Dog Food Questions - merged

rhonda_jean

and here is the dog food recipe:

HOMEMADE DOG FOOD
1 kg beef mince - if you go to a butcher you'll be able to get a lower grade and cheaper mince. Our butcher is now charging $4/kilo.
1½ cups raw brown or white rice
1 cup raw barley OR lentils
1 cup raw pasta
2 cups chopped vegetables - it can be whatever you have on hand but NOT ONIONS or LEEKS.
1 spoonful of Vegemite (optional)
Water

Place all the above ingredients into a big stockpot. Cover with water and stir to break up the mince. Bring to the boil and simmer for 45 minutes. When it's finished cooking, top up the stockpot to the rim with water and leave to cool.

When it's cold, place into portion sized plastic containers and freeze until you need them.We make this once a week. It feeds our two dogs for seven days. The dogs love it and it's got no preservatives or artifical flavourings in it. It costs around $7 a week.

champys

Rhonda Jean congratulations on successfully feeding your dogs on home-made food! I wish I could get my cats off the Friskies and other junk, but they are so picky..... Years ago when I lived in a country where cat food was not available, I tried very hard with a mixture of rice, cooked ground meat and a little veg, but my posh Persian would rather starve. Until I brought back some gravy granules from the UK to mix in - that did the trick, but not always.
I wonder whether your biscuits could work for cats and I think I'll try them, cut up in to really small shapes, and maybe i should add some anchovy paste to get them to smell fishy!
Does anyone else have experience with cooking for their cats?

squeaky

Hiya,

This will be of great interest to the members who read our dedicated Pets and Pet Care forum - so I'll move this thread across there.

Thanks for the info

rhonda_jean

Sorry sqeaky, I didn't realise we had a pet forum. Thanks for moving it.

champys, cats need more fat in their food than dogs. If you're making the biscuits for your cat, add ½ cup of vegetable oil to the mix. If you're making homemade cat food, use a large tin of tuna in oil with cooked and mashed vegetales, plus some rice. Like us, dogs and cats need protein, but it doesn't have to be animal protein. It can be the protein contained in brown rice, lentils or vegetables. So combining the tin of tuna in oil with mashed vegies and bulking that out with brown rice will be nutrious but you have have to work on it a bit until you have something your cat really enjoys. Good luck.

champys

rhonda_jean wrote: »

Sorry sqeaky, I didn't realise we had a pet forum. Thanks for moving it.

champys, cats need more fat in their food than dogs. If you're making the biscuits for your cat, add ½ cup of vegetable oil to the mix. If you're making homemade cat food, use a large tin of tuna in oil with cooked and mashed vegetales, plus some rice. Like us, dogs and cats need protein, but it doesn't have to be animal protein. It can be the protein contained in brown rice, lentils or vegetables. So combining the tin of tuna in oil with mashed vegies and bulking that out with brown rice will be nutrious but you have have to work on it a bit until you have something your cat really enjoys. Good luck.

Thanks for the tuna tip Rhonda Jean - it is true that tinned tuna is the one thing the cats always love (therefore they only get it occasionally, as a special treat). You have motivated me to try home made cat food once more!

Old_Joe

:T Thank you Jean for those recipes - I will certainly give them a try.

anna42hmr

does any one on here use wainwrights dog food, we currently have sable (a german sheppard) on the wainwrights complete puppy - large breed food (turkey/rice one), as this is what the breeder had her eating, as it is gluten free, hypo-allergenic etc

has any one else used it? is it a good quality food? we origionally mixed it with a half cup of bakers to use the bag of bakers up(long story, but we had bakers puppy food left over from when we were looking after someone elses GSD puppy for a little while whilst they were having personal issues, ) however after reading a lot of negative stuff about the bakers (e numbers etc), we no longer mix it and chucked the remainder away,

however are we doing the right thing by giving her wainwrights, there is so many foods out there, its hard to choose a good one

RooBee

Wainwrights is ok as complete foods go. The main thing is, is your puppy happy to eat it and doing well on it? Is it readily available to you at a price you can afford? If so, why change? If it ain't broke...

No doubt people will come on and recommend other brands of food but dogs are individuals and what suits my dogs may not necessarily suit yours.

I have used the Wainwrights complete wet food on occasion (when it's inconvenient to feed their regular diet) and my dogs enjoy it. If I had to revert to commercial complete food on a full time basis, it's one that I would consider.

huskydog

i have 3 siberian huskys and have had them on wainwrights since it came out. it is made for Pets at Home by James wellbeloved. i think it is a good quality food and my dogs love it. one of my dogs is diabetic and needs a quality food to keep him stable and he is fine on this.

anna42hmr

thanks for the replies, i didnt realise they were made by James wellbeloved as that is one of the dog foods were were considering