Homemade Dog Food: The Final Chapter

Since my sole intention for blogging about homemade dog food was to add to the available resources for parents who are interested in switching their dogs from commercial food to a healthy and inexpensive homemade diet, I've decided to follow up with one final post that includes the recipes that I've settled on and the total expense.

Dog Kibble (approx. 2 lbs/1 gallon bag)
 - Whole Wheat Flour, 6 cups
 - Corn Meal, 2 cups
 - Flax Seed (milled), 1 cup
 - 4 Eggs Beaten
 - Chicken Bone Meal, 1 cup
 - Crushed Egg Shells, 1/3 cup
 - Meat, 1/2 - 1 lb.
 - Chicken Broth



Meat: I've used cooked liver, raw ground beef/turkey, raw bone dust from the butcher, etc.

Top: Chicken Bone Meal; Bottom: Crushed Egg Shells

Chicken Bone Meal: Separate the bones from boiled chicken. Boil just the bones until they're clean and the water is milky white (save the water and use as broth later). Bake the bones at 200-250 degrees for about 3-4 hours or until they're completely dried. Smash them into smaller pieces that fit easily into a food processor and grind them up into a powder. Use a wire strainer to separate any visible pieces of bone from the bone meal and you can further process those small bone pieces into powder by using a spice mill.

Crushed Egg Shells: Save all of your eggshells. Rinse them and then bake them at 200-250 degrees for an hour or until completely dried. Crush them up and turn them into powder using a spice mill.

Cooking Directions: Mix all of the dry ingredients with the meat and beaten eggs. Add broth until the dough is the desired consistency to be easily rolled out. One softball-sized dough ball will usually fill a large cookie sheet once rolled out and will also freeze easily if not being baked immediately. Roll it out to the desired thickness and bake at 200-250 degrees for about an hour or until crunchy.

Expense:
I can make two batches of dog kibble (4-5 lbs) with the following supplies
(and still have a little left over):
Wheat Flour, 5 lbs.  .....  $3.66
Corn Meal, 5 lbs.  ........  $2.04
Flax Seed, 12 oz.  ........  $2.36
Eggs, 1 dozen  .............  $1.80
Ground Turkey, 1 lb. ..  $2.88
Total Cost ................... $12.74

Soft Food: Chicken and Rice
 - Chicken, whole fryer
 - White Rice, 4 cups
 - Corn Meal, 4 cups

Boil the chicken until it's easy to debone. Save the chicken broth and use to boil rice and corn meal and for dog kibble. Mix all of the cooked ingredients together at one part chicken to three parts rice/corn meal. This makes A LOT -- freezes easily.

To feed eight dogs for a week, I usually make two batches of the chicken and rice. The fryers cost about $5.50 ea. on average; a 20 lb. bag of rice is about $10 (and lasts for about a month) and 5 lbs. of corn meal is about $2. The monthly expense is roughly $62 -- or about $7.75 per dog.

Our dogs have been thriving on this diet. They've all achieved a very healthy weight and allergies, vomiting and diarrhea have stopped. Before the homemade diet, at least one of the dogs was suffering from one of these ailments each day and they were all over weight. Now, they actually eat more volume, but they've gotten back their waist lines! Our dogs get the kibble for breakfast (along with the extras listed below) and the chicken and rice for supper.

Here are a few extras that I add to their daily diet for different reasons:
 - 1/3 cup of yogurt (calcium, vitamins and gastro health)
 - 1/4 cup of cooked liver (extra protein and vitamins)
 - 1 slice of whole wheat bread with each meal (vitamins and filler)
 - 1 tbsp of dried yucca powder (anti-inflammatory and gastro health)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------