In the planning for our homestead, it has occurred to me that adding Dingo to our dog pack is going to introduce another set of situations. Dingo is highly allergic to wheat. So that means his dog food has to be carefully monitored as well as treats and such. And with Gypsy and Evee in the mix, we have to either have separate everyone to feed, or we need to change their food to what Dingo eats.

Another thing that has been rattling around in my thoughts is that I don’t like all the cans we’ve been generating. We feed our dogs kibble in the morning and evening, and they each get a can of wet food in the morning as well. It was okay with one dog, but now, two? And soon to be three? I just don’t like that it’s generating a lot of waste.

And to be honest, it’s kind of expensive and even if I get the higher quality, it’s still got a lot of filler and most likely undesirable cuts of meats and such. Paying premium for food that really isn’t very premium, just seems wrong. Here we are looking at economical cuts for our own table, yet we’re paying premium prices for dog food. Something doesn’t seem right.

So, I started to do some research on homemade dog food. I’d like to totally avoid wheat and even barley or oatmeal. Part of Gypsy’s issues last summer we thought might be yeast related in many ways. Evee has a sensitive tummy and occasionally seems to get upset from her food. I finally found several good websites that talked about how to make a sort of dog soup to be used as an extra food suppliment. I suppose that we could just feed a good lamb and rice kibble. A lot of people do. But with two elderly dogs, I’ve noticed they need a little softer food to enjoy.

So I went to the store and checked out the reduced meat area. For $14 I got 9 pounds of beef and pork. I just popped into the crock pot without cutting or anything. I added 2 cups of water and just let it all cook down for 6 hours. When it was done, it was easy to just crumble it up with a knife and fork. I cooked up 6 cups of rice and added it to the mix. I also added two cans of cooked carrot and a bag of frozen veggies that I chopped up. I made sure the veggie had no onion or garlic because that apparently is not the best for dogs. Once it was all mixed up, we split it up into 3 big containers. Two got put into the freezer. One went into the frig. And then for breakfast, I used one cup of kibble and one cup of “soup topper”.

The dogs enjoyed their meals much more than normally, I think. They were slow and enjoyed each bite. The other stuff they would kind of rush through and then be very belchy! No fun! This morning they were slower and licked the bowls clean. I think we found a hit! They got a little bit tonight and were very ready for it. Even the kitties got a little bit and I think everyone was very content with our new choice!

For less than $18, we have enough dog soup for easily 2 weeks. We will reduce our trash by close to 30 cans and cut our cost by almost half. And I really like that we’re keeping all the filler and junk meats out of their diet. They will get their vitamins and such from the premium kibble. We’ll see how it goes!

I like how we will have eliminated, also, the whole feeding issues of allergic, elderly and sensitive tummy pooches! Once we get our laying hens, I think I will be using some excess eggs to also supplement the dog’s diet and also stretch our feed bill a bit! Part of what we really want to do on our homestead is to become more self sufficient as well as careful about what we eat and the waste it creates. Even for our pets and livestock!