Source: www.pet-grub.com
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A Short Summary
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Animal nutrition is not complex. In fact it is amazingly simple and wholesome homemade pet food should be nothing more than a simulation of what a dog or cat would naturally get in the wild.
Review of animal nutritional principles and guidelines:
- Only one animal protein should be fed at one time when possible.
- Although feeding your pet a variety of vegetables is a good idea, they don't need a lot, especially cats who need less than dogs — and in some cases, I don't even feed vegetables at all.
- Meats should always be raw and dog and cats need some raw fat in their diet.
- Vegetables should be fed raw, in most situations, and they need to be finely chopped to simulate predigestion.
- When feeding ground meat, dogs and cats need their food to be the consistency of a very thick stew as they should eat and drink at the same time.
- Let your dog or cat eat as much as they want at each feeding.
- A mature dog or cat should eat once or twice, preferably once, a day and puppies and kittens can be fed up to 6 times per day depending on their age and breed — read Part 3 for more information.
- Free feeding is not good as the carnivore is designed to eat a lot of food and then let it be fully digested before eating again.
- Eggs should be immersed in hot water, not boiling, for about 5 minutes.
- Since most pets prefer their food warm and since carnivores eat based on their sense of smell, hot water is added to the food to increase the water consistency and to volatize the odour.
- Calcium is the most important supplement to provide your pet with as raw meat is high in phosphorus. In order to balance the phosphorus, calcium must be added to your pet's meal. I like to use finely ground egg shells.
- Bones provide valuable minerals to our pet, but bones do not make a good calcium supplement as bones also provide a lot of phosphorus. Out pets naturally get their calcium from the blood of their prey. But since most meats have been drained of blood, we use ground egg shells as an alternative calcium source.
Moving Right Along
Most of the serious
information is now finished. So let's have learn some more light hearted information — and that's what Appendix B is all about. Of course, feel free to review Appendix A again if you want.