How To Make Fresh Food Supplements For Commercial Dog Food, by Dr. Pitcairn

If you’re not quite ready to jump whole-hog into the home-prepared diet or you have several large dogs, these recipes offer a convenient way to provide many of the benefits of fresh foods and nutritious supplements while maintaining nutritional balance.

By adding fresh meat, dairy products, vegetable oil and food supplements, you can boost your dog’s intake of quality protein, fatty acids, lecithin, B vitamins and minerals, especially helpful for skin and coat problems.

Avoid the temptation to simplify these additions even further by just throwing a slab of meat or a dab of oil on the kibble. Meat is dramatically low in calcium as compared to phosphorus and could result in a net calcium deficiency in the diet. That’s why a calcium supplement is added. Extra oil by itself will lower the overall percentage of protein and every other nutrient in the kibble, which may already contain marginal amounts.

As with other recipes, you can always pre-mix larger amounts and freeze extras, thawing and using them as needed.

Meat Supplement for Dog Kibble

1 pound (= two cups) chopped or ground raw turkey, chicken, lean hamburger, lean chuck or lean beef heart

4 teaspoons vegetable oil

4 teaspoons Healthy Powder *

1-3/4 teaspoons bone meal (or 1100-1200 milligrams calcium or 2/3 teaspoon eggshell powder)

50-200 i.u. vitamin E

1000-2000 i.u. vitamin A (or else alternate regularly with Dairy Supplement, below)

Mix the oil, powders and vitamins together. Then combine them with the meat, coating it well. At mealtime, feed 1/4 cup of this mixture for every cup of dog kibble served. You can either mix them together or serve sepa- rately. (You’ll feed proportionately less kibble.) This makes a little over two cups and is enough to supple- ment 8-9 cups dog kibble.

Egg Supplement for Dog Kibble

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1 teaspoon Healthy Powder *

1/3 teaspoon bone meal (or 220 milligrams calcium or 1/8 teaspoon eggshell powder)

50-200 i.u. vitamin E

Mix this much oil, powders and vitamin E into every 1-2 cups dog kibble. Break the eggs over the top. (For feeding more animals or large dogs, multiply accord- ingly. For 5-6 cups of kibble this would be: 3 eggs, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tablespoon Healthy Powder*, 1 teaspoon bone meal or about 600 milligrams calcium, and 200-400 i.u. vitamin E.)

Cottage Cheese Supplement for Dog Kibble

Cottage cheese is an inexpensive, convenient and palatable source of protein to boost the nutritional value of kibble. No meat to chop, no shells to break…

2-3 cups dog kibble

3/4 cup creamed cottage cheese

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

2 teaspoons Healthy Powder *

1/2 teaspoon bone meal (or 200 milligrams calcium or 1/8 teaspoon eggshell powder)

50-100 i.u. vitamin E

5,000-10,000 i.u. vitamin A

(optional) 1/4-1/2 cup vegetables

Mix the oil in the kibble. Toss in the powders, coating the kibble. Serve the cottage cheese and vegetables together on the side, or else mix them into the kibble as well, whichever your dog prefers.

* HEALTHY POWDER: Combine 2 c. nutritional yeast, 1 c. lecithin granules, 1/4 c. kelp or alfalfa powder and 1/4 c. bone meal (or 9000 mg. calcium or 5 tsp. eggshell powder). Optional: 1000 mg. vitamin C (= 1/4 tsp. sodium ascorbate) and 1 tsp. garlic powder. Refrigerate.

Yeast substitution: Omit the yeast, reduce the bone meal to 5 tsp. or calcium to 3200 mg. (1 and 3/4 tsp. eggshell pow- der). Use half the usual amount of Healthy Powder in each recipe. Add a complete dog multivitamin mineral supplement daily as recommended on the label. Do not use additional Vitamin A, C, or E.

Kelp substitution: Use 3/4 tsp. iodized salt plus 1/4 cup of either alfalfa or montmorilonite clay or a pet vitamin/mineral supplement.