Thinking of making my own dog food to save money. Is it healthy?

Probably not. It is very difficult to calculate the proper amounts of essential nutrients, which a good quality commercial dog food will have. There is really no reason to cook food for your dog, but if you are determined, there are nutritionists who can help you to formulate a healthful diet--they should be PhD level practitioners, however.

Homemade diets are usually unbalanced and lacking in appropriate amounts of nutrients. When diets found online were tested, 97% were found to be incomplete and this can cause adverse health effects long term. If you want to make a home made diet for Brinkley, you need to work with a board certified veterinary nutritionist. Many of these vets offer remote consultations but your own vet may have a recommendation. I hope this helps and please feel free to post any additional questions.

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! You absolutely can. However, this ends up being quite expensive and time consuming. If doing this you would have to make sure that you are feeding Izzy all the important and crucial nutrients. There are several books out there such as the "the whole pet diet". I suggest reading a book and more information on this subject before starting. Good luck on this journey!

I typically don't recommend it because it's very hard to get the correct balance of nutrients needed. If you do want to feed Rascal a homemade diet, check out these two websites. They are run by veterinary nutritionists, and they provide healthy and balanced homemade diets for dogs. I hope this helps! https://secure.balanceit.com https://www.petdiets.com

Any recipe anyone could give you will be more expensive than cheap dry food and will either require refrigeration or having to make it every day. if you want to reduce the cost of food, although far from ideal, add boiled rice to dry kibbles, this will bulk up the food but will reduce change the balance between ingredient and could cause some vitamin and protein deficiency long run.

I recommend a commercial diet as this is the most balanced diet. Homemade diets often lack some of the necessary nutrients for a balanced diet. If you decide to do a homemade diet, be sure to visit balanceit.com to ensure you are making a proper balanced diet.

Yes it is, but make sure that: - you don't give anything toxic (onions and garlic for example!!) - do not give bones (gastrointestinal perforations or occlusions are very common). - home diet in my opinion should be given together with commercial diets (more balanced and complete).