Full stop the best thing I did was talk to a pet nutritionist and getting a meal plan made for my boy. Super affordable, easy to make up in bulk and freeze each week - and honestly it feels good to feed my boy something that resembles actual food. Turkey, carrots/zucchini, rice and vitamin powder - all told about an hour each week to prepare, portion out and freeze; and I’m pretty dang sure it comes out cheaper than the dried stuff in the long run.
We’ve had to start doing this because one of our cats just plain refuses to eat any commercial pet food produced over the last year and a half. He was formerly overweight and you couldn’t stop him from eating but now he’s actually underweight as we’ve tried to adapt and try different things.
Having formerly worked in a retail meat department, I know the expired product gets sent to be turned into pet food, but I suspect with supply issues during covid (and greed masked as inflation) manufacturers across the board have substituted whatever it was they were used before for something more inferior now. There aren’t any/many regulations on pet food nor legal protections for pets, so it can be the wild west out there.
Sure, for small dog that weighs i think about six kilos: each day he gets 120 grams of protein, 60 grams of veggies, 30 grams of long rice, and .5tsp of vitamin /supplement powder. The recipe also calls for .5 tsp of oils, sunflower oil is recommended, but considering I don’t drain the drippings from the pan after the turkey and instead cook the veggies in it, idk. I usually don’t add extra oil. For protein we usually go with ground turkey, veggies we go with carrots or zucchini (diced in the processor and cooked in the drippings from the meat) and the vitamin powder is something we can pick up from the pharmacy here, but I think you can grab from Amazon. I’ll have to look that one up later.
Each week I get a kilo of turkey from our butcher and cook it down, and that comes out to just about 7 days give or take.
This is what my poor grandma used to feed the farm dogs in her area. It was the off cuts of meat boiled and deboned and served with grains and veggies. Looked like prison slop, but the dogs loved it, and it still seems more appetizing than dried pellets of “food.”
Another option is to read the labels of some of the premium refrigerated pup foods and get the ingredients from those without going to a pet nutritionist.
Yeah I think it’s the portions though that you want to talk to a nutritionist for though. The ingredients aren’t rocket science: protein, veggies, filler (rice), fats and vitamins. But making sure you aren’t over/under feeding is where I think you want to be careful
Full stop the best thing I did was talk to a pet nutritionist and getting a meal plan made for my boy. Super affordable, easy to make up in bulk and freeze each week - and honestly it feels good to feed my boy something that resembles actual food. Turkey, carrots/zucchini, rice and vitamin powder - all told about an hour each week to prepare, portion out and freeze; and I’m pretty dang sure it comes out cheaper than the dried stuff in the long run.
We’ve had to start doing this because one of our cats just plain refuses to eat any commercial pet food produced over the last year and a half. He was formerly overweight and you couldn’t stop him from eating but now he’s actually underweight as we’ve tried to adapt and try different things.
Having formerly worked in a retail meat department, I know the expired product gets sent to be turned into pet food, but I suspect with supply issues during covid (and greed masked as inflation) manufacturers across the board have substituted whatever it was they were used before for something more inferior now. There aren’t any/many regulations on pet food nor legal protections for pets, so it can be the wild west out there.
Good boy’s eating better than me.
Can you share the recipe?
Sure, for small dog that weighs i think about six kilos: each day he gets 120 grams of protein, 60 grams of veggies, 30 grams of long rice, and .5tsp of vitamin /supplement powder. The recipe also calls for .5 tsp of oils, sunflower oil is recommended, but considering I don’t drain the drippings from the pan after the turkey and instead cook the veggies in it, idk. I usually don’t add extra oil. For protein we usually go with ground turkey, veggies we go with carrots or zucchini (diced in the processor and cooked in the drippings from the meat) and the vitamin powder is something we can pick up from the pharmacy here, but I think you can grab from Amazon. I’ll have to look that one up later.
Each week I get a kilo of turkey from our butcher and cook it down, and that comes out to just about 7 days give or take.
This is what my poor grandma used to feed the farm dogs in her area. It was the off cuts of meat boiled and deboned and served with grains and veggies. Looked like prison slop, but the dogs loved it, and it still seems more appetizing than dried pellets of “food.”
Another option is to read the labels of some of the premium refrigerated pup foods and get the ingredients from those without going to a pet nutritionist.
Yeah I think it’s the portions though that you want to talk to a nutritionist for though. The ingredients aren’t rocket science: protein, veggies, filler (rice), fats and vitamins. But making sure you aren’t over/under feeding is where I think you want to be careful