Home cooked dog food

[lmerullo]

Anyone got any advise for providing all nutrition for a dog, while at the same time avoiding allergies?

Vet recommends trying a limited diet to ease an ongoing ear infection. I have four dogs - until now, dog in question has never had an ear infection nor any signs of allergic reactions. He's thirteen. I do have another dog with skin and ear issues when he eats chicken. So grain free and no chicken are my only needs. Unless anybody knows of another common trigger. He will normally eat anything, so he's not fickle at all.

Since I'm home a lot more, I don't mind cooking my own.

He had pain meds and an IV for dehydration (he'd given up eating normally for almost three weeks ) so I haven't shopped and instead stayed home to monitor him. Today's dinner was white rice, cooked carrot and scrambled egg. He ate it all.

Anyone have ideas for nutrition? I'm less worried about variety - again, he's not a picky eater and will eat the same thing daily for years if given the chance.

[Simplemind]

Poor baby. Ours can't eat chicken and we recently had bought some food and found we were having the same issues. I realized it had egg in it. Duh..... chicken/egg. I can't believe how many foods have chicken in them even when they call it something else. We now have her on Purina Sensitive Skin and Stomach. So far so good.

[Teacher Terry]

Don’t feed grain free longer than a month. Many dogs develop heart disease within 3-6 months even if young and it’s often fatal.

[pony mom]

Check out Dr. Judy Morgan's website and YouTube videos. She's mostly a holistic vet and has published a book with recipes. She also integrates Chinese medicine and will recommend different proteins and vegetables for different conditions.

I fed my late dogs a raw food diet; first homemade, the last dog was frozen raw. Being able to control the ingredients and the quality of them is great. Making your own food is about balance over time, so don't stress about each meal being nutritionally balanced.

[bae]

My bloodhound developed some allergies and allergy-related health issues a few years back, so I had to start from scratch building him a diet, one ingredient at a time:

rice
rice+chicken
rice+chicken+green beans
rice+chicken+green beans+ yams/sweet potatoes

In the past month, I've been testing adding some beef into the recipe.

The Insta-pot makes preparation trivial.

[Tybee]

My husband has been making our dogfood for 5 years now due to ear infections if he does not make it.

He cooks turkey or chicken or fish, adds whatever we have in the garden, always adds squash, rice, often green beans. He just kind of eyeballs it at this point.

He makes up a big batch and freezes the tubs.

[lmerullo]

Tybee: batch cooking - duh! Thank you!

Since chicken is on my "no" list, I was going to try fish. I already know he loves tuna, so that will be my fast food option. I think I'll also get some fish from the grocery store - based on price - and portion it out for meals.

Morning of day two, and he's had three tablespoons of rice and five baby cooked carrots. One of my concerns was that he'd not eaten in three weeks and the meds require to be taken with food. Vet brushed it off and said he'll eat - I was not convinced. He is eating!

[iris lilies]

Some of our rescue dogs have terrible skin problems so our rescue head has a “hound chow “recipe she recommends for those dogs, I don’t remember what’s in it though. Blueberries and sweet potatoes are two ingredients.. We have one rescue dog who has been passed around every couple of years to a new home and he has terrible skin trouble. He’s also not one of my favorite dogs so this is not a dog I would ever take on. He’s kind of a little brat actually. But currently he has a family who cooks for him so he’s a lucky boy.

[lmerullo]

Ok - yesterday was a whirlwind of emotion and I thought I'd be putting my boy down. I was a tad overwhelmed when I posted. Thank you all for the replies. Now I've got a plan in place, this is doable.

Thanks for the guidance, pony mom! Great resource.

Forgot about blueberries, IL. I have some on hand.

Laid in some staples and I think I've got this! More rice, sweet potatoes, five pounds of carrots - he can't have biscuits or treats either so carrots will replace them. Currently I'm cooking them, but I anticipate he'll be able to eat them raw soon. Don't know why I thought fish would be inexpensive. I ended up getting a pork butt. Cheap and DH will eat it as well. Side note - ground beef is $6.40 a lb at Wal-Mart. Oy!