Homecooked Large Breed Puppy

NRC guidelines or the "wolf pups eat the same thing their parents do" method?  [lol]

NRC varies pretty far from the adult guidelines.  I called in an expert with access to this information to help me develop Lynn's diet (she ended up at 68 pounds but I had no idea whether she'd get bigger or what).  Each time the pup gains a certain amount of weight you have to recalculate - the nutrient this affects the most is calcium, a real bugaboo for large breeds in particular.

I'm getting a new pup in May - this will be my first pup raised on a diet balanced in terms of the most recent NRC guidelines (they weren't available when my youngest pup was a baby).  I will be interested to see whether we still encounter a couple of issues that often frustrate me raising  Border Collie puppies on home prepared diets.

Lonsdale has a puppy raising book that is much more casual (more the second method) and raw foods based.
 

 Whatever's going to be balanced. I can already do the "eat like an adult wolf" deal on my own. I'm looking for something a little more in depth. Although I don't know about adjusting with gain, the puppy food stays the same, no nutritional adjustment. Why would the homecooked need that?

Spicy_Bulldog

Why would the homecooked need that?

  Commercial foods are based on AAFCO guidelines and you simply feed more as a puppy grows to provide more nutrients. NRC guidelines differ in that the nutrients do not increase linearally with the weight of a dog, so you need to adjust the nutrients as a puppy grows. If you consult with Sabine as Becca and I did, the diet will definitely be more balanced than trying to feed what you think a wolf would eat. Sabine is great to work with and more than happy to answer any questions you have.

Presumably you do fresh food rather than commercial because you want to improve over their paradigm of nutrition. 

The larger the puppy, the nutrients will comprise a smaller percentage of the raw energy input.  As the puppy grows, that goes down even more.  There's a very great upper tolerance for more nutrients so commercial diets simply over-supplement like crazy.  but we still don't know what effect that has had on large breed dogs.

Back when puppies were raised on "whatever" at home, the diets were high in carbs but with nice fresh bones too - and puppies self-regulated - the larger the puppy, the more they tended to eat the carby stuff, while the bones and meat were distributed evenly. 

Not to mention there was probably greater tolerance for trashy diets among the more roughly-bred general dog population of 75 years ago and before.

Ironically, I spent less on Lynn's consultation and diet, than I would have to feed something like Orijen puppy, Core, or Eagle Pack, which are pretty much the only commercial sources I now trust - sort of.  When she spent a couple weeks with a friend I couldn't believe how much her food cost.