to cook all my dogs meals?

[Mummysgirl12]

I don't know if I am missing something so I want wisdom or advice from the crowd.

Two rescues, treated like royalty. One began being aggressive to the other (newer) dog. We hired a behaviourist, it all was linked to food. At the time we were feeding Forthglade and it isn't nutritionally complete so my dog was hungry....then aggressive.

We then found Pooch and Mutt but it will cost me £3a day to feed them which feels expensive. They're both under 10kg.

My dogs LOVE roast chicken. I bought a roast chicken, 1.9kg from Asda which was £2.80. I will roast it later, have some of the meat for my dinner, maybe DH too (he is fussy and doesn't eat much) and then boil up the meat and carcass, add rice, peas and broccoli and this could make a good 4 days worth of meals especially if I couple it with the dry food they refuse to eat unless it's with roast chicken.

Is this bonkers? Time isn't the issue, I WFH and no kids.

Yanbu.
We have kibble for breakfast which our dd loves and don't bother with rice.

She gets the odd raw egg and also half tins of tuna alongside A bit of fruit and a good bit of crunchy veg

Please hold the carcass though...the bones are dangerous!

I wrote loads of answers out but the page refreshed :(

• they will have kibble too to ensure complete nutrition
• they have vitamin supplements anyway as advised by a vet for all dogs
• no bones, obviously
• not grain fed, obviously

@Totalwasteofpaper I only use the carcass to make the stock which I use to cook the rice! Never would feed the carcass obviously!!

I'm a veterinary nurse who used to run nutrition consults in my practice.

My advice on this is that it is fine to feed your dog home cooked food as an occasional meal but any more than that and you end up with nutritional deficiencies.

It is incredibly hard to create your own nutritionally balanced food for dogs, and many of those who try end up with ill animals as a result.

Also, never feed any kind of bones, absolutely not cooked bones, but even raw bones cause impaction in the gut.

Sorry, have seen you addressed most of my concerns in your latest post!

My aunt always made a stew for her dog, I don't know what the ingredients were but it looked like beef stew. My friend gave her dogs raw meat mixed with noodles or rice.

My dogs are about 10kg, they get kibble for breakfast and dinner is pit together by me. Every few days I make up a batch of plain rice, peas or carrots and cooked chicken. Sometimes I buy ready cooked pieces, sometimes I oven cook chicken fillets. I wouldn’t cook a full checked for them as I can’t be bothered fiddling around taking it off the bone. Yesterday for a change I cooked up a tray of mince and mixed that with the rice and chicken.

I am pretty shocked your dogs are fighting because they are hungry! You need to feed them more.

I agree about deficiencies from just chicken , look up Judy Morgan as you would need to cook a more complete meal nutritionally with a certain ratio of offal (eg ox heart) , veg, mussels etc etc . I’m sure it’s so much better than processed kibble which I use and I admire anyone who has the time as would love to do this if I could.
I do try to add nutritious fresh food to Ddog’s food like an egg or tinned sardine regularly .

Why cook it?

Is that really ALL the behaviourist said... what professional organisation were they with?

I feel like there is more to it than just that.. and I am a dog behaviour/trainer..

Feeding things that cause tummy upsets, gut pain, and cause hunger will likely have knock on behavioural effects, yes.

I don't think feeding a diet based on roast/boiled chicken and rice will do your dogs any favours though!

A dogs diet needs to be balanced - dogs are better adapted to (almost) a keto diet - protein, fat, very little in the way of simple carbs or sugars.

If you don't want to feed a raw diet, and you find the commercial completes that are high end in quality are too pricey, you CAN mix and match.

The idea that you must stick to one brand, one flavour, and never deviate or your dog will get a dodgy tummy... is a/bollocks and b/ a self fulfilling prophecy.. if anyone eats the exact same limited diet and then suddenly changes it, they'll get a dodgy tummy!

Take advantage of offers on high end completes, as long as they're mostly meat (but learn to read labels... watch out for foods that split the cereal content into three or four different types so that the meat content appears first as per the rule 'largest single ingredient first' - this means a food that is 75% cereal (24% rice, 24% maize, 24% barley, 3% oats) could be listed as '25% chicken'... and listed 'chicken... rice, maize, barley... oats.)..

Stock up on several small bags of decent food, raw, kibble, cooked wet food, suitable food on offer in the supermarket (chicken wings, heart, small quantities of offal, raw veg blended to the consistency of grass clippings (freeze it into icecube chunks).. and then feed something different every day.

If they don't want a meal, fine - make a note of what it was, store it or bin it, serve something else the next meal. If they refuse that particular food several times, consider that they genuinely don't like it (we all have things we don't like!) and avoid offering it again.

You should find that if you do this, you find what your dogs like, don't like, what they thrive on etc.

If you provide variety daily, with a good core of quality foods, then you will soon have dogs who are NOT fussy.. as they've no need to be!

There's a whole lot of information on raw feeding, which is what you are talking about. As noted above, creating balanced meals is difficult. Personally, I'd feed a better quality, nutritionally complete kibble at the appropriate amount for the dog and then add chicken etc as an extra.

I feed mine a mix of complete biscuit, usually harringtons, and either raw food or cooked meat with veg. He has a tin of oily fish each week too . Sardines or mackerel.

I go to our co-op and buy chicken wings etc when they have been reduced and keep them in the freezer.

Now I’m worried my dog isn’t getting the right food!

He’s a rescue. Pretty much eats anything. Gets some expensive kibble in the morning and a small Lily’s kitchen carton for tea. I chuck in left over veg. Various training treats across the day.

He seems fine and healthy. His favourite thing to eat is the tray a ready meal has been cooked in 😆

I cook every single meal (twice a day) for my dog.

I tried various tails etc
Tried raw diet
Tried added vitamins to dog food
Nothing else worked

So now I buy meat from butchers, farmfoods, tesco etc (heart, liver, pork steaks, beef mince, lamb steak etc) and cook it then add a handful of his dry biscuit food. It's worked for the past three years now, and it's no more work for me as I'm cooking for my toddler and partner anyway.

I know slightly off track but you can buy a chicken for £2.80? I'm so shocked at that,

Yes a poor abused factory farmed chicken sadly. The poultry industry is shocking. Our reliance on cheap meat is a problem.

This entire post confuses me because Forthglade is a complete food, so I'm not sure what your behaviourist was talking about when he/she said it wasn't.

Also, the diet you're feeding your dog now doesn't appear to be nutritionally complete either - just adding a few biscuits won't make a difference as it's the composition of the entire diet that matters.

My dog has sensitive skin which breaks out into weeping weals if he eats wheat. It took a long time to find him a diet that suited him. He lives on Butcher's, tinned, grain free tripe food (the smell! Urgh) with occasional treats of additive free meatballs and odd bits of veg. Gave him some raw liver a couple of years ago, he wolfed it down but it affected his skin pigmentation and his pink skin turned black. It's slowly turned pink again but liver's been off the menu since.

DGM used to cook a sheeps head in the pressure cooker for her dog. Dog loved it, cook it till it's a mush - but you need a powerful extractor fan for the smell

Home cooking is very time consuming, it has to be balanced. I have done it.

75% meat, which contains organ meat, muscle, 5% maximum liver, and more different meats/fish the better.
25% fruit/vegetables, not not too many carb ones.
You also have to add calcium and other nutrients but I used powder.

There is an online food calculator, which you input your ingredients and it will tell you if you’ve got the balance right. Take a look at Home Cooked Diets for Dogs on facebook.

I stopped just because it was hard for me to get hearts, kidneys and liver for a while, also it took a lot of time preparing, cooking and weighing everything to get it balanced, but my dog loved it, the washing up afterwards is also something to be seen. But when you’ve got the recipe right, it does get easier. I now feed Butternut topped up with Wainwrights dry food.

My dogs have a mix of different foods. Some days they have dog biscuits, which they nibble at throughout the day - it's not their favourite meal. Other days I will raw feed them. They love fish and sausages, other, tougher meats (raw beef joints etc) they enjoy but they eat it slowly over hours. They get raw bones too. They're a bit funny with organ meat and won't eat it raw so I either fry it for them in a little oil or cook it in a stew. They love it when I make them stew. I do huge batches and freeze it for them. Sometimes it is a mixed meat stew with lots of veg and sometimes I just do them a veg stew or even make them soups. These are their favourite meals and they often have it with rice or some rice balls. They enjoy eggs, raw or scrambled.

Wow! Can’t believe the efforts people go to feed their dog!! Like having a child to cook for. Mine used to have dried dog food and a tin of pedigree chum…is that so bad?! If we were having a roast dinner or whatever she’d get a bit of meat.

I think it’s just about the quality of the meat. It can seem OTT. My dog would eat anything I give him tbh!

We feed Forthglade cold pressed. It is nutritionally complete! It’s an excellent quality food!

Where on earth did the behaviourist get their info from?!

Not a dog but...I feed my cat kibble plus some raw meat and some cooked (at home) meat. I keep cans for the odd treat/can't be bothered evening. The vet was OK with that, said it was purely raw diets that worried him.

It works out a lot more economical as opposed to buying high end cans/pouches. I think kibble plus meat is fine - at least he gets the nutrients that way. I'm pretty sure it's better quality meat than cans anyway.