Balanced & healthy home made dog food?

[Carolyn Shusterman]

My daughter was feeding her 5.5 year 31 pound labradoodle Taste of the Wild with added chicken or small amount of beef liver.  Her dog began to get loose stools intermittently so she decided to start making dog food herself rather than buy expensive high protein kibble.  For the past few weeks she has been feeding her dog cooked lean chicken, brown rice, butternut squash, broccoli, and a sprinkle of flax seed meal and a salmon oil capsule.  The loose stools are gone, her dog has smaller and fewer BM's but has started to vomit bile first thing in the morning.  Her dog's weight has dropped about one pound.  I suggested she feed her more, add other protein sources and feed her closer to bedtime so her empty stomach doesn't get irritated overnight.  Any other suggests?  

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Okay, so the first thing is that it's preferable to feed a dog twice a day, morning and evening. That would help.

Next, it's likely that your daughter's dog isn;t getting enough calories. Homemade food usually contains about 200 calories per cup, which is less than half the calories of most kibbles. This means you need to feed about twice as much homemade food as kibble when you are esclusively feeding homemade food. It's [possible that your daughter's dog's stool volume has dropped because he isn;t getting enough to eat, period. This dog needs to be getting at least three cups of the homemamde food per day, and that's on the low side. 

There were a lot of steps your daughter could have taken between TOTW, which not a recommended brand, and homemade food; better quality kibbles, dehydrated raw diets, limited ingredient formulas, to name a few. But it's fine that she wants to feed a homemamde diet. The problem is that she needs to follow a recipe that has been analyzed to be sure that it contains all of the vitamins and minerals the dog needs, and that the proportions of macronutrients are appropriate. Looking at the above diet, it is lacking in calcium and probably other minerals, and unless a full 50% is made up of that lean chicken, it's too low in protein. 
We do have a pdf somewhere here for a veterinary approved homemade recipe, I will have to find it. There are also lots of books out there that give recipes that contain all the necessary nutrients.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Okay, here's the link to the discussion that contains the link to the pdf file for a balanced homemade diet that has been approved by two veterinary internal medicine specialists. This recipe is for a 15-20 lb dog so your daughter will need to increase the feeding amounts by 50%.

It's in the middle of page three of the discussion. Post by Jane, Guinness and Murphy "Guinness Homecooking"

There are also recommendations for books with recipes.

https://doodlekisses.com/forum/topics/home-cooking-where-do-i-begin...

[Carolyn Shusterman]

Thank you so much for all this valuble information.   My daughter told me she cooks the rice in bone broth and feeds her dog 2 times a day.  She would like to find a quality kibble that is not super high in protein that she can add home cooked protein to, any suggestions? 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

It's pretty hard for a dog to get too much protein, so I wouldn't worry about that. But what might work well for your daughter is the diet I used to feed Jack. After his IBD diagnosis, I looked into feeding him a hoemmade diet, but at his size, he would have needed 8 cups per day, and that just wasn't going to work for me. So I fed him a good limited ingredient kibble, Wellness Simple Solutions Salmon & Potato, (Only 25% protein) and added my own cooked white meat chicken and sweet potatoes. He got about 60% kibble and 40% homecooked food, and that worked out well with no additional vitamins or minerals needed.

Be aware that the Simple line is being discontinued and the food will now be sold under Wellness's Complete Health line, as a limited ingredient formula. This can be confusing, so it will be important for your daughter to read labels carefully. For reference:

Here is the Simple formula:
https://www.chewy.com/wellness-simple-limited-ingredient/dp/36859?u...
And here is the new packaging and name under the Complete Health Limited Ingredient name:
https://www.google.com/shopping/product/17362432583355425237?lsf=se...

The formulas are identical.

[Carolyn Shusterman]

Karen, Thank you so much for guiding my daughter on a diet plan for her Doodle 'Gracie'.  Viki ordered the Wellness Simple Solutions Salmon & Potato right away and it was delivered a few days later.  She is feeding Gracie as you suggested.  Today Viki told me Gracie still had soft stools.  Do you think we should cut back on the home cooked chicken?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Is she just giving chicken or are there other ingredients in the home cooked food? 
Some sweet potato might help a lot. Just a tablespoon or two of cooked mashed sweet potato added to meals. 
Another thing she might consider is to start giving a good probiotic. Proviable DC can be ordered on-line and might be just what she needs to get s colony of good gut bacteria going; that's essential for proper stool formation. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Also, eating rice that was cooked in bone broth is not going to provide enough calcium. :) 

[Connie]

For raw feeders there are ratios of meat, bone, organ meats for a reason... liver can cause diarrhea. Limit that organ meat to minimal amounts.... try heart instead.