Home Made Dry Dog Food

[Roova]

I feed raw and am interested in making my own dry food, mainly for use in Kongs, boredom busters and if its yummy training treats etc. If there's any other raw, non processed food lovers out there, I'd really appreciate your feedback on the below?

Should I make any changes or additions? Would it be worth adding any egg, kelp, tripe, fish, garlic, pumpkin instead of potato etc?

Im going to dehydrate it rather than cook it which seems a bit time consuming. Also hopefully dehydrating means more nutritional value is retained because its drying at a low temperature not cooking at a high one. Im not sure if I can get Garbanzo bean flour so I might just soak the beans and use as is? Im going to try making weeny balls and hopefully they dry well too.

What do you think?

1 cup and 1 tablespoon (400g) Garbanzo bean flour or Quinoa (or mixture of both)

½ cup (100g) lentils

5 cups (1¼ litres) water

1/2 cup finely chopped cauliflower

3 medium carrots (200g), grated

1 medium sweet potato (200g) grated

1 apple, cored and grated

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley/herbs

2¼ cups (500g) raw minced Turkey, pet mince or other meat

¼ cup (50ml) olive/coconut oil, plus additional oil for greasing

Put the Garbanzo flour/Quinoa and lentils into a saucepan and cover with the water.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and cook for 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Once cooked, add the vegies, meat, herbs and oil and mix well. Add to a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles a thick puree. (You may need to add a cup or so of water if its too dry) and you may need to process in batches.

If cooking flat:

Grease 2 cookie sheets (or use baking paper) and spread 1/2 the mixture onto one of the sheets so it's about ¼ inch (5mm) thick. The mixture will spread slightly so leave a bit of room for this. It is important the mixture is not too thick because it will prohibit it from cooking through.

Repeat as above using a second cookie sheet and the remaining ingredients.

Place into a preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes. Turn over so it dries through, and cook for another 30 to 45 minutes. You should have what looks like two very large cookies. Make sure it's completely cooked through as any moist bits will get moldy after a couple of days. If it's not fully dried out, leave it in the oven for 20 minutes more.

Reduce the oven temperature to 160°C. Remove the “kibble cookies” from the oven, cool slightly and cut them into small pieces. Place the pieces back onto the cookie sheets and bake for an additional hour, or until the kibble is completely dried (but not burnt).

Remove from the oven and let cool completely. It should resemble pieces of broken pita bread. It will keep in the fridge for 10 days.

Per (100 g)

Calories: 365

Protein: 20%

Fat: 9%

Edited September 20, 2014 by Roova

[kelpiecuddles]

Sounds nice, what time's dinner?

[Yonjuro]

Sounds good! I wonder if cooking at a lower temperature for longer would be better??

I used to have a dehydrator which was great and might be worth experimenting with?

[Snoopy21]

It should be fairly easy to get garbanzo bean flour. It is flour made from chickpeas and is usually called besan flour in Aus.

[Guest crazydoglady99]

I dont use flour at all.. i find it unnecessary when using dehydrator.

I add anything i feel like, lentils, chicken liver, ground flax seeds, vegetables (whichever you prefer), parsley, seaweed (whichever kind you prefer). quinoa or brown rice or barley, apple and sweet potato works really well.

I blitz mine till it is all gloopy.

Experiment, you have to make a fresh batch every few weeks!

(chickpea flour called "besan flour" a lot in aus)

[Roova]

So..I did up a batch today to test it out.

I don't know if the goop was thin enough and I was a bit worried about air not able to get around the dehydrator sheets so I kept the edges free. It filled five trays but it shrinks a bit when dry so I might not end up with much.

I used 500g Turkey mince, a tin of tuna (not in oil), vegies, a grated apple, half a banana, 2 eggs, cooked green lentils, a quinoa porridgy mix I found, and maybe 1/4 cup olive\coconut oil.

It actually smells rather delicious, it might be one treat for you.. one treat for me during training :laugh:

I've got the timer on for eight hours but its quite thin so I'll keep an eye on it. I totally forgot to try making small balls but I think the mixture would have flattened anyway. Fingers crossed!

Edited September 21, 2014 by Roova

[Dave-o]

Certainly looks tasty to me. I'd cook enough for both the dog and myself. Seriously. :)

[VizslaMomma]

Certainly looks tasty to me. I'd cook enough for both the dog and myself. Seriously. :)

I thought exactly the same.

[Monchichi]

great recipe and looks so tasty!

do you mind if i try your recipe as well Roova? thank you! :)

[Roova]

Well I should let you know the first attempt...not so good. I spread the mixture way too thin and made a lovely flakey pastry at the end! Maggie loved it but I couldn't cut it properly to come out the holes of a Kong. It was also really painful cleaning the dehydrator trays because the wet food squished in to the holes and stuck in there quite firmly. I think I spent longer scrubbing and cleaning five sheets than it seemed to dehydrate for!

For comparison I also tried squishing a barf pattie (Big Dog) to about half an inch thickness and cooked it on a low temp in the oven. After it firmed up I put it on a cake rack and kept cooking it so it wasn't sitting in its juices. This turned out a lot better when dry and it held its shape when cut in to small cubes although the edges were very crumbly. It smelt quite delicious when cooking too and my OH said 'Mmmmm whats for dinner' when he first got home :laugh: It was soooo much easier using baking paper under the pattie too.

If I do it again it will be with a premade pattie but to make it a bit more exciting (as a training treat) I'll try mixing some liver through as well. With the above recipe I got a bit of flack elsewhere that the vegies\fruit etc were next to useless for a dog and even feeding as treats in a Kong would be a waste of part of their diet. I would have thought they would gain some nutrition from them, but oh well I've been wrong before and Im sure to be again :laugh:

I wish there was a dry product available which uses natural products and doesn't have the nutrition sprayed on at the end.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Roova