Making Our own dog food

We made a conscious effort to only feed store bought dog food as a supplement after seeing both the costs and ingredients in the garbage that was in the stores.

Most have corn and corn meal, which dogs really shouldn't be eating.

So what we've been doing is going to the local Mexican food store and buying all of the nutrient, vitamin, and mineral rich body parts that we can't get at the local grocery store. I'm talking chicken livers, hearts, gizzards, and all the stuff I never thought were used for anything. But these are highly nutritious parts of the dog.

My plan is to also shoot an extra deer or two this hunting season to get some venison for them. Since I was going anyways, an extra deer tag will only cost me two dollars for over 50 pounds of food. And the deer are well fed on a very nutritious diet and range wherever they want - unlike the meat you'll get from the store.

So here is what we used for the last batch...
17 lbs chicken parts
2 lbs pumpkin
1 package frozen peas
1 package frozen beans
3 pounds carrots
1 squash
1 zucchini
1 package quinoa
1 package barley
a cup of hemp or flax oil

Mix in a pot and cook it up. Stir constantly. When fully cooked (3 - 5 hours later), put in freezer safe bags and stick it in the chest freeer.

We figure this is enough to last us 2 to 3 weeks, and at a price point near store bought food. Sure it may take more time, and we're not really saving money, but we are feeding high quality ingredients to our dogs. We supplement with dog vitamins and glucosamine/chondroitin.

Our plan is to switch up meat sources whenever a batch runs out, so that we cycle chicken, venison, pork, fish etc. throughout the month so they have variety and as meat goes on sale.

There are times in our busy and hectic lives where we either can't heat up their food (because its frozen) or we don't have the time to. In those cases, we bought some ultra high quality dog food for growing dogs from a manufacturer called Wysong, who had the highest quality ingredients we could find.

We did find one that met our stringent requirements from a manufacturer called Wysong. Their dog food has the highest quality ingredients. It may be a little more expensive, but I figure in the long run it will pay off because we'll have healthier dogs that will live longer with less (costly) health issues.  I highly recommend going to their website and comparing the ingredients to the mass produced crap...You'll see its worth the extra money.