Commercial or home-made food?

Topics, guidelines and tips for feeding Chow Chows.

Moderator: chowadmin

Post Reply
Cocopie
Rank 0
Rank 0
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jun 05, 2013 9:17 am

Commercial or home-made food?

Post by Cocopie »

Hi, which is better? Commercial food or homemade food? Please share your recommended brands or recipes. Thanks! :)
cocomini
Rank 0
Rank 0
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon May 27, 2013 9:02 am

Re: Commercial or home-made food?

Post by cocomini »

Hi, this is Shawn, I'd like to say something.
Read what is in your dog food, cooked grain of some type, veggies, maybe fruit, and meat. 7 ingredients-ish or so, you'd think.
Count the ingredients. Wow!
If you went to the store and bought just the cooked grain, veggies, fruit, and meat then brought it home and put it all in the cupboard, or on the floor in the pantry, or where ever you normally put your bag of dog food--how long do you think it would last before it started spoiling and rotting?
Ever wonder why dog food can stay on the shelf for years and not spoil, stink or mold? ...Like a twinky.
If you ate twinkies all day every day, nothing but twinkies, I wonder what your skin an hair would start to look like?
I see alot of people doing the "vet dance", ie- taking their dog back and forth to vet for some mysterious allergy, putting needles time and again into their pets for blood work, or maybe a shot of this or a shot of that, mostly a repeated failure. The, vet finally says, welp, maybe you orta change its diet.
When you change a pets diet, it may take some time for that allergy or symptom to go away, the same thing for your pet to develop symptoms of an allergy. You say, you've been feeding the same food for 5 years? Well, your dog used to be a healthy vibrant animal, but it has been eating all the preservatives, conditioners, mold inhibitors, "natural flavors", and colors......a dogs body can only take so much before failure.
Did you ever look at the ingredients in a bottle of food coloring? Ever seen propylene glycol? Know what that is? Look it up in your dictionary, Anti-freeze. Now just who decided how much anti-freeze was safe for humans or dogs? Just because the dog food says yellow this or red that....they still arent telling you anti-freeze is part of it.
So, I did get up off my lazy chair, started giving my chow the nutrition she deserved. Not real hard for me to cook a big pot of rice, boil a dozen eggs, maybe some turnip greens. Three pans to scoop food out of. Not hard for me either. Throw in raw carrots, pumpkin, etc, some apples or other fruit , mix it up. Peel the boiled egg. put a table spoon- ish of good omega oil, veri those too. Thats all for now, Shawn.
User avatar
beckysmyth92
Rank 0
Rank 0
Posts: 69
Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2012 4:49 am

Re: Commercial or home-made food?

Post by beckysmyth92 »

cocomini wrote:Hi, this is Shawn, I'd like to say something.
Read what is in your dog food, cooked grain of some type, veggies, maybe fruit, and meat. 7 ingredients-ish or so, you'd think.
Count the ingredients. Wow!
If you went to the store and bought just the cooked grain, veggies, fruit, and meat then brought it home and put it all in the cupboard, or on the floor in the pantry, or where ever you normally put your bag of dog food--how long do you think it would last before it started spoiling and rotting?
Ever wonder why dog food can stay on the shelf for years and not spoil, stink or mold? ...Like a twinky.
If you ate twinkies all day every day, nothing but twinkies, I wonder what your skin an hair would start to look like?
I see alot of people doing the "vet dance", ie- taking their dog back and forth to vet for some mysterious allergy, putting needles time and again into their pets for blood work, or maybe a shot of this or a shot of that, mostly a repeated failure. The, vet finally says, welp, maybe you orta change its diet.
When you change a pets diet, it may take some time for that allergy or symptom to go away, the same thing for your pet to develop symptoms of an allergy. You say, you've been feeding the same food for 5 years? Well, your dog used to be a healthy vibrant animal, but it has been eating all the preservatives, conditioners, mold inhibitors, "natural flavors", and colors......a dogs body can only take so much before failure.
Did you ever look at the ingredients in a bottle of food coloring? Ever seen propylene glycol? Know what that is? Look it up in your dictionary, Anti-freeze. Now just who decided how much anti-freeze was safe for humans or dogs? Just because the dog food says yellow this or red that....they still arent telling you anti-freeze is part of it.
So, I did get up off my lazy chair, started giving my chow the nutrition she deserved. Not real hard for me to cook a big pot of rice, boil a dozen eggs, maybe some turnip greens. Three pans to scoop food out of. Not hard for me either. Throw in raw carrots, pumpkin, etc, some apples or other fruit , mix it up. Peel the boiled egg. put a table spoon- ish of good omega oil, veri those too. Thats all for now, Shawn.
100% agree with you Shawn, its scary to think what is actually in commercial dog food!
Image
User avatar
DrewBear
Rank 1
Rank 1
Posts: 182
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 8:54 pm
Location: California

Re: Commercial or home-made food?

Post by DrewBear »

Debates about what to feed your Chow are long and complicated. Raw whole carcass vs raw minced vs home cooked vs commercial vs...on it goes. Search this forum and you'll find plenty to read. There's no simple answer and much depends on your budget and energy constraints. It may sound easy to batch cook something for your Chow, but some folks barely have time & energy to tend to their own needs. We can all want the best for our Chows, yet have limits as to what we can do for them. Life is not perfect and often choices (compromises) must be made.

I looked into all the various dog food options and decided to start with high quality commercial kibble for my pup. Clearly there is a wide range of quality in dog food. One of the main reasons I chose to go commercial is the long list of "trace" ingredients necessary for a healthy puppy. It would take quite a bit of research to devise a home-cooked menu that would include such ingredients. I imagine it would also be time consuming to buy the ingredients and cook them properly. Here's one list as an example: http://www.tasteofthewildpetfood.com/pr ... ients/#Top

There are also different types of preservatives: http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/red-flag- ... ervatives/
Image
'Bear' 1996 - 2011
User avatar
JammyJoy
Rank 1
Rank 1
Posts: 156
Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2013 2:37 am
Location: Australia
Contact:

Re: Commercial or home-made food?

Post by JammyJoy »

What we are giving for our dogs is homemade for breakfast and dinner and commercial for lunch.
Post Reply