Feeding Our Pack
We feed our pack a combination of a homemade diet and raw supplementation. We feel the good health of our dog’s gut shows in their healthy teeth, coat and disease resistance. This process can be overwhelming at first, but you will soon find the variety and the results to be well worth the extra planning. You will also have fun with how much your dog enjoys meal and snack time.
The meal prep can be done easily in a crock pot or roaster pan. A batch can be made and refrigerated or frozen in individual servings. The diet consists of approximately 70-80% meat and bone then the remainder is made up of fruits, vegetables and supplements. When making a roaster pan, we start with 10lbs of meat/bone.
Let’s start with the meat/bone portion of the diet. We source seasonal meats to provide our dogs with variety but also keep the costs down. We look for natural, good quality meat, as this comprises the majority of their diet. Examples of our meat options are as follows.
★ Purchasing a local steer or hog from the yearly 4-H auctions.
★ During hunting season is a great opportunity to purchase a deer or even take leftover scraps from a fellow hunter. This has provided us with deer and goose carcasses with quite a bit of meat left or some great parts for treats as we will discuss later.
★ After the holidays many stores will have all-natural/organic turkeys available for sale at huge discounts.
★ If you look locally, you might be able to find a supplier/homesteader that has meat rabbits available for sale.
★ If you have a local meat market or meat locker you can also purchase beef scraps and fat trimmings. We especially like to add this extra fat during the winter or to our pregnant and nursing moms. If we don’t have the fat scraps available a spoonful of coconut oil in the roaster pan will help with the increased demand for fat calories.
For chickens, turkeys and rabbits we use our meat/bone grinder to grind the whole carcass including organ meats. This provides the dogs with complete nutrition. We will add beef organ meats and extra fats to the grinding as well, but the grinder we own is not strong enough to handle beef or pork or deer bones so those are left whole and used as snacks.
Adding the fruits and vegetables is the next step and can be fun to add some variety. You can grow your own seasonal fruits and veggies and share with your dog, even freezing some for the rest of the year. During the growing season, the options are endless but during the rest of the year we tend to buy fresh and frozen produce from the store. There are a few things that you wouldn’t want to add to dog food (ie. onions, raisins, grapes, mushrooms, caffeine, etc) but it easy to research online if you are questioning any ingredients. The following are some suggested ingredients.
★ Carrots
★ Cauliflower
★ Pumpkin (fresh or canned)
★ Garbanzo / black beans
★ Green beans
★ Broccoli
★ Spinach / Kale
★ Berries
★ Butternut squash (fresh or frozen)
★ Potatoes (white, sweet, red)
★ Kelp powder
★ Zucchini
★ Pears
★ Apples
★ Peas (although several of our dogs leave the peas when they finish)
We use mostly vegetables to make up the rest of the roaster pan with adding an apple or a bag of frozen blueberries per pan. We then add a non-inflammatory grain to help bulk up the volume of the food. We use rice, oatmeal and occasionally egg noodles. Just remember this portion of the diet doesn’t have much nutritional value so keep it to a minimum.
This gives you a good start to your basic recipes and you can then experiment to find out extras that your dog(s) will enjoy. We sometimes add eggs when our chickens are really producing well, or fresh goat milk when the goats are in production. Our dogs will wait in line during milking every day for any extra goat milk. Some dogs enjoy cottage cheese, kefir or yogurt. Have fun and keep your recipes interesting for you and your pack.
The final step before serving this delicious bowl of food is to add a canine multivitamin (we use RX Essentials powder), probiotic powder (we use DOGZYMES probiotic max) and occasionally flaxseed or salmon oil. There are obviously a lot of great products out there, we have just had success with these brands.
We mentioned our use of snacks earlier and we wanted to address that more in detail. Try to think of this from your dog’s perspective or you may get a little queasy. Dogs love the act of chewing and it is very natural for them. We feed one large meal in the morning and their afternoon snack consists of something which they have to work a little more. Our local butcher will order cases of turkey and chicken necks for us. The dogs love these and with the size and thinness of the vertebral bones it is all safe for them to have the whole thing. If you don’t go through a lot of them the necks can be frozen in freezer bags for later. When we process the turkeys or geese we also save the necks and feet for treats. We process whole rabbits for the dogs and will save the ears and feet for treats. When we are lucky enough to get a whole deer, we save the legs and ribs for treats. Leaving the hair on all of these parts acts as a natural intestinal cleaning. We have never had any problems with feeding these treats but i have heard stories of dogs getting bones stuck in their jaws or swallowing things whole so just take it slowly and watch for any strange behaviors. It is also a good idea to supervise groups of dogs or feed treats separately because dogs don’t usually like to share these treasures.
If you are feeling overwhelmed there are also many companies that commercially prepare natural and raw food diets and treats. For a large dog the cost of this convenience can be substantial.
If you are used to feeding a traditional kibble diet, this will take a little adjustment. You will soon realize that it just makes a whole lot more sense and you will love the results. Your kitchen will smell like Thanksgiving on dog food making days and be prepared for your family to be jealous over the dog’s dinner. They will understand when they see how much your pup enjoys their meals. Please let us know if we can help you along the way and feel free to share your stories or recipes - we love talking dogs and dog food!!
The meal prep can be done easily in a crock pot or roaster pan. A batch can be made and refrigerated or frozen in individual servings. The diet consists of approximately 70-80% meat and bone then the remainder is made up of fruits, vegetables and supplements. When making a roaster pan, we start with 10lbs of meat/bone.
Let’s start with the meat/bone portion of the diet. We source seasonal meats to provide our dogs with variety but also keep the costs down. We look for natural, good quality meat, as this comprises the majority of their diet. Examples of our meat options are as follows.
★ Purchasing a local steer or hog from the yearly 4-H auctions.
★ During hunting season is a great opportunity to purchase a deer or even take leftover scraps from a fellow hunter. This has provided us with deer and goose carcasses with quite a bit of meat left or some great parts for treats as we will discuss later.
★ After the holidays many stores will have all-natural/organic turkeys available for sale at huge discounts.
★ If you look locally, you might be able to find a supplier/homesteader that has meat rabbits available for sale.
★ If you have a local meat market or meat locker you can also purchase beef scraps and fat trimmings. We especially like to add this extra fat during the winter or to our pregnant and nursing moms. If we don’t have the fat scraps available a spoonful of coconut oil in the roaster pan will help with the increased demand for fat calories.
For chickens, turkeys and rabbits we use our meat/bone grinder to grind the whole carcass including organ meats. This provides the dogs with complete nutrition. We will add beef organ meats and extra fats to the grinding as well, but the grinder we own is not strong enough to handle beef or pork or deer bones so those are left whole and used as snacks.
Adding the fruits and vegetables is the next step and can be fun to add some variety. You can grow your own seasonal fruits and veggies and share with your dog, even freezing some for the rest of the year. During the growing season, the options are endless but during the rest of the year we tend to buy fresh and frozen produce from the store. There are a few things that you wouldn’t want to add to dog food (ie. onions, raisins, grapes, mushrooms, caffeine, etc) but it easy to research online if you are questioning any ingredients. The following are some suggested ingredients.
★ Carrots
★ Cauliflower
★ Pumpkin (fresh or canned)
★ Garbanzo / black beans
★ Green beans
★ Broccoli
★ Spinach / Kale
★ Berries
★ Butternut squash (fresh or frozen)
★ Potatoes (white, sweet, red)
★ Kelp powder
★ Zucchini
★ Pears
★ Apples
★ Peas (although several of our dogs leave the peas when they finish)
We use mostly vegetables to make up the rest of the roaster pan with adding an apple or a bag of frozen blueberries per pan. We then add a non-inflammatory grain to help bulk up the volume of the food. We use rice, oatmeal and occasionally egg noodles. Just remember this portion of the diet doesn’t have much nutritional value so keep it to a minimum.
This gives you a good start to your basic recipes and you can then experiment to find out extras that your dog(s) will enjoy. We sometimes add eggs when our chickens are really producing well, or fresh goat milk when the goats are in production. Our dogs will wait in line during milking every day for any extra goat milk. Some dogs enjoy cottage cheese, kefir or yogurt. Have fun and keep your recipes interesting for you and your pack.
The final step before serving this delicious bowl of food is to add a canine multivitamin (we use RX Essentials powder), probiotic powder (we use DOGZYMES probiotic max) and occasionally flaxseed or salmon oil. There are obviously a lot of great products out there, we have just had success with these brands.
We mentioned our use of snacks earlier and we wanted to address that more in detail. Try to think of this from your dog’s perspective or you may get a little queasy. Dogs love the act of chewing and it is very natural for them. We feed one large meal in the morning and their afternoon snack consists of something which they have to work a little more. Our local butcher will order cases of turkey and chicken necks for us. The dogs love these and with the size and thinness of the vertebral bones it is all safe for them to have the whole thing. If you don’t go through a lot of them the necks can be frozen in freezer bags for later. When we process the turkeys or geese we also save the necks and feet for treats. We process whole rabbits for the dogs and will save the ears and feet for treats. When we are lucky enough to get a whole deer, we save the legs and ribs for treats. Leaving the hair on all of these parts acts as a natural intestinal cleaning. We have never had any problems with feeding these treats but i have heard stories of dogs getting bones stuck in their jaws or swallowing things whole so just take it slowly and watch for any strange behaviors. It is also a good idea to supervise groups of dogs or feed treats separately because dogs don’t usually like to share these treasures.
If you are feeling overwhelmed there are also many companies that commercially prepare natural and raw food diets and treats. For a large dog the cost of this convenience can be substantial.
If you are used to feeding a traditional kibble diet, this will take a little adjustment. You will soon realize that it just makes a whole lot more sense and you will love the results. Your kitchen will smell like Thanksgiving on dog food making days and be prepared for your family to be jealous over the dog’s dinner. They will understand when they see how much your pup enjoys their meals. Please let us know if we can help you along the way and feel free to share your stories or recipes - we love talking dogs and dog food!!
Our human family has recently been experiencing the benefits of an animal-based, nose to tail diet transformation. Our health, joints and mental clarity has improved so much, that we have decided to make some changes in our packs diet too.
We are going to monitor our dogs with bloodwork but I have a feeling we will see even more improvements in their overall health. The biggest overall changes this involved were removing most vegetables from our recipe, slowing increasing dairy (both in the roaster pans and raw) and increasing the organs in the roaster pan. We still feed some pumpkin, squash, zucchini and carrots because they are lower on the toxicity scale. One of the (new to us) concepts that we have spent a lot of time researching is the incredible health benefits of organ meat. They provide a wealth of vitamins and immune support for us and our pack.
Our original homemade recipe and technique as stated above with a few modifications.
As of now, we still use white rice
Cottage cheese
Raw goat or cows milk (added after cooking)
Eggs (we use our fresh Ancona Duck Eggs)
Meat (cull cow or store bought pork)
Organs - bovine, chicken livers
Salmon/sardines in water
Carrots/zucchini/squash/pumpkin
Fruit (fresh or frozen) - blueberries/apples/peaches/pears/bananas/melons/anything in the kitchen that has gotten overripe
Beef tallow or pork fat
Bone broth
Sweet potatoes
We are going to monitor our dogs with bloodwork but I have a feeling we will see even more improvements in their overall health. The biggest overall changes this involved were removing most vegetables from our recipe, slowing increasing dairy (both in the roaster pans and raw) and increasing the organs in the roaster pan. We still feed some pumpkin, squash, zucchini and carrots because they are lower on the toxicity scale. One of the (new to us) concepts that we have spent a lot of time researching is the incredible health benefits of organ meat. They provide a wealth of vitamins and immune support for us and our pack.
Our original homemade recipe and technique as stated above with a few modifications.
As of now, we still use white rice
Cottage cheese
Raw goat or cows milk (added after cooking)
Eggs (we use our fresh Ancona Duck Eggs)
Meat (cull cow or store bought pork)
Organs - bovine, chicken livers
Salmon/sardines in water
Carrots/zucchini/squash/pumpkin
Fruit (fresh or frozen) - blueberries/apples/peaches/pears/bananas/melons/anything in the kitchen that has gotten overripe
Beef tallow or pork fat
Bone broth
Sweet potatoes