Can I make my own dog food? Why don’t more people do this?

Question

Lauren Adelman · Answer

Can I make my dog's own food or my own dog food? Why don't more people do this? So the answer is, yeah, you can. You can feed your dog whatever you want, but whether that dog food is balanced and nutritionally adequate to meet our recommendations as veterinarians is another issue. In recent studies, they looked at people who home cook for their dogs and found that over 90 to 95% of these diets have nutritional inadequacies. And a lot of these diets are based on recipes that people have found online or what they think is a formulated balanced diet. So it's really important to recognize that the majority of these diets are not balanced to meet dog's needs. So if you are gonna make your own dog's food, it's really important that you work with a veterinarian or a nutritionist who can make sure it's meeting all the micro and macronutrient requirements and also meeting the needs for your dog and their health, depending on if they have any issues or not. So yes, you can cook for your dog, but I would not recommend doing so without consulting a veterinarian or veterinary nutritionist to be sure that this diet is balanced, because I've definitely seen the downside to feeding dogs unbalanced or inappropriate diets.

Ashley Bourgeois · Answer

Can I make my own dog food? Why don't more people do this? Yes, you can make your own dog food. As a dermatologist, when I'm suspicious of food allergies, sometimes we will have people make their own home-cooked dog food at home. What's important to realize is we have to ensure those specific nutritional needs of a dog are met. So if I have an owner who really wants to feed something like a home-cooked diet to their dog, I'm definitely not opposed to it. It depends on if we're trying to use it as a diagnostic tool, like to diagnose a food allergy or if it's something we're going to be using long-term. Especially if we're going to be considering using it long-term, then we would want to get a board-certified veterinary nutritionist involved. Make sure that no matter if your pet, your dog, has certain conditions health-wise we need to consider, or if they're just a healthy dog, we need to make sure it's nutritionally balanced so that we don't run into any consequences in the long-term. We would want a nutritionist involved and there's lots of ways to either see a veterinary nutritionist in person and be referred for it, or there's even online consultations that your veterinarian can have with a nutritionist. So can you make your dog food? Yes. Why don't more people do it? It's just time-consuming. We're all really busy, busy lives, so it can just be a hassle to do. But it is something that if you're committed to do and you do it the right way, can be really successful.

Elizabeth Thompson · Answer

The question is can I make my own dog food and why don't more people do this? The short answer is yes, you can definitely make your own dog food. The primary reason more people don't do this is that making dog food at home is not just a matter of simply feeding your dog things that you think are nutritious such as boiled chicken and rice and putting in some vegetables. Those are all good things but those do not account for all of the essential amino acids that your dog may need. And so if you're considering making home-cooked diets the recommendation would be to contact a veterinary nutritionist. Often you can do a remote or virtual consult and so it doesn't even necessarily have to be a specialist that lives in your area or even your state. And they can take various parameters that you have, health concerns, breed, age, size of your dog and give you a couple of well-formulated home-cooked diet options and then you can do that at home. Because of the steps that need to be taken, getting the veterinary nutritional consult and the time and energy that it takes to cook things and keep them well preserved, a lot of people don't do that. So it's not wrong to do it but you certainly want a professional to give you recommendations to create a well-balanced diet and it's just a little bit more work and so because of all those things it's not as commonly done.

Ori Orion Stollar · Answer

Can I make my own dog food? Why don't more people do this? Yes, you can make your own dog food. The reason not more people do this is because commercial dog food is very cheap usually, or at least cheaper most of the time than buying the ingredients. And if you're buying from a good company, then you know that you're giving everything that your dog needs, like vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and all of that. When making food at home, you can't be sure if what you're giving is enough to support your dog's needs. There are websites, I think one of them is called balanceit.com, where they can give you recommendations on how to make the food in a safe way.

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"Can I make my own dog food? Why don’t more people do this?"