How I Easily Make Healthy Homemade Dog Food

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As a dog trainer, I understand and acknowledge the influence that a poor diet can have on a dog’s health and overall behavior. That’s why having a good food for my personal dogs is so critical to me, and why I started taking it upon myself last year to provide a diet for my pets that is nutritious, complete, and enjoyable for them.

In this article, I’ll talk about how I ended up deciding to go homemade for my dogs, what I learned along the journey, how my dogs’ health has improved, and how you can use my exact process to making dog food yourself that is affordable, flexible, healthy, tasty, and nutritionally complete.

The Problem with Kibble

For a long time I had my two small dogs on a high-quality kibble. (To read more on what makes a commercial dog food “high-quality”, check out Khayl’s article, Elongating Your Pet’s Life – Exposing Label Secrets and Lies.) In theory, the kibble I’d had my dogs on was perfectly suitable, healthy, and nutritionally complete, but both my dogs were still having issues related to their diet.

Grimm, my Italian greyhound-chihuahua mix, would get overly-thristy at night on a kibble diet. Sometimes he’d whine in the middle of the night, waking me so he could get a drink of water. And if he didn’t drink in the middle of the night, I’d have to helicopter on him first thing in the morning as he went straight to the water and drank way too much at once, which would lead to vomiting most of that water right back up shortly after if I wasn’t careful to stop him mid-drink. The kibble was just way too dry for him.

My Pomeranian, Wicca, struggled with dry and flaky skin while on even that high-quality kibble. It was a battle of brushing, moisturizing baths, and supplements, and she would still have dry skin at the end of it all.

The kibble was convenient, but it wasn’t giving my dogs the health benefit I wanted it to have.

I’d fed my dogs homemade raw food before with great success and improvements in their health, but stopped after moving into an apartment a few years ago. I knew that I loved the health benefits my dogs got from a raw whole food diet, but even with extra space to dedicate, I really didn’t want to deal with having to feed them outside or constantly sanitizing their eating areas.

I decided on making cooked dog food from home, so I could have control over what my dogs were eating without worrying about dangerous-to-me bacteria from raw meats.

Venturing into Homemade Dog Food

After making this decision, I figured out how much food my dogs would need to eat each day, by weight, and went to my local dollar store to search for appropriately-sized containers. Lucky for me, my local Dollar Tree had plastic dishwasher-safe BPA-free containers that were perfect for my purpose in packs of five for just one dollar. Needless to say, I stocked up.

Throughout the week I started collecting ingredients I knew I would want to incorporate into the dog food, and finally one Sunday morning I busted out the old slow-cooker and got to work.

After some research and careful consideration, I started my first weekly batch with brown rice, sweet potato, spinach, fresh broccoli, a few crushed-up eggs (shell and all) and a big fat tube of store-bought ground turkey. I also had some frozen plain salmon in the back of my freezer that I was certain I would never get around to, so I chopped it up and in it went.

I’m notoriously not-a-cook, and back then I was really worried I might ruin the food somehow. Maybe I’d set the heat too high, or manage to forget that the slow cooker was even on. I was sure that if anyone could ruin a crockpot dump dog food recipe, it was me.

It also didn’t help that I hadn’t used my crock pot in at least a year; anything I could cook for myself with the slow cooker had ben reallocated to the instant pot I bought sometime last year, and the poor thing had been sitting mostly-forgotten in one of my kitchen cabinets.

Quite to my surprise, the first batch of food was mostly successful. My first batch of homemade dog food cooked entirely in the background.

By the time it was ready to portion out into the containers, I had made more than a week’s worth of food for my two dogs for about the same cost as a week’s worth of the high-quality kibble I was feeding them previously. How could I argue with that?

When it was all cooked, portioned out, and cooled, I gave my dogs a half-day’s portion mixed with half kibble.

The dogs ate with gusto. I mean it. They devoured that stuff.

I spent a week increasing the ratio of homemade food to kibble, monitoring their behavior, stools, and other habits. By the end of the week, both of my dogs were happily eating just the homemade food, and I was able to retire the kibble from being the main part of their diet.

Tip: I still have a large amount of that leftover kibble portioned out in gallon-size ziplock bags in my spare freezer. If you have the space, I recommend doing that to keep the kibble as backup emergency food and to use as training rewards. There’s no reason to throw out the kibble assuming it is a decent quality if you have the means to save it.

What I Learned Making Homemade Dog Food

There was certainly a learning curve to making dog food, and I’ve refined my methods along the way. Over dozens of batches of dog food over so many months, I feel that I’ve really hit my stride with the Sunday dog food batches as a ritual or habit. Actually, I kind of look forward to it.

Some things in the actual cooking process haven’t changed much at all. I still use the same core ingredients: brown rice, something green, and a large tube of ground turkey, beef, or chicken. I still dump it in the crock pot, portion it out when it’s all cooked through, and it still is mostly a hands-off process.

But I’ve also learned ways to save time, money, and make the whole process more efficient. Here are a list of ways I’ve improved the craft of making weekly batches of homemade dog food, and things you can do to start off strong when you start making your own as well.

Making bone broth for dogs in the slow cooker

Nowadays, on Saturday evenings, I start the dog food process by dumping a whole package of plain chicken leg drumsticks into the crockpot. When the chicken is done cooking, I shred up the meat and put it in a container for myself in the refrigerator, leaving just the bones, cartilage bits, and the tiniest shreds of meat in the crockpot.

Then, I add water to the slow cooker to cover the bones, and set that to the lowest heat overnight.

In the morning, I remove and discard all the chicken bones, which leaves a rich dog-safe bone broth (I say dog-safe because store-bought broth can have ingredients that are toxic to dogs, or have potentially-harmful preservatives). This broth is awesome for dogs in a number of ways, and can improve gut and joint health, maintain a good skin and coat, and provide liver support.

The dogs also seem to love the taste of chicken-rice better than just plain brown rice. Shocker, right?

I love that they love the taste, and it gives the rice more nutritional value than it would without the broth.

Starting the rice first

If you use rice in your dog food recipe, start cooking the rice first. In my first batch of dog food, I just kind of dumped the rice in with some water and threw the rest of the ingredients in at the same time. I mixed them up, and left it to cook.

This resulted in half-cooked rice, which didn’t upset any stomachs, but also didn’t get properly digested.

Now that I let the brown rice cook in the broth for an hour or so before adding other ingredients, the rice gets a chance to soak up all that moisture and there are no more rice pellet poops.

Yes, this is an extra step, but it’s barely any trouble. I just dump the rice in, agitate it, and return in an hour to do the normal prep that I did before. It’s still incredibly easy, and provides a lot of extra nutrition for little extra cost at all.

Organ Meats in Dog Food

Another thing I switched into doing very quickly was incorporating organ meats into my homemade dog foods. I learned the health benefits and importance of secreting organs in dog food from when I was making homemade raw food for my dogs a few years ago.

Luckily, my local grocery store happens to have a “weird meats” (my words, not theirs) section where I periodically find turkey necks, beef liver, (white) tripe, and kidney. They also sometimes carry chicken livers out with the “regular” meat section, which I clean out whenever I see.

I always buy liver when I find it, and I try to keep a couple packs of kidney around as well. (Kidney smells awful, if you were at all curious.) I also sometimes manage to haul myself over to my local butcher, where they have organ meats almost all the time.

Adding organ meats doesn’t have to be an extra step, but I tend to prefer adding them in in the last stretch of the cooking process so that they aren’t quite as cooked as the rest of the food. This should help retain most of the nutritional value that these organs provide, since they are absolutely packed with copper, iron, zinc and essential fatty acids that I want to keep as in-tact as possible.

How I supplement my homemade dog food

My homemade dog food tends to be pretty well-rounded. Although I change up the recipe as it suits me, it always has staples that tend to cover all the bases of macronutrient and micronutrient content.

However, I’m a human, and humans make errors. So there are a few things I’m always careful to add to my dog food now that I have the routine down.

The first thing I have historically added is dietary bone meal. Bone meal is a powder made of finely-ground animal bones. There’s two distinct types of bone meal, so if you plan on incorporating it into your food, make sure you get dietary bone meal for dogs, and not bone meal for use in the garden.

Bone meal is important because dogs need calcium and phosphorous, period. Which they don’t get a lot of if their diet is mostly ground muscle meat and plants. I combat this nutritional gap by adding bone meal for dogs to the dog food batches.

In the future, I will probably phase bone meal out or at least reduce the quantity I use in my recipes, because I recently purchased a Weston 22 meat grinder (expect a review of that in the future!) and plan to start grinding meat for homemade dog food myself, bone and all. It was an investment for sure, but I fully expect it to pay off. That thing is 1.5 horsepower and looks like an absolute tank.

Turmeric powder is another supplement I add to the dog food, usually while the rice is cooking. The turmeric powder dissolves in broth or water, and is then cooked into the rice.

Turmeric is widely appreciated for its anti-inflammatory properties and is a great supplement for dogs in the right dose (usually recommended 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon for each 10 lbs of weight). In my recipes, I put up to 3 tablespoons in the entire batch of dog food. After doing the math, the maximum of 3 tablespoons makes each daily dose of turmeric for each dog roughly 1/3 teaspoons per day (there is some variance between dogs, as I feed my dogs based on their weight). My dogs range from 12 to 18 lbs, so this amount is fairly appropriate for their size.

The one I love most, however, is the nutrient blend by Just Food For Dogs.

The Just Food For Dogs nutrient blend is a specially-formulated-for-dogs multivitamin and mineral blend supplement for do-it-yourself homemade dog food. Each container of nutrient blend comes with one of Just Food For Dogs homemade dog food recipes, like “Fish and Sweet Potato” and “Lamb and Brown Rice.”

As a supplement, it’s made to be added to Just Food For Dogs’ make-it-yourself recipes for homemade food, but I add it to my own recipes to fill out any nutritional gaps. It’s essentially a multivitamin for dogs, and I feel way “safer” about making my own dog food when adding it to my recipes because I know that my dogs are getting everything they need out of their food.

Each container of the nutrient blend is meant to make 30 lbs of DIY homemade dog food. I use one container each month (I put 1/4 of the package in each batch of dog food) just to help fill any gaps in that week’s recipe. This spreads the nutrient blend over what ends up being more like 40 lbs, but I still feel that we get a lot out of it even at that amount.

My homemade food tends to have a lot of vitamins and minerals from a lot of different sources, and the nutrient blend is mostly for a peace of mind.

This has really put my mind at ease on days when I’m not sure if a batch of food is “complete” enough. After all, the biggest risk in homemade dog food is just human error.

In fact, if you’re not into the idea of making your own dog food from scratch for exactly that reason, Just Food For Dogs is a great done-for-you option. In addition to their nutrient blends and supplements, they also have a food delivery service of awesome cooked dog food recipes!

They have both frozen and pantry-safe cooked food options available for both cats and dogs, and you can buys as a one-time purchase or on an auto-ship schedule. I know that I will definitely be buying some of their ready-made “PantryFresh” food for when I need to travel with my dogs; apparently the pantry items have a shelf life of two years and can be stored without refrigeration! I have no plans to stop making my own food from home, but I can definitely think of times that a no-refrigeration option is going to be very helpful!

Click Here and Save $10 on All JustFoodForDogs.com Orders Over $50

Frozen and Pre-Packaged Vegetables for Dog Food

In my first few batches of dog food, the vegetables I added were fresh, meaning I had to wash and cut them and store any extras in the refrigerator. And while fresh veggies still do make their way into my dogs’ food (see: “freezer dump” below), I really hated buying fresh vegetables solely for making dog food.

I always had to ensure that I used up every last bit of it so it didn’t go to waste, which reduced how flexible I could be with their diets and how much variety I could give them. I always had to wash them, which I hated doing, and it always left me worried if I washed them well enough. And having to cut up broccoli and other vegetables took up most of my preparation time for the food and made a bigger mess to clean up afterwards.

When I was at my local dollar store looking to stock up on extra dog food containers, I passed the freezer section and noticed bags of vegetable mixes in various combinations of broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower – all dog-safe ingredients. I checked the label and found that they were literally just frozen vegetables, no preservatives, seasonings, or anything else. Totally 100% dog-safe, and only one dollar per bag.

Since then, I’ve been using bagged vegetables in my recipes. I just cut open one bag of the vegetable mix and dump it into the slow cooker. It’s so much easier than having to cut up fresh vegetables, and I can store the bags easily in the spare freezer.

I definitely still do use fresh vegetables and other foods in my dog food batches, especially dog-safe “human foods” that I’m already frequently buying for myself and usually have on-hand, like sweet potatoes, brown rice, and berries.

Which brings me to my next point, and probably my favorite part of making dog food myself from home: the freezer-dump.

Flexible Diets for Dogs: The “Freezer Dump”

With the ritual I’ve developed around making dog food from home, I’ve learned to add variety to my dogs’ diet. I love giving them a recipe that’s new and unique each and every week. Maybe it’s my sentimental side talking, but I adore the idea that they might enjoy getting to explore new flavors and combinations.

(This is, again, why I love that nutrient blend from Just Food For Dogs. I can totally be at-ease when I switch a recipe up a little!)

What I’ve been calling the “freezer dump” has also become a fun new part of that ritual that lets me waste less food while also getting to give my dogs new flavor combinations.

Once a week, I look through the freezer for forgotten foods and scraps that I’ll realistically never get around to. The thing about freezer foods is that if you don’t get to them soon enough, they get freezer burn, which makes them unappetizing to humans, but still perfectly safe to consume. If I find something that’s been in the freezer long enough to be on the cusp of I-don’t-want-to-eat-that, I’ll reallocate it to dog food. As long as it’s a dog-safe food without preservatives, added sugars, or seasonings, I’ll usually add one item per week to the dog food to pad it out and get rid of foods I’d otherwise waste.

In the refrigerator, I look for anything that’s going to go bad if not used swiftly. For example, I’m really notorious for buying more eggs than I’ll eat before they expire, so eggs become a secondary protein for my dog food fairly often. I’ve used tomatoes that are just a little too soft for me to want to eat them, the bananas that started getting mushy, scrapings from the bottom of all-natural peanut butter jars, and even whole packs of plain chicken that I forgot just one day too long in the refrigerator to be safe for human consumption (but still perfectly fine for dogs).

Not only do I get rid of forgotten dog-safe freezer food, I also throw away less scraps off my own food. Just last week, I made sweet potato fries for myself, and instead of tossing out the extra bits, I just threw the scraps into a tupperware in the refrigerator to be used for dog food. You can see them in the picture below, a mix of diced bits and shredded skins from peeling them. If I wasn’t making my own dog food, so much otherwise-useful food would just be thrown away.

I always check labels when I do this freezer/refrigerator/pantry dump, and if in doubt I always verify that what I have is in fact dog-safe before adding it to the food.

This practice has both greatly increased the variety in my homemade dog food, but also serves to reduce the amount of food waste I produce as an individual. It’s almost like returning to our roots together, with my dogs eating pieces off the same real food I consume myself.

How to Start Making Homemade Dog Food Yourself

The best advice I can give on starting out making DIY dog food it to just start. What I’ve learned since I began is to just learn and improve through practice, and you will swiftly find a routine for your that serves you and your dog best.

Me, I like the low-waste lifestyle and convenience of the crock pot, and through my list of improvements above, I’ve found ways to really make the process fun and easy. You can take any of my ideas I’ve gone over and hit the ground running, or take your time with the process by experimenting and mixing the homemade food with kibble. You can use the crock pot, or find another way of cooking that’s best for your situation.

As long as you’re making recipes that are nutritionally complete, everything else is kind of up to personal preference. And if you’re not sure how nutritionally complete your food is, you can always start out with a premade real-food diet, like Just Food For Dogs mentioned above, until you are more confident with your home-cooking abilities.

At the end of the day, if you want to start making your own dog food, you just have to start. Most dogs are going to appreciate even your first try at a tasty new food, and it only gets better from there.