DIY Homemade Dog Food
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Keep your dog healthy and fit with this easy peasy homemade recipe – it’s cheaper than store-bought and chockfull of fresh veggies!
I never thought I would be one of those dog owners who made homemade human food for their pups. Not in a million years.
But when Butters recently fell sick with an upset stomach, our vet advised us to feed him a bland diet – chicken and rice without any kind of seasoning. So that’s what we did – we poached a chicken, shredded it in a food processor, and mixed in some white rice and fed him this bland diet for 3 days.
That’s when I started to do some research on homemade dog food, and I have been so amazed as to how many different kinds of vegetables dogs can have. And with the help of Balance IT, you can create so many different recipes for your pup!
Now the best part about making homemade dog food – just like making anything at home – is that you know exactly what is going into the dog bowl, and not any of that questionable gelatinous gunk from the canned food.
But it’s important to note that dogs have different nutrient requirements than humans for their proportional body size, such as:
- High-quality protein (meat, seafood, dairy or eggs)
- Fat (meat or oil)
- Carbohydrates (grains or vegetables)
- Calcium (dairy)
- Essential fatty acids (egg yolks or oatmeal)
Now this recipe here has a balance of 50% protein, 25% veggies and 25% grains, but the ratios can easily be adjusted to suit your pup’s breed and/or needs.
Once you’ve made your batch, you can divide them up into single servings, note the date, and freeze it. When ready to serve, you can defrost it in the fridge overnight and nuke it for 15-30 seconds. That’s it! Now who knew that making dog food would be this easy?
DIY Homemade Dog Food
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups brown rice
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 pounds ground turkey
- 3 cups baby spinach, chopped
- 2 carrots, shredded
- 1 zucchini, shredded
- ½ cup peas, canned or frozen
Equipment
Instructions
- In a large saucepan of 3 cups water, cook rice according to package instructions; set aside.
- Heat olive oil in a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add ground turkey and cook until browned, about 3-5 minutes, making sure to crumble the turkey as it cooks.
- Stir in spinach, carrots, zucchini, peas and brown rice until the spinach has wilted and the mixture is heated through, about 3-5 minutes.
- Let cool completely.
Did you make this recipe?
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I’ve been making my dog food for the last 2 months & he really liked it. But now he’s not eating it like he used to. What can I add to it that is different? So he will eat like he did at first. I make him the ground turkey & vegetables.
I’m in the same situation. The first homemade recipe I was using was a hit! Our dog gobbled it up. It’s now about 3 months later and she turns her nose up at it. So, today I’ll try a new recipe, the one in this post. Hopefully it will re-engage her!
I had the same issue, my corgi was sick of ground turkey and rice apparently – I switched to chicken and oatmeal and now he gobbles it down like he’s starving, wakes me up at 4 am to eat
Excellent recipe, similar to “farmer’s dog” subscription but much cheaper to make at home. I use ninja chopper ($20) on Amazon and makes doing the veggies a snap. Thanks for this recipe. I’ve been feeding for about 6 months now and dogs love it!
My small dog went days without eating … even though we fed her top quality fresh dog food … in her mind it wasn’t “people good”. Her sensitive digestive system couldn’t handle people food. So, I decided to make a recipe the vets gave me: boiled chicken or ground beef / white rice … etc.
It worked well and she got better. So, I decided to do it everyday and added a couple ingredients like this recipe. I like this recipe because it took it a step further.
Thank you so much for making this goal achievable!!!
My vet is really discouraging me from making my own. Disappointing. But I’m still going to make it and add it to his kibble. Better than him refusing to eat because he only wants table food!
Fantastic recipe – similar to what the vets suggested
I’ve made this before but there are a couple ingredients I didn’t use .what if you think your dogs are allergic to chicken can you use beef ground meat ?
My Westie is allergic to chicken, turkey, beef and pork.
I use instead duck or lamb at the vets advice. Somedays salmon, too.
My dog definitely loved this! Slowly converting from kibble to homemade food. For the rice, does this call for 1 1/2 cooked or uncooked rice?
Use cooked rice.
Easy to find ingredients, I just made this for the first time and put it into seven pint containers, so although your recipe said eight cups, I actually have 14 cups from a single recipe. It is cooling, but the dog was licking the stove while I was making it so I think that’s a good indicator! I have a 108 lb weimaraner, and a 71 lb black mouth cur (he’s the picky eater). they are eating dry food now, so I will start putting this on top of their kibble and transition them. I checked out the Balance IT website – very informative!!
Hi Michelle, many thanks for the advice ,i am making some tonight ,i was worried of the reheating rice in a microwave although dont have one the brown rice says dont reheat once cooked so bit confusing sometimes , so i will warm it in a pan for sure once thoroughly defrosted , i am more confident now to bag up and freeze,i am trying to simpify meals for my chihuahua and hope its a success, he loves all these ingrediants but not all together so sholud be a big yes hopefully tomorrow, many thanks for the help, kind regards carol
Apologies for the misspelling, my question was meant to ask if anyone can help if i can serve from the fridge at room
temp after overnight defrosting without 15 sec in the microwave as i dont have one as is already cooked ,i cant wait to make for my chihuahua ,if anyone can help on this .
Carol, when you divide the food into individual meals, use a good quality baggie, not a sandwich baggie. To heat, once it is thawed, place the baggie in a pot of hot water and let warm. If you have a food vacuum sealer, even better, as you can boil the bag of food. Just be careful to thoroughly stir the food and test the temperature before feeding it to your dog.
Hi! I have some input on this from my short experience of feeding our rescue Chihuahua we have had for about a month. He had tummy troubles a week in (possibly bc of antibiotics on an empty stomach) so we started making him homemade food and it has been going very well, he loves it and is doing much better. But this is about how I reheat his frozen portions. I fill snack sized ziplocs with his food when it has cooled enough, and once they are zipped and laid flat they are only about 1/2″ thick. I stack in freezer and every feeding time I fill a medium sized bowl with the hottest water my faucet will produce, then put the baggy in for about 10-15 minutes (until it’s room temp or warmer). The trick is to fill the bowl THEN put the bag in, this way the water stays hotter. If you run the hot water over the bag it cools the water going into the soaking bowl so it takes longer to defrost the contents. Sometimes to speed up the process I dump and refill the hot water bowl 1-2 times as I’m puttering around the kitchen. Because his serving sizes are small and in a thin strip, they defrost quickly and can even get warmed up. I would not give my dog microwaved good and this technique of defrosting/reheating works well if you have a few minutes.
Can you tell me how much to feed a 11 lb 4 year old dog thank you
Great recipe!!! Thank you!!
Just made this to try on my dogs going to introduce it to them with the remaking dry dog for I have for them. Hopefully they will like it. I’ll let you know how it goes. Easy to make used chicken.
When you give the protein to carbs ratio, do you mean by weight or by cup measurements? If weight, is that raw or cooked weight?
Thank you so much for sharing this! I can’t wait to try it with my pups. Do you have a reference for where I can find out how much to give them? I have a 18 lb Pug, a 35 lb Shiba mix and a 65 lb Golden Retriever.
I just made this. My first batch of homemade dog food. I used deboned chicken thighs instead of turkeys. My Maltese Love it. I can’t believe not only will I know what they’re eating, I’m saving a ton of money.
My pup is 6 years old. I adopted Sir Goofiness (a nickname) when he was two years old. I have been trying different brands of dry dog food over the years. He always turns his nose up & walks away. Then eats it at night out of hunger. He loves wet food. I tried mixing that with his dry food. He picked the dry food out & dropped it on the floor.
I made this last night for my pup. Gave him a couple of ounces. Wolfed it down. This morning I gave him a couple of ounces on top of his dry food. He put the dry food on the floor again. Silly dog. But, ate every bit of the homemade dog food.
I enjoy cooking so I have no problem doing this for him. My question:
Should I just drop the dry food & give him straight homemade? I am trying to do the appropriate food switch but kind of hard when he doesn’t eat the dry food. lol
Can I store this in the refrigirator? If yes, how many days it would last?
I would treat it like my own food. I won’t eat meat that is more than 4 days old. So when I make this I’ll just keep enough in the fridge for that amount of time and freeze the rest in portions.
Good recipe. I cook lots of varied meats with veg. You should add some form of mineral supplement. Look online, there are lots of options. You can also feed raw chicken necks. My dogs are about 40 pounds each and I feed about 6-7 oz per feeding twice a day. Get a small food scale to weigh the meals. It’s very easy.
Someone mentioned being careful of too many legumes, that’s peas, lentils, beans. You may need to add taurine to keep from causing dialiated cardiomyopathy.
I suggest sweet potato, canned pumpkin, kale, carrots, fresh or frozen greenbeans for variations on veg. For filler ie. Carbs; brown rice, quinoa, oatmeal (all cooked)
Just make sure you are adding all necessary vitamins and minerals.
Also recommended is adding organ meats like heart, gizzard, liver to balance nutrition. I also feed canned fish;sardines mackerel, hard boiled eggs and add fresh raw beef as toppings . Oils are necessary vegetable oil, avocado oil, fish oil, coconut oil.
Look at multiple sites for recpies, there are lots out there.
Hello, am I missing where in the article it says how much to feed a dog per body weight? I like this idea but want to make sure my dog doesn’t get too much or too little. Please let me know. Thank you.
My westie is getting older and was having problems with stomach upsets. I changed him to more organic ( purchased) foods with little success over the longer term.
I made this food more in desperation than anything. No more stomach upsets, he’s more satisfied and it seems to move more slowly through his system. Really easy to make.
I shred the veggies small. Half cup x2 per day.
Lee. It says in the info above that 1 cup has approx 412 calories…so depending on the weight and activity of your dog you can google and see how many calories your dog should have. Most websites I have gone to say 25-30 calories per pound…so if you have a 10 lb dog it would get between 250 to 300 calories per day…which would be about 3/4 cup of food per day. or 100 lb dog would need 2500-3000 calories divided by 400 then divided by 2 for twice a day feeding. I am not a vet so to make sure the info is correct I would suggest asking them…but that is the method I am using along with adding a dog multi vitamin to make sure my pups are getting all the vitamins and minerals they need. Hope that helps…
Much easier to make the second time around. I used a real turkey pan with lid and spread ground turkey on it and baked for about 20 minutes. In meantime in Cuisanart I put all the other ingredients. (I changed it slightly as well…I added sweet potato, frozen blueberries and a small piece of turmeric as one of my dog has some inflammation as is older. I also plan to add a few other things to mix it up once in awhile, ie raw egg, yogurt, cottage cheese and kale..all of which are good for my babies in moderate amounts. I also looked at a few dog vitatmins and have talked to my vet about which one she thinks is right for my furbabies to add knowing Im cooking for them and they need calcium, magnesium and other vitamins/supplements that they may not get in this recipe. I am finding ground turkey is cheapest and best source of protein. I plan on getting most of my goods at Costco because of costs…you at this time can get 6.7 lbs of ground turken for $17.59 (2.59/lb) and I can buy spinach, carrots, etc in bulk and cook and freeze. I have 4 dogs, 2 big and 2 small…I am giving big ones 2 cups x day; small ones 1/2 cup 2xday. They are gobbling it up…I hope I can financially afford doing this. I think this is great for people with one or two dogs…hoping I can make it work for all four. And so far no digestive issues….they just can’t wait for suppertime. Thanks again…
Hi,
What vitamin brand and types did your vet recommend for your dogs. I was concerned myself about nutrients that may be missing from this recipe. My Chesney is a 40 lb golden doodle.
Thank you.
Homemade dog foods are the best. Love the dedication to our beloved companions. Also alternate with freeze dried fresh dog food.