I love my pup A LOT. She’s just the cutest … when she’s sleeping.
She is also a handful for so many reasons. Beyond the behavioral battles, she has a very sensitive belly. We learned by trial and error with many types of foods. No matter what the combination- grain free, single protein only, high end, low end, even prescription- we would come home from work to a VERY sick puppy. She was crated at that age – so she would be stuck for hours surrounded by what she couldn’t keep down. There really was no choice in our decision to switch to homemade food. It was out of desperation that we started doing our research.
I read as many blogs as I could until I found what I felt sounded like the right mix. We confirmed with our vet and our trainer at the time jotted down the mix and took it to the animal nutritionist at our local animal Nonprofit. Thankfully they both agreed this seems to cover all of the right basis.
It’s not the cheapest, nor the easiest – but for us right now, we haven’t been able to find anything else. For you it might be a choice- because one things for sure- this is INCREDIBLY healthy. If you or I were to eat this- heck, we’d live past 100!
We shop at markets that allow us to buy in bulk, or produces that’s a few days past its prime- and this really helps us save. I also might decide to alter the recipe just slightly from month to month depending on what I find and its price point at the time. For the most part it goes like this:
Ella’s Home Cooked Everyday Meal:
I dump all the ingredients into a gallon size freezer bag, uncooked. We freeze the uncooked food until two days before we need it. One day to thaw, and about 8 hours in the crock pot on low (while we work) and that’s all it takes. This recipe is per bag, although we generally make 4-8 depending on the freezer space. Thanking my baby everyday for buying us a deep freeze! This means less meal prep in a month!
4 gallon bags will last us about 15-18 days (that’s two meals a day)- I would say. We don’t actually measure anything but the rice- sometimes it last us longer, sometimes not as long depending on the size of the batch.
- 2-3 cups of White Rice (Costco @ around .43/pound)
- 1.5 #s Ground Beef (We buy a 10# portion at 27% fat because shes not getting a lot of fat elsewhere in her diet- 3.80/pound)
- 1/4 pound chicken livers (about 1.89/pound)
- 1/4 pound chicken gizzards (about 1.89/pound)
- 1/4 pound beef liver (about 1.89/pound)
- 1/4 chicken thighs (only if we get a good price under 4/pound)
- 1 extra large sweet potato/cubed (.89/pound)
- 4 large carrots (.50/pound)
- 1/4 of the largest bunch of kale you can find/chopped (.89/pound)
- 4+ large eggs (we buy a carton of 18 for about $3 and split it between each bag)
- Salmon Oil (this will depend on your dogs weight)
- Helps for bones, joints, and coat- dogs LOVE the taste!
- Bone Meal
- for strong bones and teeth!
- Daily Multi Vitamin ( we just add one to every bowl of food)
- for anything else we may have missed
We used to spend hours chopping/grating/and blending all of this together in the blender, and then stirring it to make an equal and properly mixed batch. Over time we decided it wasn’t necessary-just like us, sometimes we get a well rounded meal, some days- not so much. But by the end of the week we (and she) will get all that we need). Now we leave it all as whole as we can so that it will fit/cook in the crock pot. Just add a few cups of water to the crock pot to aid the process and avoiding burning where you can.
I hope this helps the other puppy mommies out there!
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