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Homemade dog food recipes are actually easier than you think and way cheaper than you’d imagine!
Just imagine throwing ingredients into this Crockpot Dog Food recipe and letting it cook all day and have healthy, nutritious food for your pup for a week.
It’s super easy to make homemade dog food and usually you can just throw everything into the slow cooker and be done!
The best part is you don’t have to bother with spices – just sweet vegetables like carrots or peas or sweet potatoes are enough to flavor the dog food for your pups.
Table of Contents
What are the best ingredients for homemade dog food?
The best ingredients for dog food include:
- brown rice
- lentils
- oats
- ground turkey
- spinach
- carrots
- peas
- sweet potato
- beans
Is it cheaper to make your own dog food?
Considering the price for a bag of brown rice is less than $3, a pound of ground turkey is about $4, lentils are $1, a bag of frozen veggies costs about $3 and dry beans are $1, you can make 1-2 weeks worth of dog food for around $15.
We normally spend around $50 for a month’s worth of dry dog food and it’s a good, healthy brand but definitely not the best or the healthiest.
How many cups of homemade dog food should I feed my dog?
According to DailyPuppy.com, your homemade food should contain 1 to 2 cups of cooked food per 20 pounds of your dog’s body weight per day. So my dogs are each about 65lbs so I will give them 3-4 cups of homemade food. It sounds like a lot, right?
But believe me, when you start adding the ingredients into the pot or slow cooker, it create a lot of food. You can also choose to cook the rice and some other ingredients separately from the meat and then add it together when you feed your dog.
Deciding what to include in your dog food recipe
For this particular recipe I used a steak tip from the freezer. I normally wouldn’t use such an expensive cut of meat for the dogs, but it was freezer-burned and while my family wouldn’t like the taste of it, the dogs won’t care.
Plus older meat from the freezer is perfectly safe for dogs.
So I chose to use one of the two steak tips I found, added one sweet potato that my family also wouldn’t eat but it’s fine for the dogs, threw in some baby carrots and some lentils. Since we are all home right now during this COVID-19 pandemic, I didn’t want to use too much until I can get to the store again.
I have some leftover rice in the refrigerator from our dinner the other night that I will add to the dog food once it’s done. I normally would use brown rice for the dogs, but I love being able to mix in leftovers like this and the dogs just love it! As long as the leftovers do not have spices, you are good to use them.
This batch of basmati rice from Indian night is just rice, with nothing added, not even salt or pepper.