My thoughts and opinions on life, work, and everything in between.

Home Made Dog Food

2021-12-29
  • dave
  • publish

After 2 years of feeding Dave, our frenchie, a raw diet and struggling with allergies, we decided to try a simple home cooked diet for him at the recommendation of our vet. Cooked meals also has the benefit of eliminating some bacteria risks now that we have a baby around the house.

The general makeup of the food is a combination of protein, carbs, and vegetables. Some additional supplements are added based on Dave's needs.

There are a lot of recipes and opinions around home made dog food, but there is little evidence to backup the claims or justify the make up of the recipes. We've decided to use those as a starting point and then try to find our own recipes that works for him.

Determining Dave's caloric needs

There exist a number of resources and calorie calculators that can help you determine the energy needs of your dog. Given Dave's weight he needs roughly 600 calories a day. We try to prep (and only have enough room in our freezer) a weeks worth of meal for him, so that's 4200 calories worth of food.

Fish Meal

  Ratio Calories
Protein 0.7 2940.
Carbs 0.15 630.
Veggies 0.15 630.
Total sum([0.7, 0.15, 0.15]) 4200

Protein

  • Salmon
    • Sometimes Superstore has discounts on 1kg bags of salmon fillets
  • Tilapia

Carbs

  • Sweet potatoes

Veggies

  • Frozen veggie mix
    • Aim for peas, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, beans