why not homecook?

brookcove

Ron, B-12 is a nutrient that is vital but the minimum needed is measured in teeny, tiny amounts.  It's a tiny difference that makes all the difference.  Without that tiny bit of B-12, all kinds of really bad things can happen very quickly - it's not a nutrient that a dog can just do without and they don't stockpile it like some of the minerals or fat soluble vitamins. 

Now I may not be looking at this right......but this makes me think a balanced dog food might be better then fooling around trying to balance everything in home cooking.

NO???????

Ironically, if you feed a dog bread scraps,  meaty bones (butcher bones or the carcass from the weekly chicken/duck/goose), curdled milk or whey, fish scraps, and supplemented with a daily bowl of porridge (as in the Border Collie's original stomping grounds), that's a diet high in the only antioxidants that a dog can't manufacture for itself.  Livestock was fed animal sourced protein and bone meal to increase protein levels (we use soybean meal now) with vitamin A and D additives, so saying that the dog also supplemented itself from the feed "cube" bins or at feeding time, isn't as terrible as it sounds.  Probably it was as good as or BETTER than early dog food in terms of protein levels (about 16 to 20%), and meat/bone content.

On a farm there was unlikely to be any leftovers of something like beef stew.    Pigs got the water that was washed off the dishes at every mealtime, plus peelings, apple cores, etc - and if the dog was quick he might get a mouthful of that every day, too. 

Finally, the soil wasn't depleted 50 to 75 years ago and it took less food to provide more vitamins.  I've analyzed the soil, my sheep's feed, and my sheep themselves and even though my situation is much better than a feedlot operation, the nutrients still are at a low ebb.  I inject my sheep with vitamin E and selenium, and supplement calcium well above the "recommended" levels because otherwise they still don't get enough!  Without that calcium, they don't uptake a multitude of other micronutrients. 

dyan, it's not a question of balance, but providing it. Ron's question was sort of, if the amount is so small why do they even list it?  It's because it's SO vital.  But it's also plentiful in many home cooked foods.  It's possible to do a diet almost free of B-vitamins but you'll go broke doing it!  If you include any smidge at all of any grain, you'll have plenty of most of the B-vitamins and certainly B-12 will be in there.  The only one that often comes up short is lecithin and that's not one with catastrophic short term effects.  And "short" is different from "not at all".

I don't worry about the Bs any more since I started really looking at numbers and figures.  They are one of the few nutrients that can be provided just fine with the hit or miss method.  It's interesting that of all the "touchy" nutrients - that is, nutrients with a relatively small amount that makes the difference between deficiency and overdose - zinc is the only one that really doesn't get provided from randomly feeding your dog without supplementation. 

dyan

Now I may not be looking at this right......but this makes me think a balanced dog food might be better then fooling around trying to balance everything in home cooking.

  It's not so much balancing when it comes to B vitamins, as it is making sure you're providing enough, as Becca said with B-12. B vitamins are water soluble so giving more than is required is not a problem.

What I kind of meant is that if something like that happening to like that could happen to a whole breed...because of one little tiny nutrient.....not positive if we are better off home cooking or getting a premium dog food.

What's interesting is that the problem happened because people went AWAY from fresh foods, and started depending on commercial diets exclusively.   They know better now what dogs need, but they don't know everything, and there are some major issues with the whole commercial feeding paradigm that they'll never get around, period.

Yes, you can make a blunder home feeding, but the ones I've seen have been when people just think you can toss a dog whatever and they'll be fine.  If you even do a modicum of research (less than you've done already, for instance), you can avoid the major problems.  

MY point was that B is something fresh food feeders almost never have to worry about. 

Its just so scary to think that a little too less of one vitamin..could cause such a problem with a whole breed..... 

but....................on another note.... you guys that homecook talk about mackeral. I assume you mean canned mackeral.    I remember buying a can of it years ago when I had a taste for canned salmon and saw the mackeral was a lot less expensive.    So....was at a few stores yesterday...none of them a big grocery store where I will go tomorrow....but only one store had canned mackeral...I was going to purchase two cans to add to my meat meal that I have to do this weekend for Gibson.......but as I was in line it looked like the cans had gook on them...so I took them back to the shelf and tried to find some that looked good and had a date on them,,,,,, and I did succeed but in my reading the can I saw they came from China.......put them down and left.

So................is this the kind of mackeral we are to buy? Does it all come from China? I am going to our big grocery store tomorrow but meanwhile.. will sardines do???

Dyan, sardines are FINE.  Just get them either in olive oil or water (and it can be the cheap ones as well). 

I don't avoid everything Chinese -- particularly when it's not something processed like canned mackerel. 

 Ben LOVES sardines in olive oil and I really believe those are one of the things which keep his coat so glossy.

I'm starting to homecook for Ben, not as a regular thing but a few times a week - I'm also becoming MUCH less uptight about giving him food scraps.  As long as it doesn't have anything on "the list" that I know he can't have, amongst others cooked bones, onions and raw celery - celery is just something which doesn't agree with Ben - he's getting a LOT more leftovers and scraps these days.  I'm not seeing any harmful effects at all and seriously doubt that in the small quantities he's getting these things that they will ever cause long-term damage.  I know some things can do that, like onions, but most scraps of "human food" don't have that effect.

This is all in preparation for moving Ben onto raw anyway, testing out his system with a wider variety of foods, so the homecooking thing doesn't apply so much here except that I am currently doing that a few times a week.  I do think (know, really) that dogs have been around longer than kibble has...and that that says something.  

dyan

So................is this the kind of mackeral we are to buy? Does it all come from China? I am going to our big grocery store tomorrow but meanwhile.. will sardines do???

 Dyan; I buy Kroger's brand of mackerel for Jessie and it comes from Chile. Mackerel can't be farmed, it has to be wild caught, so it should be safer than farmed fish coming from China, IMO.

Thanks guys....... I did buy the sardines...but today I put Salmon in with his other food...... will save the sardines for next batch and check out the mackerel at the grocery store tomorrow!

dyan

Thanks guys....... I did buy the sardines...but today I put Salmon in with his other food...... will save the sardines for next batch and check out the mackerel at the grocery store tomorrow!

 

I like sardines and mackerel, too. If you put down a bowl for me, I will eat it. And I will stay with my own bowl, too. I iz housetrained.

Gibby will share!  ..............................but don't tell him I said so!

No luck with mackerel in our big grocery store.  Couldn't believe it, but they had 3 brands of salmon.  Well there are a couple of other grocery stores around...guess I could go look at one of them.

Unfortunately Janice....all the Krogers got up and left a few years back in are area.

Back in the early 70's in southern Cali, my first step-father used to take us on chartered fishing boats out of Mission Bay and we found this one spot that was just exploding with mackerel. You could drop a line, wait a few minutes and start reeling in and you would have one. We used lived anchovy for bait.