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This is a simple recipe for making cat or dog food at home in a printable PDF format. When a mass poisoning incident occurs, the pet food industry is quick to tell us how unsafe it is to make pet food at home because getting the proper supplements formulated correctly is beyond the ability of pet owners. The truth is a pet owner who cares enough to do it right can do a better job of it than a pet food industry that cares very little about anything other than quarterly profits. There are some excellent pet food recipes available online, and some that are not so good. The problem with many of them is exotic ingredients are needed, which are not easily obtainable by the average pet owner, from the local grocery store. What we've done is to provide a simple formula, which with the exception of taurine (required for cat food), is made from ingredients that are easy to find at your local grocery store. The bottom line is the least expensive cuts of meat at your local grocery store is orders of magnitude better quality than anything you will find in commercial pet food. Virtually any kind of meat your pet likes will work fine. Ground round, chuck roast, pork loin, chicken, turkey and so forth. Is salmon or shrimp on sale? Add some to the basic recipe for extra flavor. Pick up an extra bird or two when they're on sale around Thanksgiving. Boneless, skinless, chicken breast when it's on sale for $2 a pound or less makes excellent pet food and is easy to work with. The same is true for lean pork loin roasts when they're on sale. Generally, the idea is to target an average price per pound of homemade pet food in the two dollar range. This compares favorably to mainstream national brands at .65 for a 5.5 ounce can and you actually save a considerable amount of money when compared to high priced brands that often run .75 for a 3 ounce can of cat food, or right at $4 per pound.
The photo shows the basics of freezing and storing homemade pet food. Find a cardboard box that fits well on a shelf of your freezer and cut it down to about 6 inches tall. The box pictured is about 12 inches wide, by 17 inches deep, is about right for a side by side freezer, and will hold over 30 pounds of pet food without taking up much freezer space. Boiling is the simplest way to cook the food and keeps the meat moist and tender. An inexpensive canning pot works well for cooking large batches. A large canning pot will hold a whole turkey and you may want to slice off a few pieces for yourself if you cook one that way. Boiled turkey breast is quite good. The ability to store quite a bit of prepared pet food in a small space makes it convenient to stock up when you find a good sale. To use your frozen pet food, move a frozen package to the fridge about a day before it is to be used. It will be thawed enough to break up into the food dish after about 24 hours to be served over the next day or so as needed. Once you get used to the system, using homemade pet food is as convenient as using canned commercial pet food. IMPORTANT: If you cook large batches of meat in a large pot, you should break it up into smaller containers for cooling prior to preparing it for freezing. Meat is a low acid food that is prone to spoilage/bacterial growth at temperatures above 40F. A large canning pot holds enough material to prevent contents in the middle to cool properly. Five pound batches are no problem, but when you get up to 15-20 pounds at a time, split it up into 3 containers for the refrigerator to cool down. Do not leave meat out at room temperature for more than about an hour and a half, max. Most brands of commercial pet food use large quantities of what is listed as "fiber". This so called fiber is essentially recycled garbage left over from processing vegetable matter for human use. For example, after a beet has been wrung dry to make sugar, the left over pulp is "fiber". Instead of taking it to the garbage dump where it belongs, it is often processed into pet food. The most noticeable results of switching your cat to an all meat diet are four fold. Their coats will improve, the frequency of hairballs will drop close to zero, allergic reactions to grains in the food will disappear, and they will need to use the litter box less often to vacate excess fiber. While carnivores, dogs are able to metabolize a certain amount of vegetable protein as food, but it still shouldn't make up the bulk of their diets. By nature, meat is what their bodies have evolved to use as fuel and should make up 2/3rds of the food they eat. A brief review of the tests pfpsa.org has done, on a variety of pet foods, shows how wildly inconsistent in the quantity of essential nutrients commercial pet foods really are. For years the approach to vitamins and minerals has been based on the "more is better" theory. A great deal of credible research has come to light in recent years that convincingly proves the "more is better" theory is dangerously untrue. The vast majority of micro nutrients, essential to good health, are in fact fantastically toxic at levels much over trace amounts. The margin of error between a healthy dose, and a toxic dose, is often very narrow. Vitamin D3, for example, is one of the most common ingredients used for rat poison. By making your own pet food, the ability to control the ingredients and supplements is completely in your hands. "Complete and balanced" takes on a meaning beyond ad agency marketing hype for the life and health of your cherished companion animals. Cats have a reputation for being "picky" eaters. While it might be a little difficult to view anyone as fussy, who can eat raw mouse from nose to toes, or munch an occasional bug without a shiver, the perception is not without merit. It would probably be more accurate to say cats are creatures of habit, making them resistant to surprise changes in routine at dinner time. Getting a new kitten started on homemade pet food is easy, but making the switch with an older cat may prove frustrating at first. As with most cat things, taking it slow, a little bit at a time, with lots of patience, is the only way to go. The nice part about using quality ingredients is anything your cat won't eat, you can use yourself. Start with small amounts at first, as treats. Find out what kinds of meat your cat likes best when tossed out as tidbits. Chicken is a popular favorite. Dice up a small portion and parcel it out a piece at a time from your favorite chair. A cat that will turn up its nose at something different in the food dish, will go crazy for bits of meat fed as treats. Once you find what goes over well as treats, start making up small batches of homemade food, then mix it with their regular commercial diet in small proportions to start. Over a period of about a month, steadily increase the amount of homemade you add to the commercial food until the transition is complete. You may also find that picking out an especially tasty looking piece of the homemade food, and handing it over as a tidbit, works well. After half a dozen offerings of this kind, your cat will usually decide the offerings aren't coming fast enough to suit its hunger, going straight to the dish it sees you taking the tidbits from. The following is a list of references we've put together. The first 4 are nutritional values for chicken, beef, pork and turkey that can be used to fine tune your homemade recipes. In general, no changes are needed as far as vitamin and mineral supplements in the recipe provided. Depending on the kind of meat used, minor adjustments in the amount of calcium to add might be appropriate. Meat is naturally high in phosphorus and the phosphorus content should be balanced with the calcium added to the food. For dogs, calcium and phosphorus should be present in equal amounts. For example, if the total phosphorus in 5 pounds of meat is 5000 milligrams, the calcium content should be the same. If the meat and vitamin supplements total 500 milligrams of calcium, you would need to add another 4500 milligrams of calcium to get it perfectly balanced. For cats, you should have 5 parts calcium for every 4 parts phosphorus. In the foregoing example, for cat food, the total calcium should equal 6250 milligrams (multiply phosphorus by 5/4ths). It doesn't have to be 100% perfect, but it should be fairly close. A margin of error within 10% of perfect should be acceptable. There is a radical difference between NRC and AAFCO recommendations for vitamin K. Per NRC, a 9 pound cat would need over 80 micrograms of vitamin K, which compares to 75 mcg for a 150 pound person. AAFCO does not recommend vitamin K at all for dogs, and conditionally recommends a small amount for cats if fish is part of the diet. We took the approach that all other proportions in a multi vitamin being equal, the vitamin K content resulting from their use should be okay. If desired, 3 each of 100 mcg vitamin K tablets could be added to 5 pounds of food, which would double the values for vitamin K in our recipe. Included below is a link to an Internet retailer for taurine. Taurine is a critical element in a cat's diet and cannot be left out of the homemade food without serious health consequences. It has to be added, as there is too little of it in lean muscle meat to meet your pet's needs. We're not affiliated in any way with the listed retailer, and inclusion in the list is not intended as an endorsement of any kind. It just happens to be a source we have handy as a reference and their prices compare favorably with other sites we've looked at. Nutrients in 5 pounds of pork Nutrients in 5 pounds of hamburger Nutrients in 5 pounds of turkey Online retail source of bulk taurine powder in 1000 gram containers (Several year supply for several cats. Smaller containers are also available.) National Research Council Cat Food Nutrition Recommendations National Research Council Dog Food Nutrition Recommendations AAFCO Cat Food Nutrition Recommendations AAFCO Dog Food Nutrition Recommendations |