Home Made Dog Food: What I Feed Huggy Bear, My 60 lb German Shepherd Mix

I make my own dog food.  I decided to do this when we moved to Oahu and was faced with exorbitant prices of Orijen dog food.  (I will write how I made my decision to purchase Orijen dog food for Huggy Bear in another post.)  When I looked at the price, I was shocked, and my wife was like "We can feed Huggy chicken breasts every day, and it would be cheaper."  So this started the ball rolling on the idea to make dog food at home.

The question that arises is then, what should I make?  At first, I figured that anything home made is better than store bought since all of the ingredients are human grade.  I bought a pressure cooker and made the following:

Huggy's Dog Food Recipe:
Ingredients:
10~12 chicken thighs with bone, skin removed (Foster Farms from Costco)
1~2 lb of ground turkey (Foster Farms from Costco)
1~2 lb of Normandy Style Vegetable Blend (Kirkland brand, frozen from Costco)
5 sprigs of rosemary

Optional:
Cooked rice

Ground Sesame

Bonito fish shavings (you can find this, and all other items pictured below at Japanese grocery stores like Marukai or Mitsuwa)

Small dried fish

Nori seaweed

Preparation Instructions:
Throw in all of the meat and rosemary with a bit of vegetables in the pressure cooker and add water until it almost covers all of the ingredients in the pressure cooker.  Important Points:

• Don't put in all of the vegetables in the pressure cooker because they liquefy during the cooking process.  
• Be sure to put all of the chicken thighs on the bottom so that they are completely immersed in water.

Cover and heat the pressure cooker at high heat until the pressure builds.


When the pressure cooker pressurizes, turn the heat to low-medium and let it cook for 1 hour.  This ensures that the nutrients from the chicken bone are extracted and the tendons become soft.

After an hour, turn off heat, and let the pressure cooker cool down and depressurize before opening the lid.

After it has cooled down to a lukewarm temperature, remove all of the bones.  Do not remove the tendons, as they are the source of nutrients that are not found in the bones or the thigh meat.

Boil the rest of the rest of the vegetables in a separate, non-pressurized boiling pot.  Important Points:

• Use minimal water as possible and do not drain the vegetables once boiling is finished.  
• The rationale for saving the water is that it will contain some nutrients that have been boiled off the vegetables.  
• Do not over boil the vegetables.  Once the water boils, throw the vegetables in the pot, then let the water come to a boil again, and then turn off the heat.

Combine the contents of the pressure cooker with the boiled vegetables including the boiling water.

Mix.  This is the basic dog food for Huggy Bear.

I feed Huggy twice a day; once in the morning, and once at dinner.  When I serve it to Huggy, I usually put in his dog bowl a cup of the chicken/turkey/vegetable mixture, a cup of hot water, a bit of cooked rice, a bit of ground sesame, a bit of the nori seaweed, a bit of the bonito fish shavings, and a bit of the small dried fish.  Except for the hot water and rice, everything else is optional to add.  I sometimes put some of the ingredients in, or sometimes none at all.  I mix everything in the dog bowl, then make sure the food is not too hot, and then serve it to Huggy after I make him sit.

Huggy Bear likes it very much.  I've been feeding him this food for about 2 years, and I just got a clean bill of health for Huggy Bear from the vet, so I am pretty happy with this recipe.

Nutritional content and how it compares to a vitamin supplement that was given to me by Huggy Bear's vet will follow in my next post.