How to Make Dog Food at Home?
In our previous post, we discussed the benefits of getting pet food from your local butchers. Although most local butchers shops will be more than happy to make it for you if you feel comfortable making it at home – we decided to do a guide for you.
Visit the local butchers
The first step is naturally paying your local butchers shop a visit. You can discuss your options and concerns with your local butcher and they are usually more than happy to help.
Supermarkets and butcher shops alike have a reduced/sale bins that have a day old meat that you can use, alternatively, you can buy from whole meat butchers.
Whole meat butcher shops have a good chunk of offal, unpopular cuts, and animal by-products left over for sale.
From said butcher, you can purchase meat with bone, and organs to get started on your homemade pet food.
Add some fibre
We all know how much our pets love meat with bones, but for a healthy digestive system, it is important to add some fibre to your recipe.
Your recipe already calls for a good chunk of fibrous bones; making your food a bit more fibrous by adding lightly cooked veggies such as green beans, peas or carrots is completely up to you.
However, not all veggies are suited to a dogs digestive system, therefore, important to educate yourself.
Feel free to print this table out and use it for quick reference.
Cook, store and educate
Factory packed, mass produced dog food is ready to be fed and has a long shelf life. However, when you make dog food at home, you need to make sure you cook it a bit and store it to make is safe for animal consumption. The life of homemade dog food on average is 4-5 days in the refrigerator.
The question that arises is how much cooking time does homemade dog food require?
The average cooking time for homemade dog food is 3-5 minutes. You can heat olive oil and toss your mix on medium heat for a couple of minutes.
A lot of butchery shops like Taylor’s Market in Sacramento sell organic, in-house made dog food to their customers. If you want to switch to a safer diet for your pet but feel more comfortable buying it then you can look into your local butchery shops.