why not homecook?

dyan

Also...I have an constant thing in my head the kibble is not real food!  For some reason...I never considered feeding kibble until our danes.  They might have gotten cheap canned...or cheap moist...but never kibble because it doesn't seem real.

It's in your head because it's good common sense, in my opinion anyway

 One of my good friends has always owned Danes and homecooks using a recipe devised by a nutritionist.  All her dogs have lived a lot longer than average for a Dane. It seemed pretty simple to me when she described it, and she's certainly not the type to spend hours and hours in the kitchen.  She doesn't even cook for herself!  I'll see if I can get the recipe for you.

Good thread jenns, and very pertinent. I rotate between homecooked and dog food (Addiction raw dehydrated and dry). I can definitely relate to what a lot of other posters said, part of it is worry (and hence lack of self-confidence?) over whether I'm feeding my dog in the best way possible for him. So I want to make his diet as complete as possible. It's a just-in-case thing. But part of it is that it works out to a cost I'm happy with, he gets a nice variety, and eases the load of cooking (even though I cook in batches and freeze). It's a happy medium that I'm cool with.

brookcove

People weren't interested, for the most part, in ensuring long healthy optimum health for their pets.  So dogs then either survived and reproduced on such diets or they didn't.  Beyond that, Nature really doesn't give a darn.

Gotta disagree here I think.  The first dog I homecooked for lived to be 20 despite severe pancreatic problems her whole life -- this was almost 35 years ago that I started cooking for her and the vet's recipe was hamburger, rice and a raw egg stirred in when I took it off the stove.  Not what I'd call 'balanced' today.

My parents were among the first to give the dog "dog food" (Gainesburgers UGH) and Pip died at 8 from heart failure (and given the salt content of that junk I'm not surprised). 

Did food kill him?  No.  The fact that they KNEW he had heart problems and NEVER vetted him for it?  That did.

I honestly think food has *something* to do with longer lived dogs -- but I think a HUGE portion of it is that dogs today are simply better vetted -- their teeth are taken care of and more people WILL take a dog to the vet to be treated where 35+ years ago you'd just put the dog to sleep or shoot it. 

My parents had a FIT when I spent almost $300 on Pris 35 years ago.   It was, they thought, the height of STUPIDITY. 

Oh well -- my mother still doesn't think I'm very smart (and she was mad at me for MONTHS for going after Tink ... like it's any of her business!!) 

Good food *is* part of it -- but I don't think it's the defining moment in why dogs live longer. It's far more than that.

dyan

I have an constant thing in my head the kibble is not real food!

This is a great thread because I have been wondering about this myself. And I also feel that kibble is not "real" food, although I have always fed high quality kibble, although the majority of their food is homecooked. Kibble probably makes up 25% of their diet. They are on Evo Red Meat Small bites and sometimes other high quality samples that I am given at the holistic store that I mix in with what we have. They let you take all the samples you want and have every imaginable food out there, including new ones all the time. I only give grain free, gluten free, yadda yadda yadda.... I feel like I do a pretty good job of giving them a balanced diet. The one thing I worry about is maybe a lack of calcium, but I do give them a multi-vitamin every day with their salmon capsule.

Additionally, I want them to have variety. I wouldn't want to eat the same thing at every meal. I know they are dogs, but I think they deserve it. Honestly, with my dogs being small, I could probably feed them for less doing *all* homecooked, vs all kibble, especially when I buy meats and veggies on sale, 99.9% of the time when it's buy 1, get 1 free and I freeze the meat and local stores always have baby carrots, etc. buy 1, get 1....

On occasion, when I run out of home cooked food, and it does happen because I only cook enough for about 3-4 days, sometimes less, they will get wet dog food. I've tried all the expensive wet foods and even the cheaper ones and the only one they will eat is Caesar's, those little square plastic containers. I split one container between them along with veggies and a little kibble. I know it's not great food, but I do keep a couple of containers on hand for those rare times when I need to use it. Overall I feel my girls are healthy, although Layla could stand to lose about 3 lbs. She is a little dumpling!!!!

jenns

I'll see if I can get the recipe for you.

Great!

When I made my first attempt at home cooking it was because of a person who does homecook.. does some raw too...and for sure does'nt like kibble or any dog food.   But her concept was that dogs were always more healthy "back when" they were given table scraps and home food.  While she has a list of suggested food....they are in rations of 50% meat ( raw or rare ) 10% carbohydrates ( things like oatmeal, brown rice ;) and 40% veggies ( raw ground or partically cooked so they can digest)    She suggest adding calcium if you are feeding boneless meat and certain things like that, but her "Friendly Diet" is simple to follow and use. She says basically that this diet is like feeding the dogs of year ago..while they might not have gotten enough of one nutrient today.... he will get it tomorrow....thus its important to rotate the food with the different ingredients during the week.  Whats good here is that all foods are found in grocery store so easy to get and for those of us that don't want to feed the same food from feeding to feeding.... with this diet you are not supposed to.

My problem here again....is that Gibson is growing a lot...and I can't be sure how much he should be getting to eat as he grows...so when I saw him being so hungry and seeming to get even thinner than he is.....I  didn't feel I was feeding him enough and I lacked the confidence I needed to stay with it.   Too bad because it would be nice to kind of start him out with home cooked while he is developing....and yet I suppose it is the food companies that have scared me into thinking I am not giving him what he really needs to grow.   Thats probably kind of stupid for me because this person is a Great Dane person....owned and showed them for years.

I'm not picking on you Dyan or your friend, but I wanted to address this:

while they might not have gotten enough of one nutrient today.... he will get it tomorrow.

Something always nagged at the back of my mind about this concept, and not being a math oriented sort, I could never put my finger on it.  Finally I read somewhere what it was.  I'm a concrete person so it's easiest to use an example to illustrate:

Let's say your dog needs 118 mgs of zinc in a week (based on x mg per day per kg of weight to the power of 0.75).  You feed about three pounds of chicken, which provides about 3 mg of zinc TOTAL.  You throw in some beef heart for variety.  A pound of beef heart supplies less than 8 mg of zinc, which is pretty darn good.  You'd have to feed 14 pounds of beef heart in a week.  But beef heart supplies copper at a level of 2 mg a pound.  You'll go over the recommended level for copper by about double.  Extra copper binds zinc.  Now you are back where you started.

Not to mention the fact that I suspect there are only few people who have 35 pound dogs who COULD eat 17 pounds of meat in a week, not to mention any other ingredients.

So instead of meat you use more dense forms of energy.  Enter grains and starchy veggies.  But now this reduces the mineral content even more.  As we've seen, it's hard to supply certain key minerals from JUST a diet of meat - reducing the meat makes this even more difficult.  

If X nutrient makes up 50% of the diet and provides less than 50% of any nutrient, then there's NO WAY to make up for that other than actual substitution, or supplementation. 

It doesn't seem right, but remember that dogs DO have the genetics to do fine on opportunistic eating plans - it's just that my comfort level doesn't include living with the thought that I'm playing Russian roulette with my dogs when I could do it otherwise.  Knowing that it could be years or any day that one of my dogs turns out to be one in a thousand that doesn't have the ability to "get by" - I couldn't, can't, won't.  Every time they had eye goop, coughed, or stumbled in their work I'd worry it was diet related.  Heck, I do anyway and I'm pretty confident in my method. 

brookcove

I'm not picking on you Dyan or your friend, but I wanted to address this:

No fear in that!!!!  

Actually though,  not my friend, I don't know her.....she is/was a show person  and owns a supplement company.  Her diet is not defying other home cooked diets or even saying hers is better, but rather a good place to start thinking home cooking.      She says the diet is designed to be easy, effective and affordable while many diets and recipes are complicated and expensive. As she says..." this diet is far more nutritious and usable food element than any processed commercial product.  By that I believe its saying that this diet is better than any processed pet food.

So by that,  I don't think its better than what you are doing....or any diet that has been made up by a nutrionist.....but perhaps a commerical diet.

People have been brainwashed by the dog food companies into thinking that kibble is somehow superior to food, despite the fact that the AAFCO standards are a joke and there are a number of very disturbing scientific studies showing that kibbles formulated to meet AAFCO standards are far from being complete and balanced.

mudpuppy

..... a number of very disturbing scientific studies showing that kibbles formulated to meet AAFCO standards are far from being complete and balanced.

 Can you provide references (preferably links so that I can read them sooner rather than later).

I actually think the NRC numbers are pretty good, so before I started the 1/3rd fresh food I got the complete nutritional analysis of my chosen kibbles and canned foods and made sure that Prancer's basic needs were covered by just that 2/3rd of her diet (they were - she got everything she needs although B vitamins were a little low so I give a supplement for that).

mudpuppy

People have been brainwashed by the dog food companies into thinking that kibble is somehow superior to food, despite the fact that the AAFCO standards are a joke and there are a number of very disturbing scientific studies showing that kibbles formulated to meet AAFCO standards are far from being complete and balanced.

Well I don't know about disturbing scientific studies....... and I don't know that anyone really thinks that kibble is superior to food...I know that I don't...but I do believe the dog food companies have us brainwashed into being afraid that we can't balance our dog food as well as they can.  As you can see...that seems to be the biggest reason that people here have stated why they don't homecook.

That said.....and really...maybe the companies have brainwashed EVERYONE into thinking that dog food has to be balanced so carefully....and that is the reason so many people are out there doing consulting over pet food...

And how do we really know????  We know that they need nutrients to survive and be healthy......but do we really know that a little too much this or that in a food is so very detrimental?  I mean even in the Great Dane breed...there is much discussion if its calcium or protein that is causing some of their growth problems.  When I was making an attempt to homecook for Gibson...the calcium was one big thing that worried me. One person said give him egg shells...another said give him cottage cheese and it will be enough calcium...another said bone meal or a supplement if he is not given bones........all the time I am worrying that he might get too much calcium for his growing bones. My solution was to go back to dog food.  Yeah...I believe the dog food companies brain washed me.

 That's exactly what I decided, a few years ago. Emma had chronic demodex. I read Callie's article, and started adding canned sardines, salmon, mackeral, sweet potatoes, greens, and berries to her kibble. After a couple of weeks, I went, "What the HECK??!?!?!" and just.... ran out of kibble, LOL. Ena ate kibble, for a while, because she's a puppy and I was scared, but the dogs share everything, so I had to stop. Emma does not tolerate kibble, much.

jennie_c_d

That's exactly what I decided, a few years ago

jennie, so do you follow a certain recipe, making positive that each nutrient is in place...or do you just feed everything that you know is good for them?

Myra

The dogs ate whatever was left from the people food.  Both sets of g'parents were well off enough that they didn't have to pinch pennies at all (in fact, I suppose they would both have been considered rather wealthy by the standards of the time), but they didn't eat tons of meat, and thus the dogs didn't get a lot of it

You beat me to it. Yeah, the dogs got whatever the humans cast out or set out, including cooked bones.

As for me, I think the kibble is just fine. I give Shadow extra bits of meat because I like spoiling him rotten and getting a little NILIF in, as well. Plus, I use bits of meat as the mother lode when actively training.

dyan

Yeah...I believe the dog food companies brain washed me.

Then, you and will be brainwashed together. When I give Shadow bits of meat, I mean little bites, not whole steaks. I think a vet with a CVN probably knows a little more about pet nutrition than I do. I, OTOH, may know a little more about fixing a light than they do. Maybe.

"We are borg, we have been assimilated...."

Brookcove .....ok, now you're scarying the heck out of me!

You say every meal needs to be balanced, are the nutrients *that* critical that a dog can't thrive on one or two unbalanced meals in a week..in the longterm, not short-term.

I'm using HK Preference as a base along with my own added meats....is this, in following their instructions of meat/preference ratio, considered balanced??

This fear of not getting the exact ratios IS my reasoning behind using a base such as HK cause it has a vit/min premix added in.

I have no inclination to go it completely on my own, but I do like using the HK...seem like an excellent reputable company. BUT, is the Preference actually assisting me in the balancing of meals?

I do cook an average of 20# of chicken per week, along with 2-3# of beef heart mixed in (but not every week) and mix all this into the Preference in the 2:1 (meat/preference) ratio recommended.