rvlifer
Well-known member
For anyone interested in providing the highest quality food for your dog, this is the recipe we used to make our own dog food for our Shelties. They call it a BARF diet, which stands for bones and raw food. It is very difficult to find ground bones so we went with ground meat and varied it depending on what we could find. Beef and chicken were easiest but we also occasionally found other types. It is already a lot of work so we didn't grind our own meat.
I'm skeptical that the Nupro and other vitamins were needed but my wife disagreed so guess who won
. It would be a lot cheaper without those, especially the Nupro.
We made large batches and stored them in plastic containers in the freezer, such as these - Glad Food Storage Containers - Entre Container - 25 Ounce - 5 Containers - Walmart.com
One of our shelties passed before we sold the house and went full time in the RV but we still did this diet for the 2nd while living in the rv. Far easier to do in a house.
We did see benefits from feeding this but nothing like the raw food proponents or commercial food advertising would make you think you should get from switching to their food. Vets are funded by the food companies so if you want to research this they tend to be against a barf diet and you will need to do some digging to get past the subjective info from both sides.
Recipe
In a blender mix the following:
1/3 canned mackerel in water (sardine sized can), or 1 can sardines in water, or 1 or 2 eggs (organic recommended)
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 or 2 handfuls of kale or mustard greens
2 or 3 stalks of celery
2 carrots (ends cut off)
1 banana
1 apple cored and peeled
2 or 3 tbsp honey
Then add any fruits or veggies to make a full 5 cups. Frozen or raw works. Avoid white potatoes, grapes, eggplant, and peppers.
This mixture could be frozen and added to other food to improve the nutritional value.
To make the full recipe, take the above and add:
10lbs of ground beef, chicken, lamb, etc (including ground bones if you can get them)
2lbs plain yogurt
2lbs cottage cheese
10 scoops Nupro vitamins
15 vitamin C tablets, ground
15 vitamin E softgels (add only the liquid and discard the exterior casing)
15 tsp flaxseed oil
8 vitamin B complex tablets, ground
3 eggs
3 teaspoons garlic
Should make a total of 33 cups. We fed our guys about a cup a day so it lasted a month (1/2 a month for us since we had 2).
Pretty stinky stuff with the mackerel and sardines but our guys loved it. One of the downsides was that on the very few occasions we weren't able to feed them this recipe they weren't happy with any other food. Since most commercial dog food brands are made in the same factories by a small number of manufacturers, I do think this is healthier than any of those. Quite a bit of work. When we started it the cost was about the same as premium dog food at the time. Things may be different today. Owned a good number of dogs over the years and the shelties were the only ones we did this for. But it wasn't long after the time when a lot of the commercial foods were contaminated and some pets were killed. So it seemed to make sense at the time.
I'm skeptical that the Nupro and other vitamins were needed but my wife disagreed so guess who won
We made large batches and stored them in plastic containers in the freezer, such as these - Glad Food Storage Containers - Entre Container - 25 Ounce - 5 Containers - Walmart.com
One of our shelties passed before we sold the house and went full time in the RV but we still did this diet for the 2nd while living in the rv. Far easier to do in a house.
We did see benefits from feeding this but nothing like the raw food proponents or commercial food advertising would make you think you should get from switching to their food. Vets are funded by the food companies so if you want to research this they tend to be against a barf diet and you will need to do some digging to get past the subjective info from both sides.
Recipe
In a blender mix the following:
1/3 canned mackerel in water (sardine sized can), or 1 can sardines in water, or 1 or 2 eggs (organic recommended)
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 or 2 handfuls of kale or mustard greens
2 or 3 stalks of celery
2 carrots (ends cut off)
1 banana
1 apple cored and peeled
2 or 3 tbsp honey
Then add any fruits or veggies to make a full 5 cups. Frozen or raw works. Avoid white potatoes, grapes, eggplant, and peppers.
This mixture could be frozen and added to other food to improve the nutritional value.
To make the full recipe, take the above and add:
10lbs of ground beef, chicken, lamb, etc (including ground bones if you can get them)
2lbs plain yogurt
2lbs cottage cheese
10 scoops Nupro vitamins
15 vitamin C tablets, ground
15 vitamin E softgels (add only the liquid and discard the exterior casing)
15 tsp flaxseed oil
8 vitamin B complex tablets, ground
3 eggs
3 teaspoons garlic
Should make a total of 33 cups. We fed our guys about a cup a day so it lasted a month (1/2 a month for us since we had 2).
Pretty stinky stuff with the mackerel and sardines but our guys loved it. One of the downsides was that on the very few occasions we weren't able to feed them this recipe they weren't happy with any other food. Since most commercial dog food brands are made in the same factories by a small number of manufacturers, I do think this is healthier than any of those. Quite a bit of work. When we started it the cost was about the same as premium dog food at the time. Things may be different today. Owned a good number of dogs over the years and the shelties were the only ones we did this for. But it wasn't long after the time when a lot of the commercial foods were contaminated and some pets were killed. So it seemed to make sense at the time.