Homemade Balanced Raw Food for Dogs

How to make a balanced raw dog food diet at home. Are you looking to learn more about natural pet health and wellness? You've come to the right place. Click the link to subscribe to Veterinary Secrets. I was invited to speak at the Feed Real Summit and I was able to take one of their specific courses how to make a balanced raw dog food diet at home. They base their diet on the ancestral diet but along with following NRC raw dog food guidelines. So this is a national research council and they're ensuring that what nutrients are in that food are meeting all those acceptable levels of nutrients that need to be in the food to ensure that it's balanced for your dog. They have this great calculator. It's at feedreal.com. The world's simplest feeding calculators. You put in the age of your dog. Drula, she's more than 12 months. You put in their weight. She's 22 pounds. I put in how active she is. Somewhat active. They calculate the exact amount you should be feeding your dog which is 14 just over 14 ounces and then I'm specifically choosing their suggested feeding model the Real Ancestral Diet which is made of six specific ingredients. 70 percent of the diet it's made up of muscle meat. It's a primary source of protein and fat. The animal protein is a primary source of the essential amino acids. Methionine, taurine, lysine. It's providing the energy. Some of the vitamins such as B vitamins. Some of the minerals such as zinc, selenium. And this meat, it's representing the actual flesh like what a wolf, an ancestral dog would have consumed in the wild. Number two, it includes raw edible bone. It's a primary source of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, even collagen. This is chicken thigh and this includes this raw edible bone. So by feeding the measured amount, it's ensuring that you're staying in the proper calcium, phosphorus ratio somewhere between one to one to one to 1.3. And that's the NRC recommended ranges. So they're ensuring that those nutrients are there, the calcium and phosphorus, ensuring like bone health, normal muscle contraction, normal nerve function. And then by ensuring you're feeding the adequate amounts of all the different ingredients, ensuring that it's balanced. So it's in that exact range of some 1.1 to 1 to 1.3. This way you're ensuring there isn't any excess nutrient imbalances, too much or too little of calcium or phosphorus. That also leads to problems. The third part of the food includes a small oily fish. These are sardines. This is providing the really important omega-3 fatty acids, the ones that have the anti-inflammatory portions, the EPA, DHA. It's things that our land animals, they don't have. It also has other vitamins and minerals, iodine, selenium, vitamin D, vitamin B12. So the biggest thing by adding in this small fatty fish, it's a natural source of the omega-3 fatty acids. And you can ensure you can have that balanced omega-6, omega-3 fatty acid profile. Most of animal protein, the meat protein has omega-6s. It's the fish, for instance, that has the omega-3. We balance that ratio out, we're going to have less inflammation and much bigger positive health benefits, right? Being beneficial for things like allergies, arthritis, cancer, all the chronic inflammatory diseases affecting our animals. Ingredient number four, we have this guy here, liver. Liver, it's the most nutrient dense organ. It's really high in protein and rich in essential vitamin and minerals, such as vitamin A, such as copper, such as folate, such as some of the other B vitamins. It's required to be in the diet to meet NRC minimum micronutrient requirements. So you need to have liver, but it's being capped at 5% so you don't have problems with nutrient excess. That would be vitamin A toxicity. But if you don't add any liver, it could lead to vitamin A deficiency. So it needs to be in the diet, but once again, it's at an appropriate amount. And that's what's so good about their calculator. Number five, another secreting organ, it could be kidney, it could be spleen. I was able to find a beef kidney here in my co-op. So today's video is going to include kidney. And it's providing other vitamin minerals that aren't found in the other sources of animal protein that aren't found in the liver. It's a source of vitamin D, vitamin K, vitamin B, some of the other trace minerals. But it just makes once again off a small amount of the diet at 5%. Ingredient number six, we have a source of fiber. So the one I'm choosing, you can have low glycemic fruits and veggies. I've gone ahead and chosen these guys, green beans. The whole big point of the fiber is why do you and I have fiber, right? To ensure that the stool moves through your dog normally. It acts as a prebiotic and help feed some of that beneficial good bacteria. And yes, even animals in the wild, wolves, yeah, whenever they happen to kill. So they happen to kill a deer. They're not just choosing to eat just the animal protein. They're also going to probably eat the stomach, some of the stomach contents, which could include these. So that's why this is being included as a source of fiber. So this is matching the nutrient profile of a typical prey animal, 70% muscle, about 10% bone, 10% organ meat, the liver and kidney, the trace omega-3s found in the fish, the fiber. So that's enough of me going on about stuff. Let's get on with making the diet. So back to the feed reel calculator, as I put in Tula's weight, 22 pounds, somewhat active, choosing the real ancestral diet. They ask how much bone will you feed daily? Recommended for adult transition, 12%. And from there, then I've chosen the choice of all the different nutrients, making the primary protein, chicken thighs with 20% bone. Here's our suggested nutrients to feed along with the specific portions. So this includes 0.53 of a pound or eight ounces of chicken thighs, two ounces of other muscle meats. They also encourage another source of animal protein. So I've chosen chicken hearts, the heart itself. It's a great source of animal protein, cover most of the essential amino acids, as well as including additional taurine. And it's that one amino acid we've been so concerned about with DCM. And it's also really rich in coenzyme Q10, that really powerful antioxidant, which is just so important for overall health, especially where important for mitochondrial health. So all that's in heart. And this is more than I spent. I got about 30 little chicken hearts for about less than $5. So this is my other source of animal protein for you to consider hearts as well. Shows you, so there's going to be two ounces of the other muscle meat. That's the heart, 1.4 ounces of the small oily fish. That's the sardines in water, 0.6 of an ounce of the other organ, which is going to be kidney. I don't have spleen, was able to get that. 0.6 of an ounce of beef liver. That's the liver, which is in all these raw ancestral diets along with 0.6 of an ounce of the low glycemic veggies, which is our green beans. A few other things I would suggest. Number one, you want an antiseptic spray. I'm going to try to make sure that we keep our counters clean, et cetera. Two, I'm going to wipe the counters off with, just going to have some paper towel. I have some gloves here. I wouldn't always be using gloves, but especially the video, want to make sure we stay uncontaminated. You need a scale and you need to adequately measure everything, right? And it's got both units. I can measure in pounds or ounces, under milligrams, kilograms, if I'm wanted to. And I think we're pretty much set with all that. We need a little container to go on top of our scale. I've got yay here. Tool is a bowl. Okay. Let's get measuring and I'll just show you how relatively fast and easy this is. Here's our little scale. Maybe you can put your container on top. Let's go to zero. Now it measures zero, zero. First, it calls for eight and a half ounces of chicken thighs. Chicken thighs, 8.3. Okay. We're pretty close, maybe a little bit more, or eight and a half ounces of chicken thighs. Yummy Tula. Number two, it's the other meat or other animal protein source. I've chosen heart, 0.4. There, 1.9 ounces of chicken hearts. That is going into the bowl. Tula, you're going to have a feast today. Next, 0.6 of an ounce of kidney or spleen. I've got my kidney chopped up into chunks. Supposed to be less than 5% of the diet, so it should not be much. That is, wow, that's too much. That's 0.8. How about this little bit here? 0.6. Next, it's the liver. Let's go for 0.6 an ounce. The beef liver here is already, they're in little chunks. 0.6 of an ounce of liver. 0.6, that little chunk of liver. We have all of this liver left. I think it costs about $3. Got a few things to go and then we're ready to chow down. Let's put a chunk of sardine and see where we get. Just over an ounce, get a bit more sardine. 1.6, pretty close. Okay, about one and a half ounces of sardines. Tula really likes these. We're almost one more ingredient and we're done. We need our low glycemic veggie. The fiber I chose is the green beans. Ta-da, we have green beans here. We're looking at 0.6 of an ounce of the fiber, so chopped green beans. Now, let's see if we can get to 0.6 of an ounce. There's your green fiber source. There it is, actually 0.7 of an ounce of the low glycemic veggie. This has produced 14 ounces of food and this is Tula's complete daily requirement. A couple of points with this. I know with Tula, she's not a great bone chewer. In fact, she'll get to the meat and she probably won't crunch into the bones. I would be more inclined to just take the chicken bone itself and really just throw it into the processor and just grind that up a lot smaller. Then I know she's going to get an adequate calcium phosphorus. She can get the nutrients required from the bones. Because the way it is, she'll eat the protein, but she won't eat the bone itself. So that's one big consideration based on your dog. You have the option to make multiple things all at once, where you do the meals, plans up ahead of time, you freeze them, pull them out when you're ready. One of the things I found difficult to find was the actual, the organ meats. I went to three different grocery stores, didn't realize I could just go to my call up and they had liver, they had kidney, which was great, but the other stores didn't have that. I think that's probably not uncommon. There is a company, a wonderful company, they're the ones who started the Feed Real Summer called the Real Dog Box and they have organ toppers. So this is one they sent me home with. It was a ground lamb, spleen and beef liver, which makes it really easy to add your, you know, 10% organ topper, right? You can just rehydrate and then mix that into your homemade raw diet. It makes it a lot easier. When I was attending the summit and I got to go through the course, making a balanced diet, one of the things they use for a big source of protein, which is really, really cost-effective is chicken gizzards, right? It's just this big muscle. It's their ax to grind stuff up. It's part of a big part of digestion for a chicken or turkey, but that's, it's just a big, big muscle itself. Really inexpensive, lots of places, those you can pick up. The other thing they suggest is starting getting familiar with your local butchers, areas where there's going to, you're going to have access to some of these organ meats, some of the protein that we as people don't eat, but make great options for our dogs. But there it is, right? A balanced, raw, homemade dog food diet. And it's just so easy using their calculator. It's meeting NRC nutrient profile requirements, calcium, phosphorus, vitamins and minerals, amino acids, omega-3, omega-6 ratio in the correct amounts. And then it's addressing the concerns that you see with some of the homemade raw diets where a calculator is not being used. You're having an excess or deficiency of some of these essential vitamins and minerals. Some of the other nutrients just required for long-term dog health. If you guys are looking for a solution where, okay, I just, I don't want to deal with all this stuff because as you can see, it can be fairly labor intensive. Check this company out, The Real Dog Box. They make it easy. They'll ship stuff to your house, just looking at their topper themselves and seeing all the things that they do. You're going to get a balanced, fairly priced raw dog food that is easy for you to feed at home. So yes, I encourage you guys to use this, the Feed Real Dog Food Calculator. So if you're at all interested in making a homemade, raw, balanced dog food diet, try this out, the Feed Real Calculator. Thanks so much for watching this edition of Energy Secrets of how to make a balanced raw dog food diet at home. Click up there to subscribe, hit the bell to sign up for notifications. Then when you click that link directly in the box below, I can send you a copy of my free book.