Making the Change to Homecooked On My Own

 Nonono, that's fine.  There might be a tiny bit of loss but it's not worth tossing anything out.  It's just recommended by Balance IT that you don't add the supplement until it's time to feed.

Ok, good. From now on, we'll add right before serving.

The portion sizes look HUGE to me. Feel like we're completely overfeeding the dogs, even though we're weighing everything out as instructed. Do homecooked portion sizes tend to be a bit bigger?

Also, the consistency of the food is very pasty, so I think it's a bit difficult for the dogs to eat. I was thinking about adding a spoonful or two of water prior to heating in the hopes that it will moisten everything up for them, but figured I'd ask to see if you had any other helpful hints.

Thanks! 

 It will probably look significantly larger than a portion of dry food, because it isn't dried It's bulkier, because of water content, mostly.

You can definitely add a bit of water, if it makes the food easier to eat. 

  A lot of people on this forum do both home cooked and kibble; as long as both diets are balanced, it should be fine. It's probably not necessary, but if you want to be certain your dogs are getting all the nutrients they need, Monica Segal has a book for $25 called "Optimal Nutrition" which includes the National Research Council's 2006 recommended daily nutrient requirements for dogs, with instructions on how to use the information to calculate the daily requirements for your dogs according to their weight;

http://www.monicasegal.com/catalog/product.php?cPath=25&products_id=101 

  You can calculate their needs, then add what they get from the amount of kibble you feed them plus the home cooked.  For unenriched rice, I use Jasmati by Rice Select; it comes in a plastic jar with a green label and can be found at Kroger.  I think the reason for the mixture being pasty is because the rice has to cooked until it's mushy; if you use an electric mixer it blends the meat and rice better than hand mixing and makes the food less pasty; that's what I do. Also, adding a little more water like Jennie said should help too.

 Edited to add; I forgot that your recipe uses more rice; the recipe I use is about 50% meat by weight, and includes more vegetables, so  the mixer idea may not work as well for you.

I hear you on the cost!  I'm in practically the same boat as you, trying to do homecooked without breaking the bank.  I'm hoping Santa brings me some of the books I asked for, Monica Segal's books and pamphlets.  I want to read those before making a huge decision.

Balancing everything using homecooked AND kibble seems way complicated.  I'm thinking of either going to a dehydrated raw (ie, honest kitchen, sojos, etc) because the cost is less than homecooked but still seems much healthier than kibble or mixing kibble with homecooked.  But then I'm back to needing to balance.  It's just as much the food as it is supplements.  We went through something like $50 worth of food in about 3 weeks and I'm not even doing 100% homecooked. I'm used to about $20/month for kibble *and* treats.....

I'm sure i'm making it more complicated than it needs to be..... but there's a ton of information out there and some of it contradicts other stuff.  I'm not sure yet what we'll end up doing... but I'm enjoying reading the replies to this thread since I can related and use some of it too!

It's probably the most difficult part, balancing the budget. For those who can't afford homecooked a decent or premium kibble will. I will mention this, not as a debating point but to show that kibble can work. My previous cat, Misty, lived 17 years on Purina foods. Delicat for 16 years, Purina NF for one year. I think our pets can as well on some of the finer foods we would rather feed them.

Some people feed their dogs three ways. Kibble, homecooked, and raw. Sometimes the raw is just an RMB for dentition and enjoyment. Other times, it's a balanced raw meal. And some still feed some kibble just so that the dog or dogs stay used to it for when they have to travel and don't always have space or time for raw or homecooked.

I think it's great that people are homecooking when they can. It seems like its a joy to do and is certainly a bonding experience and many swear by it, either through performance eval or just tradition, with long-lived dogs to prove it. It was more common in the past for mushers to feed their teams raw or homecooked. I've heard it said that racing greyhounds were often fed raw. And they transition to kibble and hogging the couch quite easily.

And I think this forum and the people here are incredible for offering everything they can think of to help.

ron2

It's probably the most difficult part, balancing the budget. For those who can't afford homecooked a decent or premium kibble will. I will mention this, not as a debating point but to show that kibble can work. My previous cat, Misty, lived 17 years on Purina foods. Delicat for 16 years, Purina NF for one year. I think our pets can as well on some of the finer foods we would rather feed them.

I've got a 14 y.o. cat here kicking it and impressing the vets with her health on Science Diet.  

Home prepared is way, way less for me than feeding my gang super premium foods.  Carbs are simple - rice, oatmeal, potato, sweet potato.  Veggies and fruits are common and inexpensive:  carrot, apple, zucchini, garlic, parsley.  Meats are the cheapest available plus farm scraps when available:  Chicken (52 cents/pound), pork (80 cents/pound), turkey (90 cents/pound), beef heart ($1.20/pound), and lamb or goat (50 cents/pound).  Eggs are in there too.

I use high quality supplements but they are very inexpensive, rarely more than a few dollars a month.  fish oil is the exception but ten dollars a month per medium sized dog is an investment that will certainly pay for itself in decreased vet bills.

brookcove

Chicken (52 cents/pound), pork (80 cents/pound), turkey (90 cents/pound), beef heart ($1.20/pound), and lamb or goat (50 cents/pound). 

Wow can I buy where you shop?!?!  I'm LUCKY to see prices less than $2/lb ON SALE. Cheapest I can get is kidney for around $1/lb and chicken necks for under $1/lb.  Even veggies are pricey -- frozen is $1-$1.50/lb and fresh is around that depending on the size of the container and what I'm buying.  I'm averaging well over $1-2/lb homecooked and I could easily rival that with a good kibble for a lot less work. Plus, he eats more homecooked than he does kibble.....

If I had prices close to what you pay I'd totally be on the homecooked bandwagon!!

OT -- Becca I sent you a PM about the fish oil -- could you let me know the shelf life of the seapet you use?  It would last us a good 6 months but I don't want it to go bad before then....

NicoleS

Wow can I buy where you shop?!?!  I'm LUCKY to see prices less than $2/lb ON SALE. Cheapest I can get is kidney for around $1/lb and chicken necks for under $1/lb.  Even veggies are pricey -- frozen is $1-$1.50/lb and fresh is around that depending on the size of the container and what I'm buying.

  I hear ya; it's not that cheap around here either. For me it's worth it because Jessie has special needs; she's allergic to ingredients in most kibbles on the market, including the ones I'd really like to feed her like Origen or Wellness Core. I started years ago with cooking kibble toppers, then started replacing some of her kibble with a cooked mixture according to the instructions in Monica Segal's book " Enhancing Commercial Kibble."  After that, it wasn't much of a leap to doing all home cooked. I don't know of anyone who changed from kibble to cooked using a carefully balanced diet that didn't think their dog is healthier, but dogs absolutely do live long healthy lives on a good kibble. We all do the best we can, and if you can't afford it and your dog does fine on kibble, there's no need to feel bad. If you still would like to home cook, you can get some great support from folks who know a whole lot more about it than I do at Monica's group K9 Kitchen.

I've actually been quite concerned with nutritional supplements since reading raw. I've even pondered going back to kibble but just couldn't bring my self to do so. I'm quite content with using Honest Kitchen's "Preference" simply because I still get to feed fresh RMB's and I get a little piece of mind that he's getting the appropiate supplements from the dehydrated stuff, or so I hope!

•  Chicken:  10 pound bags of chicken quarters at Walmart or the Hispanic market
• Pork: 
  
• Necks:  Big packs go for around 90 cents at Walmart, or 80 cents at the Hispanic market. 
  
• Large packs of shoulder slices go for about 90 cents a pound at the Hispanic market when I can find them.
  
• Ribs:  $1.19 a pound at a local market - I get slabs of these and only use 9 pounds a week
• And I could get cases of pork parts if I worked with a local processor I know of, but when gas was so spendy it wasn't worth it.  I'm going to look into it again after we move.  Their prices were around 95 cents a pound.
• I can get large joints of pork on sale
  
• Beef heart:  Either cases from a local guy who has a grass fed beef operation, or when he doesn't have those, Wally World has them for $1.29 a pound.  The price recently went up!  :-/
• I get turkey necks from the Hispanic market.   They are usually around 70 cent a pound

Good thing we have a super walmart around here... as much as I dislike it (There are people EVERYWHERE! can you say claustrophobia?) I wouldn't mind it if I could limit it to once a month or so.  And I'm working on finding a good market around here.

When you use ribs, for example, do you feed them raw, since there is bone?  although i'm not opposed to it occassionally, there are times I just dont want to clean up after raw meat, so I try to limit it or feed outside.

NicoleS

When you use ribs, for example, do you feed them raw, since there is bone?  although i'm not opposed to it occassionally, there are times I just dont want to clean up after raw meat, so I try to limit it or feed outside.

 Yes, ribs are fed raw. Jessie is trained to chew her RMB's on an old bath towel, so all I do is wash it when she's done. I agree with you about Wal-Mart; I only go there early on week days; forget later in the day or weekends.

  I added up the cost for feeding Jessie for a week and it's about about $19.70, and that does not include the supplements. Buying all the supplements is expensive at first, but they last for a long time. Jessie can't have chicken or potatoes, so that makes her diet more expensive. Also, the diet from Mordanna is about 50% meat by weight whereas balanceit diets like 2 DogsMom is using have more carbs and would be cheaper to feed. Monica's diets are also about 50% meat. I have no idea what it costs to feed a high protein kibble like Wellness Core or Origen since Jessie can't have them, but her diet is about 37% protein and 22% fat and she is doing great.

jessies_mom

I added up the cost for feeding Jessie for a week and it's about about $19.70

See, logically, $20/week doesn't sound bad when you consider the cost of food for the humans (we spend $60-80 a week at the grocery week for two of us) but it's just such a jump from what kibble had cost us..... I'm in the range of under $5/week.  LOL.  And I was feeding a food with a pretty decent ingredient list... but 40lbs of kibble would roughly last us 10 weeks.  At least supplements last a while. 

And we tried to train Sammy to use an old towel but for some reason he likes to travel with his food