The preceding pages have outlined some of the simple principles that will guide us while preparing and making wholesome homemade pet food for dogs and cats. However, if you only fed homemade pet food as described thus far, then you would not provide all that your dog or cat requires nutritionally. As with any commercial or homemade pet food there are certain nutrients which are missing and need to be replaced and/or added in the form of nutritional supplements.

The single most important supplement, when feeding a wholesome raw meat diet, is calcium. I repeat, the single most important supplement is calcium. You must add calcium to the diet, but using human calcium supplements is not suggested since they often do not provide enough calcium nor any of the necessary supportive nutrients. So please keep reading to learn more about calcium, the importance of calcium in homemade pet food and in fact, later, I will even teach you how to make your own calcium supplement (if you want to do it).

Now when it comes to calcium, in the past, I used to always tell people about the calcium that our pets would obtain while eating a bird, mouse, rabbit and so on because while eating the prey, our pets would also eat some of the bones. But the bones are no longer in most of the meat we feed. Therefore, in the past, myself and many others would suggest adding bonemeal as a source of calcium for your pets. The supplemental bonemeal was meant to simulate the bones our pets would eat naturally in the wild.

Using bonemeal as a calcium supplement is how things used to be done, but no more.

While bone does provide calcium, bones also provide too much phosphorus which we want to actually avoid (the reason for wanting to avoid phosphorus is explained below — just keep reading). So if bones are not the ideal source for calcium, then where did the majority of the calcium our pets obtained come from?

The answer, which might shock you, is from the blood of their prey. Blood is very high in calcium.

While there is still some blood in the raw meat you buy from your butcher or grocery store, the amount of blood is not as high as found in fresh prey especially since the blood is drained from the meats we buy.

As a result, we definitely want to ensure our pets get additional calcium through the use of a good calcium supplement. The importance of a calcium supplement cannot be stressed enough and further information about calcium is explained in the coming pages. Now, I know what you are thinking — you are wanting to know right now, if calcium is so important, then please tell me now what sort of calcium supplement I should provide my pets?

So to satisfy your curiosity, the calcium supplement I now use is finely ground egg shells because it is high in calcium and contains almost no phosphorus. Okay, now I know you are wondering what's the deal with phosphorus? Why do you keep mentioning phosphorus?

Let's take four steps backwards for a moment now and talk a little more about the history of calcium supplementation for our pets. Let's start from the beginning and work our way forward so that you better understand why good calcium supplementation is extremely important for our pets.

When I first started feeding a wholesome raw meat diet in 1993, bonemeal was used. Why? Because at that time, that's all that was available. Although bonemeal was not the ideal source for calcium, it was the only source.

Even though bonemeal contains calcium, bonemeal is not a good source of calcium but why?

It's important to note that when I talk about bonemeal, I am not referring to the bonemeal you find at your favourite garden center (unless you want your pet to flower). Bonemeal used for gardening purposes would be poisonous to your pet. When I talk about bonemeal, I am talking about nutritional grade bonemeal which is for human consumption and which is found at your local health food store.

Over the years, as homemade pet food started to get more popular, advances have been made in terms of supplements for our pets. Bonemeal, slowly but surely, was no longer viewed as a suitable or acceptable form of calcium supplementation for pets and it's the same reason that make bones not a suitable calcium supplement for pets.

There are numerous reasons why bonemeal and bones are not suitable as a calcium supplement for your pets:

1. Bones by nature store nutrients including heavy metals such as lead. Some bonemeal could therefore be high in lead.
2. For those that don't know, the ancient Romans made their water system using lead pipes. At that time, lead was known by its Latin name which is Plumbum. The individuals who worked on these plumbum (lead) pipes became known as plumbers.
3. Since the pipes were made of lead, the water the Romans drank was also high in lead which lead to many health problems including infertility which was one reason why the Roman Empire fell apart (see, not just a pet book, but a history book too!)
4. Now, since bones can store such nutrients as lead and other heavy metals, it was important to ensure the bonemeal being fed was low in lead.
5. In order to make low lead bonemeal, one needs to use the bones of young cows and many, including myself, do not feel totally comfortable doing this.
6. Since lead is a concern, this is one reason for not feeding bonemeal.
7. Bones can also contain some toxic elements due to the fact that toxic elements, when ingested, can be stored in the bones.
8. Bonemeal is made from bones that have been first boiled, usually to make gelatin. As a result, by the time the bones are ground into bonemeal, most of the nutrients have been boiled out. Therefore, bonemeal does not provide as much nutrition as one thinks.
9. Last but not least, bonemeal is now difficult to find and expensive to have shipped to you due to its weight.

But wait, here's the most important reason why you should not use or consider bones and/or bonemeal as a good calcium supplement for our pets and this is where phosphorus, as mentioned above, becomes a factor and where the mathematics start to happen!

1. Meat is naturally low in calcium and extremely high in phosphorus.
2. Bones are not only a source of calcium, but bones are also an abundant source of phosphorus. Stunningly, bones and teeth contain approximately 85% of phosphorus in the body – that's a whopping amount of phosphorus in bones.
3. Pets need a 2:1 ratio between calcium and phosphorus (nobody knows the exact ratio — some say 1:1, some say 1.5:1, but I still use 2:1. So going by the 2:1 ratio, this means for every 2 parts of calcium in the food, there should be 1 part phosphorus. As an example, if the food contains 2 grams of calcium, the food should contain 1 gram of phosphorus.
4. Do you follow so far?
5. When using something like bones as a calcium supplement, your pet actually becomes calcium deficient. Why?
6. To understand why it's important to read #1 and #2 again.
7. When reviewing #1 and #2 again, we see that meat is low in calcium and high in phosphorus while bones provides both calcium and phosphorus. As a result, by feeding bones as a calcium supplement, you do not adjust the food so it has the 2:1 ratio of calcium to phosphorus. Instead, bones can reverse this ratio so that perhaps our pets are getting a 1:3 ratio — that is, 1 part calcium to 3 parts phosphorus.
8. One therefore needs to feed a calcium supplement that it is high in calcium and low in phosphorus to help create a balance in the daily calcium and phosphorus intake.
9. Our pet's body must have a 2:1 ratio of calcium and phosphorus to be healthy and if this ratio is not achieved, then your pet's body will be out of balance. This simple nutritional imbalance can then affect other aspects of your pet's health especially the kidneys.
10. Using a good calcium supplement to help counter balance the high phosphorus content of meat is the single most important supplement you can give to help improve the health of your pets.

Okay, so that's a look at bones and why bones are not used or recommended as a calcium supplement.

I know, I know what you are asking — but what about the bones? What about those who feed or say bones are a good source of calcium?

Well, it is true that some do provide bones in the belief that the bones provide enough calcium. However, bones are still providing phosphorus. Are the people who feed bones as the source of calcium wrong or right? Quite frankly, it's hard to say one way or the other with 100% certainty. But for me, providing bones as the only calcium source does not make sense. In fact, if you watch a lion eat a zebra or a wolf eat a deer, they don't eat the bones. They leave the bones and just eat the meat. Now, if you had a pet a hyena, then yes, by all means feed bones. Hyenas eat what the lions leave behind, the bones. In fact, hyenas eat bones so much that their stools are solid white!

Anyway, while nobody knows for sure exactly how much calcium our pets need, there are two things that are relatively absolutely certain:

1. Of all the reports I have seen, no–one has ever said that our pets need less than a 1:1 ratio of calcium to phosphorus.
2. Raw meat is extremely low in calcium while extremely high in phosphorus. As a result, even to meet the minimum ratio of 1:1, a lot of bones would need to be fed to reach this ratio. If you are bad at math, just trust me on this one!

Please remember what was mentioned earlier that blood, not bones, provided our pets with a ton of calcium and yes, blood also contains phosphorus. But the blood our pets ate while eating fresh prey was Mother Nature's way of providing our pets with calcium.

Unfortunately, many people get fooled by the fact that bones provide calcium. This is true, bones do provide calcium but we must look beyond just the calcium. We have to ask... Are bones a good source of calcium? When we ask this question, we realize the phosphorus content in bones means that bones are not a good source of calcium, even though they do contain calcium.

Instead of thinking of bones as calcium source, I think of bones as a mineral source. Bones provide plenty of minerals to our pets but at the same time, bones can also provide the body with too many heavy metals especially lead, mercury, etc.

I would like to quickly mention that you should never feed cooked bones to your dog or cat because they can splinter. If the bone splinters, it can get stuck in the throat, stomach, intestinal tract, etc requiring emergency surgery. Fresh bones have not been exposed to oxygen for too long and thus are, relatively speaking, soft and supple. But old bones can splinter due to oxidation.

I personally prefer to feed chicken necks occasionally because they can be easily crushed without us having to worry about them getting stuck or splintering — even if the chicken necks are slightly older and slightly oxidized. I talk more about feeding bones in the new sections of my book.

Okay, so what's the alternative to bonemeal and/or bones as the best calcium supplement for our pets?

I use and recommend finely ground egg shells.

Why? Why use finely ground egg shells?

1. Finely ground egg shells are not boiled like bones to make bonemeal, thus there is full nutrition in the ground egg shells.
2. With ground egg shells you do not need to be concerned about mad cow's disease.
3. Finely ground egg shells can be made by yourself.
4. If you do not have your own supply of egg shells or if you don't have time to make your own finely egg shell powder, then you can buy finely ground egg shells at a very affordable price. Since ground egg shells are lighter and more concentrated than bonemeal, shipping charges are much lower than the cost of shipping bonemeal.
5. The most important reason for using finely ground egg shells is this...
• Egg shells are extremely high in calcium and contain virtually no phosphorus! There's that word again — phosphorus.
• By using finely ground egg shells as the calcium supplement for our pets, we can more easily balance our pet's body so there is more calcium than phosphorus in their body

WOW

Let's take a deep breath for a second — because not only are we talking about pet nutrition at the moment, but we are talking about mathematics in the form of ratios! If you were like me and asleep during class, then this whole ratio thing might have confused you a little. If this is the case, then let me summarize by saying the following:

• Meat is low in calcium and high in phosphorus.
• Our pets need twice as much calcium in their diet as phosphorus.
• The best way to ensure your pets are getting twice as much calcium as phosphorus is by using finely ground egg shells as a calcium supplement.
• If our pets do not get enough calcium in their diet, then our pets are more susceptible to health problems relating to excess phosphorus in the body including kidney problems.
• Providing finely ground egg shells as a supplement is the single most important supplement you can give your pet that is eating a wholesome raw meat diet.
• You can buy finely ground egg shells or you can make your own egg shell supplement by collecting and grinding the egg shells yourself.

Please note, all of the above information is for pets eating a wholesome raw meat diet only. Since the raw meat diet stimulates the highly acidic digestie system of a carnivore — and since calcium requires acid to be extracted from the food so the body can absorb it, only those pets eating a raw meat diet should have a calcium supplement added to their diet. Pets eating cooked meat and/or commercial pet food will not make enough acid thus causing the calcium to be stored, often in the joints leading to arthritis, etc.