Confused about Homemade Diet

[Eleni3]

Hello Everyone! I have two little babies, one 2 and one 3. They are my loves, as you all know. I have on a few times given them chicken and rice with vegatables. They eat it up and are so happy. They look more alert and spunky. I am considering a homemade diet, but the comments seemed 50/50! There are so many recalls on commercial food. I would just die if anything happened to them, but I do not want to make a mistake given homemade foods. My male, 2 years old, has horrible allergies and I have not been able to find a food that doesn't make him itchy. I have tried all of them.
My 3 year old female holds weight better when I give homemade food. So all seems to point to this plan. However, I would need suggestions of supplements to made sure they rec'v all their nutrients.
Any comments and advice is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

[Wylie's Mom]

I'd recommend a consult w/ vet nutritionist, that way your kiddo's diet would be balanced and safe. Here are some folks: http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/die...itionists.html

As far as the itchies/allergies - did you do a true elimination diet? Food allergies are rare in dogs (~10%), usually it's enviro.

[brezofleur]

Yes, it's usually environmental over food allergies. I thought my Zeus was allergic to chicken but it turns out it's a neighborhood tree, poor thing.

I do a home/raw diet. Love it. It's not commercial (found in the freezers of pet stores) - it's true raw chicken/beef/quail, etc, bones and all. I don't know if other board promotion is acceptable here (I really should read up on board rules again!) but please feel free to PM me if you're interested.

Both my cat and dog are on raw food. Their coats are beautifully shiny, bright white teeth, get the rare flea... We adopted them both and it's an amazing difference with the before/after, both physically and emotionally.

[gracielove]

I would recommend a homemade diet over most kibble. Looking into a good food based supplement is always best when home feeding. Try to avoid synthetic vitamins.It's not that complicated. You do need a good meat source and rotate the meats from one week to another. Chicken one week, beef the next. Organ meat is very nutrient rich. Heart and liver are always good. When I home cooked I did 80% meat. The remaining 20% consisted of mostly veggies with some berries and eggs with a supplement that was rich in calcium. Omega3's are important as well.
I tried using grain but Gracie hated grains so I switched to sweet potato and she loved that. It turns out sweet potatoes are nutrient rich and easily digested. There are some who believe that dogs cannot digest vegetables but there is no evidence for that theory. I always put Gracie's veggies through the food processor before mixing with meat anyway. There are some good sites available that have good ideas on home feeding. You need to use common sense though. There are some far out people who have some strange ideas.
Read the ingredient list on the average dog food bag. I'm sure you can do much better for your dog using real food that has not been cooked at extremely high temps at least 3 times. This is done to destroy all organic material in the kibble so that it can sit on a shelf for months at a time. Synthetic vitamins are then added to replace all the nutrients that were destroyed by the process.
I eventually went to a commercial raw diet but I did homemade raw for a while. It is just easier for me to buy the commercial frozen raw. I still do fix her a meal or two myself every week.

[107barney]

I've home cooked for 12 years now and like it. I use a vet nutritionist for my older dogs who have some health issues but my younger dogs eat chicken, squash, sweet potatoes and vegetables. For $25 you can order a home made recipe from Welcome to Pet Diets or a free recipe from www.balanceit.com

I think kibble is also a perfectly acceptable option. I use Royal Canin as back up.