Summary of Homemade Pet Food

Animal nutrition is not complex. In fact it is amazingly simple and wholesome homemade pet food should be nothing more than a simulation of what a dog or cat would naturally get in the wild.

Review of animal nutritional principles and guidelines:

Only one animal protein should be fed at one time when possible.
Although feeding your pet a variety of vegetables is a good idea, they don't need a lot, especially cats who need less than dogs — and in some cases, I don't even feed vegetables at all.
Meats should always be raw and dog and cats need some raw fat in their diet.
Vegetables should be fed raw, in most situations, and they need to be finely chopped to simulate predigestion.
When feeding ground meat, dogs and cats need their food to be the consistency of a very thick stew as they should eat and drink at the same time.
Let your dog or cat eat as much as they want at each feeding.
A mature dog or cat should eat once or twice, preferably once, a day and puppies and kittens can be fed up to 6 times per day depending on their age and breed — read Part 3 for more information.
Free feeding is not good as the carnivore is designed to eat a lot of food and then let it be fully digested before eating again.
Eggs should be immersed in hot water, not boiling, for about 5 minutes.
Since most pets prefer their food warm and since carnivores eat based on their sense of smell, hot water is added to the food to increase the water consistency and to volatize the odour.
Calcium is the most important supplement to provide your pet with as raw meat is high in phosphorus. In order to balance the phosphorus, calcium must be added to your pet's meal. I like to use finely ground egg shells.
Bones provide valuable minerals to our pet, but bones do not make a good calcium supplement as bones also provide a lot of phosphorus. Out pets naturally get their calcium from the blood of their prey. But since most meats have been drained of blood, we use ground egg shells as an alternative calcium source.

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The following are testimonials shown in random order. In addition to reading these testimonials, you may also want to read The Sick Pet Project.

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2010-01-27

I'm totally sold on the raw diet in every way — health wise, time wise, even money wise — it is less than I was spending on wellness canned food.

And if it wasn't for all your information — your book — your website — your informative emails I would feel a bit more lost, but I don't because of everything you have provided. You have made me feel more confident about everything.

Thanks again for everything and I'll keep you posted! :)

Linda

2010-06-10

Here’s our story.

We have 2 rescue Chihuahuas, one is a mix, we believe, with Jack Russell Terrier. His name is Lucky and he is approximately 8 years old. We rescued him 3 years ago. Our other little guy is Chico and he is about 2-3 years old. We rescued him November, 2008 and they said he was 2 but we think he was younger, just looked older and acted older because he was undernourished. We have been feeding NutroMax and Iams dog foods, which we believed were on the better side of commercial grade pet food.

Lucky has lost some teeth and recently developed allergies with wheezing and coughing. The vet gave us 2 medicines for him to give twice a day. On Saturday, May 29, 2010, he came to his breakfast, sniffed the food, shook and shuddered and walked away. I thought that was weird!, but when he gets hungry he will eat. Saturday night he did the same thing and also Sunday morning. By now my husband, Robert, and I are getting a little concerned. Lucky is a little chunky, but not obese, so missing a few meals probably wouldn’t hurt him as long as he was drinking his water, which he was. Well I tried giving him the canned food, which he ate for a couple of meals and then did the same thing as he did with the dry. Sniffed, shuddered and walked away. Well, for a week I tried several things, canned chicken, cut up chicken (sautéed) and then on Friday, June 4, 2010, I started searching the internet for homemade pet food. Praise the Lord! I found your website. I immediately switched both dogs to raw food on Saturday morning. I happened to have thawed a chicken breast, cut it into small pieces and they both chowed down!

Saturday I bought some ground meat, turkey and some beef (lean), and have been feeding them both raw meat mixed with some chopped frozen veggies ever since. The immediate improvement (within 6 days) in both dogs has been just short of miraculous. Lucky is not wheezing and is back to his old bouncy self. He gets the bounce from the Jack Russell side of his family. He hasn’t had his meds since he quit eating because we thought they might have been part of the problem. Chico is more relaxed and not as fearful, which is a strange benefit, but I’m loving it. We believe he was quite abused in his former life and even after being with us for 1-1/2 years still acted fearful. Both their coats are smoother already and their bowel movements are much better, still firm, but not hard. Believe it or not they are even getting along better with each other. I guess just generally feeling better overall.

I am so excited about their new diet, oops, new life style change, and am telling everyone about it and giving them your web site info and a copy of the condensed version of your book.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being there when we needed you.

God bless you and keep up the good work taking care of His creation that give us so much love. And isn’t love the key to everything?

– Hazel

2008-06-12

Sharon Hi Jesse, I am so delighted with your products. I really appreciate your sending the extra gift of the enzymes the past 2 orders. They are really good and I can see that they are extremely beneficial. Many thanks for making these products available. My dogs send you many wet kisses.

– Sharon

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