Found an article on homemade pet foods...what do you think?

The article is from Mother Earth News. The site is here

The specific recipe is this:

For Cats:

2 cups cooked chicken
1/4 cup carrots, grated
1 cup brown rice, cooked

Cut or grind chicken into small pieces. Mix chicken and carrots with rice. If there is any fat from the chicken, pour about 2 teaspoons over the mix. Serve at room temperature.

I will include the dog recipe to just for the heck of it...

For Dogs

3 cups cooked oatmeal or cream of wheat
2 cups cooked ground beef
2 tbsp plain yogurt
1 small apple, cut or sliced into small pieces

Mix together and serve at room temperature.

My questions is... what do you think of this as a meal for your animals everyday? Seems they should need more, but I know not a whole lot about cooking your cats food. My cats would LOVE this. Do you think it would save money or be more expensive?

good bases but you would need alot of supplements with those .. plus no organs bugs me

ya seemed a little too simple to me, I admit, I skimmed the article, didn't read it thoroughly.

Homemade is actually harder than raw since you have to make up for the bones and the enzymes plus balence all the meats with grains and veggies

As I've been reading "Dr Pitcairn's Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats" lately I'm skeptical of Ann Martin's(Is that the source of this recipe?) unbalanced recipes. First of all the recipe you gave us has no calcium supplements or taurine supplements or vitamin E supplements at all. It's ok for an occasional treat though. Ann Martin has recipes which involve cottage cheese or yogurt as a source of calcium. Not good enough. Here is something directly from Dr Pitcairns book:

"Please do not presume that feeding your pet milk with every meal means you can omit the bone meal or other calcium supplements in the recipes. To be used properly in the body, calcium must be provided in a specific ratio to phosphorous. Cats and dogs require such high amounts of calcium that the amount of milk is just about enough to balance the phosphorous in the milk itself. But that level of calcium is not enough to balance the high phosphorous levels in meats and grains. Bones provide much more extra calcium, and they are the natural way that predators achieve this balance."

No wonder cooked diets for cats aren't given a whole lot of support. I have wondered about this as I thought about preparing a homemade cooked diet for my cats. But now I'm convinced that the only way to prepare homemade food is raw with a careful balance of ingredients and supplements. Cooking destroys much of the nutrients, especially taurine, and takes the water out of the food. Not the diet that nature intended. I'm convinced it's either high quality commercial with lots of canned food to boost water intake and reduce carbohydrates or homemade raw or a commercial diet with raw food supplementation. Not that you can't feed a piece of cooked chicken as a treat but think of that as a high protein snack which is better than commercial treats, rather than a highly nutritious meal.

I called the feline instincts company and asked if I could add their supplement to cooked food, since I had considered that too and they told me that feeding a homemade cooked diet is not good for the cats urinary PH because raw food naturally promotes that acidic urine that maintains such good urinary health in a cat. Plus they thrive on the enzymes of raw meat.

Cooked food is not enough for a cat or a dog. If you are going with a home made diet, either go Raw or use a Dr. Pitcairn recipe WITH the supplements.

Otherwise it's dangerous for your cat.

I just bought Dr. Pitcairn's book on Sunday! I haven't read it yet, but the recipes are way more complex than that one.

Originally Posted by Jen

The article is from Mother Earth News. The site is here

The specific recipe is this:

For Cats:

2 cups cooked chicken
1/4 cup carrots, grated
1 cup brown rice, cooked

Cut or grind chicken into small pieces. Mix chicken and carrots with rice. If there is any fat from the chicken, pour about 2 teaspoons over the mix. Serve at room temperature.

My questions is... what do you think of this as a meal for your animals everyday? Seems they should need more, but I know not a whole lot about cooking your cats food. My cats would LOVE this. Do you think it would save money or be more expensive?

Click to expand...

This recipe is a good start, but you would need to add a calcium supplement, a good multivitamin/mineral supplement, and taurine to make it complete. Personally, I would substitute pumpkin for carrots as well.

Whether it would save money depends on what you feed now. It's probably cheaper than most canned foods, but more expensive than most dry foods. I used to cook for my dog, and it was a little more expensive than the premium dry food she eats now.