Before You Start Feeding Your Dog Homemade Food

Posted by Dr Sam, On 15 Feb, 2023 | Updated On 15 Feb, 2023 No Comments »

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Feeding your dog homemade food is better than commercially prepared food. It gives you the opportunity to give your dog customized meals as dictate by her lifestyle, health status and other parameters.

But there’re facts you must know before you start feeding your dog food prepared in your kitchen less you do her more harms than good.

1. Essential Nutrients

A good and balanced homemade dog diet should comprise all of the nutrients that a dog needs for sound health and wellness and must contain these elements:

• Proteins – is the building blocks of cells. They help to build muscles and repair the body. Good food sources of proteins are lean meat, eggs, and cheese.
• Vitamins and Minerals – they help to sustain your dog’s body frameworks. Body structure like bones, blood cells and skin are supported by vitamins. Minerals also support body system metabolism, turning food into energy and other products needed to sustain life. There are huge number of food sources for vitamins.
• Fiber – is tiny thread-like materials in food stuff. They help in absorption of nutrients by slowing digestion. It also helps in prevention of constipation. Great food sources of fibre are rice, potatoes and vegetables among others.
• Fats – essential fatty acids like Omega-3 and Omega-6 oils help to maintain cells. They help growth and healing of wounds in your dog. The oils are great sources of vitamins A, D, E, and K. Meat, oily fish, sunflower oil and linseed oil are good sources of fats for your dog.
• Water – is very essential for your dog’s life. No amount of nutrients will be useful to an animal that is deprived of water. Make sure your dog has access to fresh water. Do you know how much water should a dog drink per day?

2. Food Allergies

Generally, allergy is hypersensitivity to harmless substances leading to strong reactions from the body. Food allergies in dogs are an overreaction of the dog’s immune system when a protein is taken from a new food source an animal is not used to. Proteins are present in a wide range of foods dogs eat. Meats are not the only sources of proteins, grains and vegetables also contain proteins.

These are the signs you should look for to know if your dog has allergy for certain food:

• Ear infections
• Skin infections
• Dry itchy skin
• High frequency of hot spots
• Vomiting
• Excessive scratching of ear or feet licking
• Bald patches
• Diarrhea
• Soft Stools
• Poor Appetite
• Seizures

3. Dog Food Poisoning

There are quite a few homemade foods dogs must NOT eat. These substances are harmful because the dog’s body cannot break them down. So they can lead to slow or acute poisoning.
Food stuffs that lead to food poisoning in dogs are:

• Alcohol
• Chocolate
• Yeast
• Raisins and Grapes
• Onions and Garlic
• Salt
• Xylitol
• Sugar
• Lactose
• Nutmeg
• Hops
• Macadamia Nuts

4. Dog Life Stages

Do you know your dog’s life stage? Nutrition requirements of dogs vary from one life stage to another. Knowing the phase of life your dog falls will guide you in feeding her appropriately.

Depending on breed, the following are the life stages of a dog:

• Puppyhood ends between age 6 and 18 months.
• Adolescence begins between age 6 and 18 months.
• Adulthood starts between the ages of 12 months and 3 years.
• The senior years begin between six and 10 years of age.

5. Dog Lifestyle

Dog lifestyle involves the activeness of your dog and is categorized into four:
Inactive, Normal, Active, and Very Active.

Is your dog an active or sedentary pooch? This is one of the strong factors that dictates the daily nutrients requirement of your dog. Note that an active puppy will end up as an inactive senior dog. Therefore, a dog’s lifestyle changes as her life stage changes.

6. Health Status

Homemade dog food is a great advantage for dogs with health issues. With it you feed your dog tailored customized diets as her health status dictates.

Do you know your dog’s health status? If your pooch has no health problem, homemade food will help you keep her from getting sick and if she has one or more, curative quality of home-prepared dog food will make her recover on time.

7. Organized cooking and Kitchen Safety

Organized cooking is all about scientific principles to meal preparations with greater accuracy in order to prevent food poisoning and food-borne diseases.

Kitchen safety procedures are put in place to prevent incidents that may lead to damage and injury.
You must follow outline standards stated by Conference for Food Protection (CFP) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

This information will be beneficial not only to your dog but to you and your entire household.

8. Transition from One Diet to Another

When making changes to your pet’s diet, you must do so gradually, allowing her digestive system time to adjust. It is ideal that you take about 2 weeks for the process so that your pet is less likely to have stomach upset or diarrhea.

Also, allergic reactions will usually be seen within 48 hours of the introduction of a new food and may last for up to 5 days.

• Days 1 to 4: Feed 75% of the old food and 25% of the new food.
• Days 5 to 8: Feed 50% each of old and new food.
• Days 9 to 12: Feed 25% of the old food and 75% of the new food.
• Day 13 and on: Feed all new food.

9. Ideal Dog weight

Overweight and obesity are serious threats to dog’s health. To keep your dog’s weight in check, keep checking her weight regularly and compare it to the ideal weight for her kind.

10. Food Tolerance

Food intolerance is the result of poor digestion, such as lactose intolerance. People and dogs with lactose intolerance are either missing or have low levels of the milk digesting enzyme lactase. Keep an eye on your dog for food intolerance.

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