Dog Community

Homecooking - does it need to be complicated ?

Posted : 5/4/2007 8:32:37 AM

Personally, I think it does ..... I think you need to analyze the nutrients that you're feeding your dog. I've started this post in response to a question from another post so that we don't throw that one way off topic.

Because of Jessie's allergies I can't use the recipes in Monica's Cooked Diet recipes booklet so I'm thinking of using your spreadsheet since the nutrients are according to the NRC guidelines.

You need to take into account whatever she's getting in her food or you risk an excess of nutrients (some are toxic in high levels, especially minerals which can accumulate in the liver over time). You also have to watch the ratios between the minerals and they interact with each other - too much of one of them and you can cause a deficit in another.
You can figure out the idea ratios by comparing the ratios from the spreadsheet - for example zinc:copper needs to be the ratio of 10:1, zinc:iron should be in the ratio of 2:1.
Being off on some of the ratios isn't going to make a dog sick short term, but if you want to homecook for more than a few weeks or months then you have to do a sufficent amount of work to really get it right - it'll take some decent spreadsheet skills and patience to look up and record each of the nutrients.

To complicate matters even more, it depends upon who you listen to - you can have a diet that "might" get it right by using lots of variety, you can try and follow the AAFCO nutrient guidelines, or you can try and follow the NRC nutrient guidelines which are VERY different from AAFCO.

I believe that homecooking needs to be taken seriously. I should spend 10% of the energy I've spent trying to homecook for Prancer on my own nutrition !!! But I feel that since (a) dogs generally have a lower body weight than humans that nutrition is actually more important ..... call it some misguided notion of "importance per pound of body weight" and (b) since dogs have a shorter lifespan nutrition can impact them more quickly than it can for a human and (c) if I'm not feeling well I can bring myself to a doctor who will hopefully figure out if its nutrient related; my dog on the other hand might hide her symptoms, delaying veterinary care and prolonging the dietary error

Yeah, it can make my head explode and I'm seriously thinking that while homecooking is probably better nutritionally that I'm going to go back to commercial food once I feel confident in the pet food industry again ..... (of course that's just me wanting the bliss that comes with ignorance - but lots of dog live long lives on commercial foods, so they can't be all that bad !)

jessies_mom

Posted : 5/4/2007 8:44:59 AM

I believe that homecooking needs to be taken seriously. I should spend 10% of the energy I've spent trying to homecook for Prancer on my own nutrition !!! But I feel that since (a) dogs generally have a lower body weight than humans that nutrition is actually more important ..... call it some misguided notion of "importance per pound of body weight" and (b) since dogs have a shorter lifespan nutrition can impact them more quickly than it can for a human and (c) if I'm not feeling well I can bring myself to a doctor who will hopefully figure out if its nutrient related; my dog on the other hand might hide her symptoms, delaying veterinary care and prolonging the dietary error

I agree 100% and have read that a dog's nutritional needs are more specific than ours. Thanks for the advice about taking into account the nutrients from her food; that's what I was thinking since that's the way Monica does it. Right now I'm using the booklet "Enhancing Commercial Diets" to supplement her food and she's getting about a fourth of her calories that way but was thinking of doing a combination of kibble in the morning and homecooked for her dinner. I do feel confident in the kibble Jessie's getting since they make thier food in their own plant and it's whole grain.

JoAnnDe

Posted : 5/4/2007 8:52:23 AM

The combo will be fine - just supplement the calcium to offset the additional phosphorus. Most commercial foods are based upon the AAFCO requirements which for the most part are higher than the NRC recommendations.

It REALLY drives me nuts - especially since AAFCO is based upon kg of food and NRC is based on Kg of body weight - comparing the two is an exercise in advanced algebra ! I really don't know which one is right and its the last piece of the "homecooking is scary" puzzle for me ..... actually - Vitamin A drives me pretty batty also (three different measures and the conversions make no sense to me - its one of those topics that makes my eyes glaze over ! LOL)

I'd love to hear from people who have been homecooking for 30 years and have dogs that lived into their 20s - is that too much to ask ???? ROFL

mudpuppy

Posted : 5/4/2007 9:44:58 AM

gee, I don't agree. Do you go around working up spreadsheets for your own diet? I don't. I try to eat lots of a wide variety of fruits and veg, eat some salmon every week, and eat few to none simple carbs. That's about it.
Why are dogs any different? if anything they seem to have fewer nutritional requirements than humans. Many raw feeders feed NO veg, no fruits, no carbs and no supplements and their dogs thrive.

JoAnnDe

Posted : 5/4/2007 10:05:11 AM

Mudpuppy - that's exactly why I started this post. I want to hear others experiences and opinions. My inital post had my own reasons for thinking it needed to be complicated - I'd LOVE for someone to offer real proof that it doesn't need to be as nutty as I'm making it - trust me, I could do w/out spending hours reading nutritional information and figuring out all this "balanced and complete" stuff.
Do you know of any actual studies that talk about raw diets sans carbs / plant matter and things like longevity, reduced disease incidence ? I'd love to read them so please post links if you have them.

No, I don't spend even a small fraction of time on my own diet compared to my dogs - my reasons (wrong as they may be) are in my initial post. And just because I don't spend time on my nutrition doesn't mean I shouldn't -- I'd probably be appauled if I analyzed my own weekly diet

chelsea_b

Posted : 5/4/2007 10:12:52 AM

Most people don't feed themselves very well, so I'm glad people take their pet's diet more seriously than their own. Cherokee eats a lot healthier than me, and that's a GOOD thing, because she is nine years old, which means she may be at least 3/4s way through her life. I'm..uhm, no where near that. If she ate an unbalanced, incomplete diet for a year, that'd be like a person not getting all the nutrients they need from ages 60-67 or something.

That said, I don't make sure every meal is perfectly balanced. I do balance over time. Every week or two I sit down and figure what Cherokee ate over that time period, I plug it all into Nutritiondata.com (and just fyi, there's no way I would do this if I didn't have that website to use. I add all the ingredients to my "pantry", type in the amounts of each, name my recipe, type the number of days that food lasts, hit analyze, and voila, all the daily nutrients are calculated for me), compare that to my spreadsheet, and make sure everything's pretty close to the NRC numbers. If a thing or two are deficient, I make sure to add lots of that in the next batch of food. Likewise, if it's excessive, I cut some out of the next batch.

I try to use food to meet the requirements as much as possible. A few things, like vitamin E and calcium, of course, have to be supplemented. If I'm not feeding fish, I also add a bit of cod liver oil for vitamin D (and cut the liver back a bit). I add a B-complex, because I find it difficult to get enough of all the B vitamins from food sources, plus since they're water soluble, excesses to a certain extent are fine. The only other thing I really ever add is zinc. I have a hard time getting enough zinc into her recipes sometimes, especially with the amount of copper that's sometimes in them from kidney or something.

I don't sweat it THAT much. I think close enough over a few weeks is perfectly fine.

JoAnnDe

Posted : 5/4/2007 10:35:35 AM

oh BABY - I never thought of using the pantry function the way you do to analyze the whole weeks work of what she ate ! I LOVE YOU !!! LOL

Right now I'm just trying to get things close to the NRC recommended values - I try to avoid excesses of more than 50%, and try to avoid deficiencies of more than 20%, especially for stored nutrients (minerals, Vit A) - if I hit either of those situations and can't amend the recipe to get it right then I try and get the opposite effect in one of my other recipes. I'm sure I'm not balancing over a defined period - but over a LONG time (a month) I'm sure it'll work.

I'm actually enjoying doing all this but I've gotta admit - there are many days when I miss using my can opener !

Myra

Posted : 5/4/2007 11:17:27 AM

I'm more in line with Mudpuppy. I think we need to educate ourselves about canine nutrition and put some thought and common-sense into what we feed, but I don't feel the need to analyze every little thing. I feed one meal of kibble, so that gives me a little leeway, but I don't think I'd feel differently if I were doing all home-cooked.

brookcove

Posted : 5/4/2007 11:40:20 AM

I'd rather see over caution applied than carelessness as more people try this, but I really don't think we should scare people off by telling them if they don't balance every single meal with a spreadsheet, they will kill their dogs. Canine nutrition really isn't subject to a lot of narrow ranges of tolerances - I'm constantly struck by the differences I face feeding my dogs and feeding my sheep, who DO have huge sensitivities to both deficiency and toxic ranges of nutrients, sometimes to the same nutrient (copper and selenium for instance). It's enviable to consider my dogs' needs for these nutrients in mgs rather than PPMs or mcgs.

I think home cooking is so extremely healthy that the benefits of trying it, far outweigh the potential dangers to the animal if inbalances are thereby introduced. Gosh, consider that some of these people are feeding Iams and KnB. Yeah, these are balanced, but balanced nasty ingredients versus nutritious whole foods, that might be just a little lacking in some area, occcaisionally?

There's no doubt we're going to have a recoil effect as people, terrified of canned foods, feed their dogs and cats plain meat and rice or other table food, injudiciously - and then we'll have problems associated with THAT. But education, and kindly advice, are the key here, rather than an all or nothing approach, I think.

Stacita

Posted : 5/4/2007 11:41:55 AM

I'm also of the common sense, make sure calcium is added variety. I also add a canine multiple, salmon oil and specific supplements for conditions. It tates quite a to exceed vitamin/mineral tolerance for healthy dogs.

One thing I don't skimp on is vet care. Now that mine are considered senior, I run a blood panels at least yearly for my very healthy girl, twice a year for the dog that had mast cell cancer, and every three months on the one with iffy kidneys.

I'm personally finding it challenging to balance the needs of a dog with both kidney disease and dysplasia. If the protien goes too low the dysplasia flares up but if the phosphorus goes high then the kidneys show problems. Without doing a home prepared diet, I think he'd have a short life span.

JoAnnDe

Posted : 5/4/2007 11:48:17 AM

oh MY - I certainly didn't mean my post to scare people off of homecooking ! Now I feel terrible

I do hope however that it gives them incentive to read a little, learn a bit and then apply common sense.
I'm very analytical by nature (I'm an accountant, and a drop out pre-vet student) so I need the spreadsheets to give me that confidence boost. By the same token they've shown me that what I thought was a good meal really wasn't - zinc (as mentioned) was difficult to get into her diet without adding oysters or a supplement.
It also opened my eyes to mineral interactions - and to how much Vit A I was going to end up feeding if I just did 5 - 10% of ever meal being liver.

I applaud anyone trying to homecook right now - goodness knows the recalls are what got me doing it.

Like I said - I'd love to read some real scientific fact that diets which are not based on detailed analysis lead to long healthy lives for our dogs. Please please, if you have any articles or books to recommend let me know - I'd love to be a bit less neurotic about all this ! I'm driving myself batty and want to know that I don't need to be doing this to myself [&o]

Ratsicles

Posted : 5/4/2007 2:40:08 PM

Eh, I personally don't try to overcomplicate things. I just make sure to vary the protein sources, stick to one or two staple carbs (since changing that up too often seems to bother them) and make sure they get a wide variety of fruit and vegetables. Top that off with healthy table scraps a few times a week. I supplement with a daily multi, calcium, and fish oil. Mine are doing really well. [

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JoAnnDe

Posted : 5/4/2007 6:53:05 PM

Ratsicles - how long have you been homecooking ? Are you feeding any commercial at all ?

I'm really struggling to get over being so neurotic about all this - I'd like some real understand that there is LOTS of leeway and that I won't be harming Prancer if I continue to homecook. Understanding other peoples point of views and experiences helps a great deal.

Ratsicles

Posted : 5/4/2007 8:26:41 PM

I've only been doing it for a little over a month now-since first news of the recall came out mid March- but my rats have been on a home cooked/whole food diet for a year now, and a home prepared diet before that. My ferrets are on raw diets, and my chickens are on a mix that I formulated myself...so I'm not new to dealing with nutrition. I have honestly found that simpler is usually better. There was a time when I spent hours making spreadsheets and calculating percentages and I eventually realized that it just wasn't necessary and it was alot of effort and heartache that really didn't make much of a difference. Now I just use common sense...and I've pretty much come to the conclusion that variety is the key to a healthy diet- getting exactly optimum calcium/phosphorus ratios in every single morsel of food isn't.

That's just been my experience. [

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Stacita

Posted : 5/4/2007 9:59:39 PM

I've been home cooking for Tasha since she was about nine months old. I did it as a kibble topper which is also good if you don't feel comfortable going 100 percent. She's become a senior dog without anyone really noticing, because she looks and acts like a dog half her age. Certainly some of that is good genetics and some environment, but cooking for her sure hasn't hurt.

In December 2005 I went 100 percent because my rescue dog Floyd had three grade II Mast Cell Cancers in a two week period. We consulted with a holistic vet and one of the things she advised was to get off a regular diet of commercial foods. He was also given supplements. I can't tell you that cooking/raw cured him, but it sure didn't hurt him, because he's well and happy today. He is not taking Prednisone. The odds were not good and now they are.

I know my dogs are better off on a home prepared diet. They see both a regular and a holistic vet each year and they are doing far better than most senior dogs.