Hi! I'm Sacha, a fresh food recipe formulator and advocate of feeding our dogs a healthy diet and I'd like to walk you through how to make fresh food for your dog without a board certified nutritionist, a degree or a mental health break down.
What is a fresh food recipe formulator? I formulate recipes using whole foods, they can be raw or cooked, I'm not a raw only advocate or a raw extremist - the recipes I formulate can be balanced in different ways, from meeting AAFCO, NRC & FEDIAF guidelines (which are the same that kibble manufacturers use) or the widely fear mongered B.A.R.F ratio diet. I have a number of Veterinarians that utalise my services to formulate balanced diets for their clients who no longer wish to feed commercial diets.
What I don't do: I'm not going to tell you that your dog is a wolf and you should feed it the same but what I will do is stick to the facts that your dogs digestive system is made to consume its ancestral diet and has even had some evolutionary upgrades to make consuming foods us humans eat and throw away to be more digestible. The modern dog is not a wolf and the environment they live in means their digestive systems can need more support and we have to respect that, so let's not die on the hill that dogs should be fed like wolves and wild dogs.
Guardian breed eating deceased livestock
Raw/fresh food feeding often gets a hard time because it's said to not be balanced, dangerous or even irresponsible. The realities are, your Vet sees so many cases of poorly balanced fresh food diets from meat only meals to the dreaded chicken, rice & vegetable diet and then add to that poor bone choices and food handling, so you can't be upset at them for being cautious when you say you want to feed this kind of diet.
Poor choice of bone - weight bearing that can cause blockages and dental injury.
Whilst fresh food feeding and some formulating is being taught in some veterinarian schools, the unfortunate situation is that most Vets haven't received enough education on the topic to actually help you with this and will need to refer on and yes, it is possible, you will come across an anti-fresh food Vet and look, they probably have good reason but let me help you put together a diet that they'll feel more comfortable with.
The biggest push back from the kibble and Vet medicine industry is "balance". For some reason, we are pushed to believe that domestic pets such as dogs and cats are must consume a 100% balanced diet at every meal whilst every other animal in the world including healthy humans does not live this way.
A healthy human understands that eating a variety of food on rotation to avoid underdoing or overdoing any one element is healthy. A typical healthy human does not micro-manage nutrients and does not seek to perfectly balance each meal. In human nutrition, we understand and accept that the government guidelines for "balance" are not suitable for every individual person and that there are many different ways humans consume a healthy balanced diet.
However, in domestic dogs, we are pushed to feed a "perfectly balanced" diet to our dogs at each sitting and this type of diet is typically an ultra processed brown pellet that is only about 20-40% animal matter and is "balanced" with a vitamin and mineral mix that contains synthetic nutrients - so tell me again how that is healthier than feeding a fresh food diet that is balanced over time like every other animal including healthy humans in the world?
Most pet parents are so conditioned to this "balance" issue that they will never be able to feel comfortable feeding a fresh food diet they make at home but for those pet parents, I have solutions because, my friend, there are always solutions.
The solution to this is simply to use a recipe I have formulated that is balanced to AAFCO/NRC/FEDIAF guidelines using real food not synthetics OR a balancing supplement/base mix that is either formulated with whole foods (more expensive) or synthetics (cheaper) - either way, they're all nice easy options so I think we can put that stress about balance to the side for now, yeah?
For our readers that only feel comfortable with complete & balanced recipes i.e. those balanced to AAFCO/FEDIAF/NRC guidelines, our Patreon platform will probably be a good fit for you. There are over 60 recipes there and whilst this is a $5 per month membership, I do have a bunch of free recipes there too. If you can afford $5 a month to access over 60 recipes, most with full nutritional analysis reports your Vet can feel comfortable with, hit that subscribe button.
For the batch I'm going to walk you through, we're going to use the B.A.R.F ratios. B.A.R.F stands for: Bones And Raw Food and Biologically Appropriate Raw Food or Bones and Raw Food and is a term coined by Dr Ian Billinghurst who is referred to the Godfather of fresh food feeding. There are a variety of different ratios used for the B.A.R.F model, we choose the one with up to 25% plant matter to support a healthy gut microbiome and gives us access to more nutrients.
Making enough food for a batch is a good idea, it's also cheaper. If you work out approx. how much to feed your dog, you can work out how much you should make for a weeks worth. If you're on a budget, we have some great tips here. Generally, you will keep in the fridge what you will use in 2-3 days and portion+freeze the remainder.
When I make a batch, I generally will do it based on 1 kilo of meat, I do this because it's easy for me as my supplier has 1 kilo packs of different proteins. Only doing 1 kilo batches forces me to feed a variety instead of just feeding the same thing day in a day out which we can fall into the trap of when we're busy or we get a bit complacent.
1,000 grams of Muscle Meat i.e. Meat, heart, tripe, tongue etc.
182 grams of Secreting organ i.e. liver, kidney, brain etc.
454 grams of Plant matter i.e. Vegetables, crushed seeds & nuts (except Macadamia), fruits, herbs etc.
The thing missing from this recipe is bone. The B.A.R.F ratios call for 10% bone but it's not that simple, it's actually a bit tricky and it's where people often give up. A chicken neck is around 36% bone so you'd actually have to sit down and do some math to figure how how many grams of chicken necks you'd need to feed to get 10% bone in the diet - GAH, too hard!
The easiest way to approach bones is to simply give your dog edible bones as an entire meal every 2nd night and if bones scare you, no dramas, just use a calcium supplement such as My Doggie Boosters MCHA (Bone Meal) or Calci-D for example.
I wouldn't recommend chicken necks as an entire meal though as they're quite high in bone content and could be constipating especially in dogs just new to this style of feeding. Poultry carcass & wings can be good options. Check out our guide here that gives you plenty of options to consider.
Big Dog Pet Foods have an excellent guide here based on the size of your dog and you can check out their article on bones here.
Your next question is probably....how much bone to give? It's a common sense approach, have a look at the size of the bone, how much of it is edible, what type of bone would represent the general size of a meal you would normally give? It's ok to be under or over if your dog is maintaining their weight fine - this is something you generally get a feel for over time so to start with, a good guess is fine.
Supervision is very important when you're giving your dog bones so you can intervene if necessary but leave your dog be if they're doing fine. General rule is don't give greedy dogs small bones they can swallow. Brisket bone can be a bit iffy as they can rip large chunks off which can be problematic in the digestive tract so I would say, err on the side of caution with brisket.
Ok, let's head back to the recipe:
1,000 grams of Muscle Meat i.e. Meat, heart, tripe, tongue etc.
182 grams of Secreting organ i.e. liver, kidney, brain etc.
454 grams of Plant matter i.e. Vegetables, crushed seeds & nuts (except Macadamia), fruits, herbs etc.
Your next question may be, how much of each?
Generally, with secreting organ I would make Beef or Lamb Liver 50% of that ratio and other secreting organs such as Kidney the other 50% but if you can only get Liver, then it will do but try for that other type as Liver is very rich. Secreting organ makes up around 10% of your dogs diet but you can generally go up to 20% safely but Liver can cause loose dark stools and the only way to learn how much your dog is ok with is by experience. Chicken Liver is ok on rotation but don't just stick to that as it doesn't have the nutrient density that the others do. Rotation is a very important part of fresh food feeding for this very reason.
For muscle meat, I would either feed 100% meat or 80% Meat and then 20% other muscle such as heart. Heart can be quite rich so exceeding 20% of it might upset the tummies of dogs especially those new to this style of feeding.
Here's what I did with my Meat ratio: Beef Mince: 680g
Beef Heart: 200g
Canned Sardines: 80g
Canned Oysters: 40 When it comes to plant matter, that is totally up to you! My only suggestion here is that I'd keep fruit to under 20% of your plant matter ratio due to the sugar content.
Here's what I did with my Plant ratio which was influenced by what I already had at home: Cooked Sweet Potato: 200g
Blueberries: 40g
Salad Mix: 50g
Crushed Seeds: 20g - I choose an LSA mix from the health food isle.
Garlic: 5g
Canned Kidney Beans: 100g
Capsicum: 39g
I finely chopped everything as one of my dogs doesn't like the sloppiness that doing it in the blender creates but if your dog doesn't care, that's the super easy way apart fromt he clean up.
You might be wondering what plant matter should be cooked, I cover that here, it's really just the starchy ones but you can cook it all if you want.
Get those clean hands in there (or use gloves) and mix very well if you're not using a blender.
Now, you're done if you're comfortable to leave it here but if you're worried about balance, you can add in a balancing supplement at meal time.
The most popular ones in our community are typically wholefood supplements that help fill potential nutrient gaps in wholefood diets because they are not synthetic, they can be expensive, and may not be viable for pet parents with large+ dogs.
Hunde Essential Blend
Bestie Balancer
McDowells Roar
Wellbeing for dogs
Non-wholefood supplements are much cheaper because they include synthetic nutrients.
CEN Multivitamin
Multi-Vite for Animals
Predamax
Feramo-D
Don't give yourself a hard time if you can only afford the synthetic ones, that's what kibble has anyway. Learn more about supplements in fresh food feeding here.
Coming at then end of January 2025 is our web app that will do this all for you, so keep an eye here for it.
If making your own food at home just doesn't feed right, then you can buy it from the shop, check out more information about that here.
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