

I prefer not to use supplements as I think it can be very easy to overdose on the oil soluble vitamins in particular, especially when feeding tiny dogs, although I did use ground eggshell for calcium until I sourced a complete minced meat. I worked out how to cover all the nutritional bases with "real" food, and both the cats and dogs have thrived on a cooked diet for many years now. 

I found DogAware.com: Diet & Health Info for Man's Best Friend very helpful when starting out, and for reviewing recent research. NAS has a useful summary of nutritional needs (Petdoor: Nutritional Requirements of Cats and Dogs) and if you enjoy research many happy hours can be lost gleaning information from the USDA food composition database (https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/). But in a nutshell all my research and spreadsheet analysis came down to mostly feeding a balanced meat mix (or adding a little eggshell, liver and other organs to muscle meat) with a small amount of green and orange vegetables and a few green beans, and feeding meals of eggs or oily fish a couple of times a week. My dogs are similar in size to yours and I find they need around 100g each per day of this mixture - a very active pup may need more. If their weight goes down I give them a bit more, if it goes up I add more beans and decrease the amount of meat.


----------



## grjoga (Aug 1, 2013)

fjm-thanks so much for your help. I never considered that maybe I'm feeding too much of some things. I have been more worried about the supplements then the food. I'm going to follow your advice and try to pay more attention to each thing I feed him. I think I may take him off some of the supplements except the probiotics and see how that goes. The vitamins and the oil concern me the most. I have also been giving him minerals and probably too much liver. I will try one meat and one green and one orange veg. and his probiotic. What do you do for calcium in your diets?


----------



## grjoga (Aug 1, 2013)

I just reread your reply about the calcium. So using the different meats will meet his calcium requirements?


----------



## grjoga (Aug 1, 2013)

Where do I find ground bone that is safe to use? I have heard you could make your own by cooking and grinding chicken bones, but don't know much about that. Sorry for all the questions but you sound so knowledgeable about your diets. Thank you so very much!!


----------



## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

You can use a suitable calcium supplement, but I found the easiest source to be eggshells. Wash them, dry them, grind them in a clean coffee grinder or pestle and mortar, and add 1/2 teaspoonful per pound of meat, 1 teaspoonful per kilo. Reckon on about 5% liver, 5% other organs (kidney, spleen, etc), 90% muscle meat if you are not feeding bone - that means less than 1 ounce liver to a pound of meat. I found the easiest way was to puree the liver and kidney etc and freeze it in small quantities (eg ice cube tray) so that I could add a little to each batch I cooked.


----------



## Tamika (Jan 7, 2018)

fjm said:


> But in a nutshell all my research and spreadsheet analysis came down to mostly feeding a balanced meat mix (or adding a little eggshell, liver and other organs to muscle meat) with a small amount of green and orange vegetables and a few green beans, and feeding meals of eggs or oily fish a couple of times a week.


fjm, I was pleased and reassured to read your post and especially the quote above. I have come up with an identical diet to yours from all the reading I have done.


----------

