Homemade Healthy Dog Food Pucks

October 19, 2015 by Leanne Vogel November 2, 2018

Inexpensive grain-free homemade dog food recipe. Make it raw if you’d like!

Ingredients

Raw Base Recipe

• 3 cups raw grass-fed beef
• 6 eggs, whole (you use the shell, too!)
• 1/2 teaspoon grey sea salt
• 1/2 cup coconut oil or grass-fed tallow
• Dog multiple vitamin powder

Cooked Base Recipe

• 1 cup bone broth
• 1 (300 gram) sweet potato
• 2 apples, seeds completely removed
• 3/4 cup ground flax seed, pumpkin seed or hemp meal
• 6 chicken livers or 2 calf livers

Optional Boosted Supplements

• Vitamin A in the form of Cod Liver Oil (100IU per day per 5 pounds of body weight)
• EPA/DHA in the form of Krill Oil (240mg per day per 5 pounds of body weight)
• Soy-free Vitamin E (12IU per day per 5 pounds of body weight)
• Kelp water (1/4 teaspoon per day per 5 pounds of body weight)

Instructions

1. Add Raw Base Recipe ingredients (including the WHOLE egg) and any additional Boosted Supplements to the jug of your high-powered blender and blend until smooth. Transfer to a large bowl, cover and set in the fridge.
2. Meanwhile, add Cooked Base Recipe ingredients to your Instant Pot and cook on high pressure for 15 minutes. Alternatively, you could increase the broth to 3 cups and add to a large saucepan. Cover and bring to a boil, then simmer for 25 minutes.
3. Allow the Cooked Base Recipe ingredients to chill until room temperature. Transfer to the jug of your high-powered blender and blend on high until smooth. Transfer mixture to the bowl with the blended Raw Base Recipe ingredients and mix with a large spoon until combined.
4. Transfer to small silicone molds or larger silicone molds if you have a larger dog. Once all molds have been filled, transfer to the freezer and freeze for 12 hours. You can store them in the molds, or transfer to a large ziploc.
5. Keep the pucks in the freezer at all times. When ready to feed, take out on the counter to defrost for 1 hour or place in the fridge overnight. Remember there is raw meat in here, so wash up afterward.

Notes

MAKING HOMEMADE DOG FOOD SAFE

• If you have babies or toddlers that like to stick their hands, feet, and other small objects in your dog’s mouth, it may be best to hold off on feeding your dog raw food. While raw meats are safe for dogs, they aren’t safe for your baby. Cross contamination is a big problem here. If your children are older, it may be easier to teach them not to touch your dog’s mouth, especially after the dog has eaten.
• When making your homemade dog food, do not use these toxic foods. When in doubt, Google, “Is <<Ingredient Name>> safe for dogs” to make sure.
• Keep the pucks in the freezer at all times. When ready to feed, take out on the counter to defrost for 1 hour or place in the fridge overnight. Remember there is raw meat in here, so wash up afterward.
• When we travel, if we have access to a freezer we will bring the frozen pucks with us. If we don’t they get switched over to straight-up raw meat and eggs. Whatever we’re cooking, goes into their bowls before we cook it.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

• The easiest most cost-effective way to make dog food is to save your food scraps of the items called for in the recipe above, or the ingredients you decide on. We keep a large ziploc bag in the freezer that we dump all of our scraps into – meats, starches and fruits. When it’s full, I make a batch of dog food for literally pennies a serving.
• Ground seeds, replace with additional vegetables. Just make sure they are safe for dogs.
• For meat, I like to stick to grass-fed beef or pasture-raised lamb. Grass-fed beef is the least expensive of the two.
• For starch, I like sweet potatoes because they’re inexpensive and easy to cook.
• For liquid, I use bone broth because it’s nourishing and I always have lots in the house. You could use water instead.
• For fruit, I stick with apples or blueberries. For the apples, always be sure to remove the seeds. If you don’t want to use fruit, just add more starch.
• For fat, I use a combination of coconut oil or grass-fed tallow. The tallow is the least expensive at $3 per pound. You could also use flax oil, but it can go rancid easily and I don’t like to take that chance.