Doggie menu-seem okay?

[gamecockgirl]

My dog has been on a homemade diet for a few months because of her food allergies (wheat/chicken). She’s a 3 year old 30lb chow/lab mix. This is what I feed her daily…

1-1 ½ cup cooked meat (organic lean ground buffalo, beef, or venison)
¾ cup soaked oats
¼ - ½ cup fresh pureed veggies (carrots, pumpkin, yellow squash, zucchini, green beans)
2 tablespoons yogurt
1 whole large sardine (3 days per week)
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 multivitamin
Pureed fruit (strawberries, apples, bananas) for snack
homemade froze yogurt cups with peanutbutter for snack

I would like for her to eat raw bones, but she absolutely won't touch them. She's just not much of a chewer and can't stand bones. I do give her bullysticks a few times a week, and she'll chew on those if she's in the mood

So, does what I am feeding and the amounts seem okay? Any suggestions would be appreciated

 

[Mordy]

Glancing over it without doing a detailed analysis, the first thing I see is a lack of calcium and zinc. If you want to do a home prepared diet, it's best to start out with a balanced recipe that is formulated to meet all nutritional needs until you are more familiar with things.

You don't have to feed whole, raw bones if your dog doesn't like them, ground meat with bone would be an alternative, or a calcium supplement.

 

[gamecockgirl]

Thanks I tried to do as much research as possible before I started the homecooked diet, and I was a little worried about that..didn't know if she was getting enough calcium in her multivitamin and the yogurt/cottage cheese. I guess it's off to the store for some calcium supplements.

 

[gamecockgirl]

btw-Forgot to add that she eats hard boiled eggs too. Don't those contain zinc? I haven't tried grinding up the shells yet, but I'm also going to start doing that.

 

[Mordy]

Check out this site for information on nutrients in foods:
http://nutritiondata.com

You will be able to find information for just about any food item imaginable, you can add them to your pantry and from there combine them into recipes. Just make sure that you pick the food including the matching style of preparation, so for example if you feed cooked chicken breast, pick the cooked and if you feed raw, pick the raw listing. (Example)

Make sure to set the amounts properly for analyzing.

Looking at these pages, you will see that for example cottage cheese, yogurt and other dairy products do contain some calcium, but most of them contain even more phosphorus - so they do not help balancing the diet itself.

A good rule of thumb is that per 3.5 oz of raw, boneless meat you need about 250 mg of calcium supplement, but exact figures depend on the specific calcium and phosphorus content of the type of meat and whatever other ingredients bring into the diet.

 

[gamecockgirl]

That's a great site-thanks! I'll definitely be adding some things to her diet. Hopefully I haven't done any damage to her in the past two months

 

[Mordy]

I don't think two months is a long enough time frame for any serious problems to develop. It's far worse if a dog gets excess amounts of a particular nutrient (e.g. vitamin A or D) over a prolonged period.

You also don't have to formulate your diet to provide exact amounts of nutrients in each single meal, it is much easier to calculate on a weekly basis.