DIY Dog food

How to make dog food for your dogs that is very nutritious and can save you some money.

If you have a puppy I would suggest to stick to a legitimate brand of dog food and then later in the year start making it for your dog.

How did I decide on making dog food?

Well a couple of years ago, my mother and I found some old vet documents for our dogs which were at the time a German Shepard and a  Daschund. And in these documents were veterinary advise for us to feed the pups mealie pap mixed with a bit of Bobtail tinned dog food, grated carrots and some other veg, and then when the dog got older you had to feed the dog with the tinned food and then the later in the day Bobtail Pellets.


Reading that, I came to realise that dogs back then survived on the basics of foods. Now with all these amazing brands, and better technology we are able to spoil our dogs with the best of the best.

But what happens when you can't. Well, I eventually googled how to make dog food. I used the recipe from
https://damndelicious.net/2015/05/13/easy-crockpot-dog-food/  as my main inspiration and then I calculated how much of it to give to my dogs with this dog food calculator.

I'm going to rewrite the recipe but using substitutions as a lot of the stuff and measurements are ones we don't use.


INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 to 2kg's of pet mince (ask the butcher in your local grocery shop or butcher)
1 1/2 cups brown rice
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
**4 cups/500 grams of frozen mixed veg (make sure there is no onion or corn in it)

1 tablespoon of Italian Mixed Herds (optional)
4 cups of water
Pressure cooker

or
slow cooker

DIRECTIONS:

1. Stir in pets mince, brown rice, kidney beans and frozen veg and 4 cups water into a  slow cooker or pressure cooker.
2. Cover and cook on low heat for 5-6 hours or high heat for 2-3 hours, stirring as needed or 15-20 minutes for a pressure cooker.
3. Let cool completely.

You can check on the original page for the nutritional facts. But it's 418 calories (kcal) per cup.

Use the dog food calculator to figure out how much food to give your dog a day.

Remeber you may need to half the amount if you are feeding your dogs twice a day.

I've heard from a Dog behaviourist to actually give your dogs 2/3rds of the dog's daily requirement in the morning and 1/3rd in the evening.

**Optional ideas for the frozen veg

Instead of using just frozen veg you may use dog-friendly fresh vegetables