With the price of dog food continuing to rise, Chris and I started looking at our options. What we found was the less dog foods contained items that we did not want to feed our dogs.
So our middle ground was to use a med/high quality kibble and replace the wet food with our own. We literally broke it down to the cost per ounce, example…Diamond Performance is 36.99 for a 40lb bag was about 5.8 cents per ounces and last us about 1 week. (36.99/640oz = .058 cents per ounce). In addition, we were using 21 cans of wet food at a cost of 1.59 – 1.99 per can.
Our total cost for feeding 7 dogs (mix of mature adult and less than 1 year old dogs) was about $75-90 per week.
So here is what we have come up with and it make about 25 days of wet food and extends our dry food by several days.
Ingredients:
This can be modified. Example, if you only have 2 bags of green beans, use those and maybe put 1 back of lima bean (or what you have in your freezer).
20 lbs of chicken thigh quarters (just bought them at Walmart for 10lbs $4.96)
5 20oz containers of chicken livers (Walmart $1.29 per container)
3-4 lbs apples (.99 per lb)
12 lbs or so of sweet potatoes (.79 per lb)
3 bags frozen green beans (good time to clean out your 1/2 bags in the freezer) ($1.28
2 bags sweet peas (same as above)
3 packages frozen spinach blocks (88 cents per box)
4 lbs of carrots (1.48 lb)
5 lbs of potatoes (2.97 bag)
4 lbs brown rice. I ran out so the last 4 or 5 containers has whole wheat pasta. (1.18 per /lb)
2lb barley (2.00 per lbs)
Step 1 : Cook all of your chicken just like you were making chicken soup. I put salt, pepper, thyme, celery seed and maybe some poultry seasoning. Remove from pot and let cool. Once its has cooled, removed all bones. Check, check and double check for bones.
Step 2: Cut your sweet potatoes, carrots into large chunks, peel and all. I cook it in the chicken broth I just made.
Step 3 – Cut your russet potatoes into small pieces and boil. I typically boil these in a separate pot because my large stock pot is already full with Step 2.
Step 4 – Cook rice and barley as directed. You can cook to together or separate.
Step 5 – Cut your apples and cook with the chicken liver. Once all cooked, I use a blender to blend into thick mixture. You will probable have to add some broth. This will become you thickening agent.