Does anyone feed their dog a home cooked diet?

[Beanie]

We have been having problems with Maisy eating from Day 1 and she is now refusing JWB.  We have tried the tricks of wetting it, pulling it up after ten minutes if she doesn't eat it etc but nothing makes a difference. everytime she does not eat she keeps us up for nights on end crying and barking which I am convinced is hunger.  the trouble is she loves home cooked food. 

Last week when it got too much I gave her mince carrot and brocolli (all cooked) and she was like a hoover!  Can I do this all the time? or should I make her haave a dried diet?  I do want her to enjoy her food and it's not too much hassle as she is six months now and only has two meals a day.  I am worried about the quantities I should be giving her and what I can give her.

Any advice appreciated.  I want a happy dog!

Nina

[lyn]

you don't need to cook the food. a raw diet is becoming very popular atm. ellie is fed part raw and also natures menu. it is 60% meat with veggies added. it is all cooked in the bag it comes in. you can get it from tescos so if, like me, you don't drive its easy to get with your shopping. its about £6 for 8 pouches. ellie absolutely loves it. because it is cooked in the bag all the juices from the meat are conserved.
hth

[Krisdt]

Loki is another fed on part raw and part BARF. He gets a pouch of nature menu for breakfast and then raw chicken wings, or mince both with veg for dinner. He loves and licks his bowl clean. (his poos are much firmer and less of em aswell, much to my oh's relief)

[Nicola]

There are a few people on here who feed a home cooked diet and if you're happy to cook for her every day then I don't see a problem with it, although you do have to be careful to ensure she is getting all the necessary vitamins and minerals she needs so you'd probably have to add supplements such as bone meal for calcium and probably others as well. Before embarking on anything like this I would do some research to make sure I was doing it right and wasn't missing anything out or adding anything harmful. I read 2 or 3 books on the subject before moving Alfie to a raw diet and despite this I do still worry that I'm missing some stuff out sometimes  

It's really personal preference and nobody can say to you what you should or shouldn't do. If you want to stick with dry food maybe try her on a different brand such as Burns, Arden Grange or Autarky but don't chop and change her diet all the time or she really will become very picky as she will realise that if she holds off then you'll give her something else to try    Dogs don't think like people about food either and she will not starve herself, she will eat eventually when she is hungry enough but I do understand that you want to give her something that she seems to enjoy as well.

[Cob-Web]

Can I just check I've got this right - cos I'm still confused.......

Natures Menu - do cooked food pouches, and a raw frozen range?
NatureDiet - cooked food pouches, no raw products?

[happydog]

I think that it's much easier to feed a balanced diet with BARF rather than home cooked. It's more natural for dogs for a start, also cooking destroys a lot of the vitamins and other nutrients that a dog needs and then you end up having to faff about with supplements.

If you do a search from the main forum page on BARF you will find lots of threads here on COL along with some recommended books and links so you can find out more. I changed Fern to BARF in October last year and we haven't looked back. She absolutely loves it. It was scarey to begin with -but only because we have been conditioned by multinational dog food producers to think that only they know best   .

Here is the thread I started about it. It is rather long, so wait until you have plenty of time     .

http://www.cockersonline.co.uk/discuss/index.php?topic=22308.0

If you are interested and want to know a bit more, this is a good place to begin

http://www.njboxers.com/faqs.htm#daily

HTH  

[lyn]

Can I just check I've got this right - cos I'm still confused.......

Natures Menu - do cooked food pouches, and a raw frozen range?
NatureDiet - cooked food pouches, no raw products?

yep rachel you got it right as far as the natures menu is concerned. not sure about natures diet. i was convinced that ND did a frozen range but it was NM i had seen ellie has the natures menu pouches and she adores them. it is the first time i have fed a wet food to a dog. i only changed because our very old cat can't manage dry food anymore and ellie would go mad when she smelt his dinner it didn't seem fair to keep her on dry food.

[White Bryony]

Both our Cockers used to graze throughout the day because Maddie wouldn't eat any other way (or I didn't try hard enough to make her).

We had to change this when Woofie had to go on a diet and he changed to Senior Food.  Maddie wouldn't eat at all at set meal times.  I took her food away after half an hour as recommended and tried again at the next meal time but she lost a lot of weight and I got worried so I tried her on the wet food NatureDiet and she absolutely loved it from day 1.  We now have two set meal times a day with no problems at all.

[Beanie]

I tried Maisy with a raw chicken wing about four weeks ago and she took it then guarded it with her life for an hour until I enticed her away with some cooked chicken!!  She was badly teething at the time but struggled to eat it then guarded it on my carpet 

did I approach this wrong?  this is what put me off BARF in a way

[happydog]

If you had left her with it I am sure she would have eventually worked out what to do with it. You could try bashing it with a rolling pin first to soften the bone and/or cutting a bit half off the bone to get her going. As she was teething it would have made it a bit more difficult for her so perhaps not quite the best time to start 

BARF takes a bit of getting used to, more us than the dogs I think. As I wrote in my thread, Fern took half an hour to eat her first chicken wing and I sat with her the whole time giving her gentle encouragement. She had no idea what to do with it  She takes about 30 seconds now 

[Beanie]

Did you hold it for her? 

[bluegirl]

I do raw but you can do the same with cooked. Just remember no cooked bones and you'll probably need to add a few supplements as with raw to try to maintain a good balance.

[happydog]

Did you hold it for her? 

No. If I had held it I think she wouldn't have got the idea that it was hers and not mine. I just gave it to her outside on the patio, sat down on a chair beside her and feigned casual indifference.  She licked it, looked at me quizzically and I kept telling her quietly 'good girl take it'. I might have picked it up and handed it to her a few times to get her interest in  it.  Once she started chewing I started praising her enthusiastically 'gooood girrrllll!'

I fed it after her raw mince and veggie meal so she wasn't ravenous as I was scared at the time that she wouldn't crunch the bones properly  and had the vets number to hand in case she didn't  . I needn't have worried though. It took a couple of weeks of two daily after meals as pud for her to get used to them. Now she tells me if she thinks I have forgotten to give them to her  .

Edited to add: I don't generally mess with Ferns food anyway so she is not used to me hand feeding her. It depends on what Maisy is used to 

[Nicola]

Can I just check I've got this right - cos I'm still confused.......

Natures Menu - do cooked food pouches, and a raw frozen range?
NatureDiet - cooked food pouches, no raw products?

Yep that's right except ND comes in tub thingys, not pouches.

And to add to it there's a new one out called Nature's Harvest which is a similar high quality natural food and comes in tubs like Nature Diet BUT they're easier to open 

[Beanie]

Thanks everyone for your advice!!

We tried BARF tihs weekend and I am 100% sold (have posted on puppies)

I am sure I will be back with more BARF questions now!

Happy Dog - I read your entire thread, lots of help on there thank you