 Barked: Tue Jul 24, '12 12:42pm PST |
 | |  | | I think you can do it easily. A can of food costs how much and is about a pound. If you make food and use the cheaper meats they cost how much a pound? That is weight alone. Check how much protein is in a pound of meat and a can of food, usually the meat has a lot more protein.
Around here I get chicken for >$1 a pound, ground beef for $1.75 from the clearance bin and just bought 4 huge trays of loin pork chops from Valu+ for $1.19 a pound last week.
If you try the really interesting method of cooking bone until it is soft in a pressure cooker or slow cooker then you wouldn't even waste the bones in the cheapest meat, chicken. Here is a method I just found that sounds pretty good to me although I haven't ever tried it. I would just mix the bone with the meat though. Some sites say the soft bones can be ground in a blender! Since it isn't just that cooked bones are hard and poky it is that even ground they can pack up and become a hard mass in the gut I wouldn't want to serve this without a big cushioning of other stuff.
http://pressurecookerrecipes22484.yuku.com/topic/1423/Cookin g-a-chicken-till-it-s-mush#.UA7zMaAyCSo
That is far too much calcium and phosphorus for a balanced diet however. As a raw feeder I know that a whole chicken is about 30% bone and my dog needs 10% bone for its calcium and phosphorus. So add in 2x the weight of that whole chicken in whichever red meat is cheapest that week.
That covers the meat part. If you need more calories then white potatoes have lots, they are cheap enough and dog love them. As long as you avoid any plants from the onion family any veggy is fine for dogs so buy or use edible trimmings from your cooking that are cheap. Carrots and cabbage maybe? Veggies on sale? Never green parts from potato/tomato family or trimmings you wouldn't put into a soup pot for your human family.
So the recipe comes out 1 part chicken, 2 parts meat and 1 part mixed veggies. You can increase the veggies to up to half the food if you like to increase calories or just increase the bulk of the meal. You know how much richer home cooked stuff is compared to kibble, probably would be richer than canned except for the really expensive stuff.
You could add in an ounce of liver per pound of meat if you like.
You could use a can of fish for part of the meat if you like, not tuna often but mackerel, salmon and sardines are great.
You could add/substitute some egg if you like.
I would do the pressure cooked chicken thing and store most in the freezer and make up food every couple days. If you found a great deal on meat and want to stock up cook that up and store as well, can even do that with the veggies. Then you can mix up different combinations of foods and add in more or less of this or that veggie as you determine what works best for your pack. Packing up equal quantities means you can easily choose one part of this and that. Max's raw food doesn't easily fit in cottage cheese, yogurt and deli tubs but they worked great for Sassy's food. |  |  | |  |
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