Hi, Kaylanni here! If you are wondering how to make food for your beloved pet, here is a description of how we do it in our house. It may inspire you and give you some ideas. Here is a quick explanation as to what work goes into making of a weeks supply of fresh food for a dog with cancer.
First we cook up 7lbs of turkey. The higher the fat content the better. These packages from Trader Joe's or Costco usually weigh about 1.25 or 1.5 lbs each. We break up all the meat after it has been cooked and then let it cool in a very large bowl.
This is the pre-made veggie mix we buy. It is 2lbs in weight and keeps very well in the freezer. It's all broccoli, cabbage and other green veggies. The Paws Cafe adds my omegas, probiotics, arginine and CoQ10.
Before we add the bag to the meat we must mix in the other vitamins the doctor wants me taking to keep my cancer as slow growing as possible. At this step we add green tea extract, curcumin, mushroom mix and Yunnan Baiyao to help prevent internal bleeding from any mass that may develop. Once it's all mixed in, we shake up the bag and let it sit until the turkey is cool. If we add the mix too early, the heat may kill my probiotics.
After all the meat is cooked we add organic kale and organic chard in the leftover juices and fat from the turkey cooking process. This helps it to break down the greens enough to mix well with the other food and I don't notice I'm eating rabbit food. This helps prevent me from spitting the chard and kale all over the kitchen floor while I sift through turkey.
After all this has cooled, we mix the veggie mix with the meat and then the kale and chard all by hand. Most important is to make sure the vitamins are distributed evenly throughout. The food is then weighed into 7 equal parts and placed into a Tupperware for freezing/refrigerating. With this recipe each container weighs up to a little under 2lbs and that is split between morning and night feedings. That's about it! One weeks worth of dog food takes about 1.5 hrs a week to prepare and costs around $30 for a 50lb 8year old dog.
Here is a recap from earlier this month on the quantities of vitamins that go into the mix.
Here is a recap from earlier this month on the quantities of vitamins that go into the mix.
1.5lb bag of organic kale and 1 bundle of organic chard or green beans, 1 head of organic broccoli chopped
Omegas 2,000mg (helps keep down inflammation)
CoQ10 - 100mg day
Arginine
Arginine
Doggy enzymes & probiotics 20 billion (increases my body's natural defenses)
Green Tea extract 100mg 2x dayCurcumin (turmeric root extract)- 250mg 2x day
PURE encapsulations mushroom formula - inc. Maitake, Reishi & Shiitake 1 cap 2x day
Yunnan Baiyao - 1 cap, 2x day ( found where Asian supplements are sold)
