 Barked: Tue Jul 24, '12 1:16pm PST |
 | |  | | Do learn to use ND, it is awesome and you will get all your dogs need if you follow the steps. Glad you have a scale it is a huge help in measuring amounts of this and that.
You are feeding 113 pounds of dog so start out with 2% of that daily, about 2.25 pounds of meat or meat+cooked grain a day, veggies are extras. The small dogs would get about 1/4 pound of meat a day, the bigger one about 10 ounces a day. Perhaps if you had a scoop for the 10 pound dog and the three smallest get one scoop of food, the 18 pounder gets a scant 2 scoops, the 28 pounder gets 3 scoops and the biggest one gets a scant 3 scoops of food? For starters, one never knows which dog needs more food! Max needs 600 calories a day for his 38 pounds and Sassy needed 1000 calories for her 42 pounds for instance.
You can feed up to half veggy/grain with the meat but no more plant material than that. I wouldn't feed more than 1/4 grains - cooked grain, not raw. 1/4 raw grain mixed with 1/4 veggies and 1/2 meats would result in a food that was more than half grainy stuff as it expands so much cooked!
So a daily recipe might be 2.25 pounds of ground beef, 2 cups or 1 pound of cooked rice and 2 cups or 1 pound of chopped carrots, cabbage and broccoli stems. Do serve up any cooking liquid as well. For each pound of meat add in an ounce of liver, beef is probably best. Divide that 12 ways. Figure out what measure you have that is about that volume for next time and use that or weigh the food and divide by 11 which is a bit more accurate. It ought to come to about 4.25 pounds so a portion for the littles would be about 5.5-6 ounces a day total. That is a very small amount of food, about 2/3 cup. It isn't easy to feed that small amount of food, I know. Max got really fat on home cooking.
I was comfortable cooking every four days for Sassy. That meant the whole recipe fit in one pot and I wasn't concerned about spoilage. I would never hold food for a whole week in the refrigerator. You could cook once a week and store daily portions in the freezer or process large amounts of meat and veggies and store in the freezer and cook up daily. I found that was very time and space saving. 4.25 pounds of meat would be 30 pounds for a whole week and that is just the meat, not the grains and veggies. Unless you roast in the oven I doubt you have a pot large enough! I did make up a month's worth of meals for Sassy once. It turned out it didn't save actual time, I just spent the whole day cooking and nothing for the following month but I worked really hard that day and the kitchen was quite the mess.
What about turkey? If you found it on sale it is a good protein. Otherwise I really liked feeding hamburger that is found in the clearance bin for $1.75 a pound most of the time here. Pork is found very cheaply in ethnic markets for less than $1.50 a pound most weeks but will have bone and may have more fat than you like.
Dogs can eat most any veggie. You could use trimmings from your meals that are good enough to put in soup for your family too. Don't feed green parts of the potato family or any members of the onion family. Realize corn kernels, beans and peas will result in interesting poops as the hulls won't digest.
If you want to just jump in try stewing a chicken or cooking up some hamburger and mixing a bit with the food you offer now. Be sure to reduce the current diet a bit so you don't overfeed the dogs. You can mix in about 25% fresh food calories for the current diet without concerning yourself with proper calcium, B12 zinc or whatever. Remember to adjust quantities with the littles getting less than the bigger ones. |  |  | |  |
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