Balanced nutrition
Week 2
Welcome back for week 2 of Kibble to Cooked!
After cooking up your first meal last week, in this second module of Kibble to Cooked we’re going to look at how to ensure a home-cooked diet provides all the nutrients your dog needs. These are the main aims of this tutorial:
Learn how to use a varied diet and nutritional supplements to ensure your dog’s diet contains everything they need
Sign up for a free account at My VetChef to get personalised recipes and recommended supplements for your dog
Cook another tasty meal for your dog to enjoy
So, sit back, watch this short video, and get cooking :)
For week two, it’s time to try one of the tailored recipes from My VetChef.
Sign up to get your dog's recipes, such as this Beefy Rice dish for puppies
Beefy rice for puppies
This delicious recipe is specifically designed to support growing puppies, with plenty of energy, protein, vitamins and minerals. When mixed with the VetChef Growth supplement, it is perfectly balanced for puppies up to 6 months of age.
The quantities below will make enough for one meal for each size of dog (or half a day’s worth).
To cook, simply add all the ingredients together in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for around 20 minutes, stirring regularly, until the rice is cooked and most of the water has been absorbed (add a little more water during cooking if the mixture becomes too dry).
Dinner time!
This week, you can either feed your recipe as a one-off complete meal or split it across two meals alongside your dog’s usual food as you did in week 1.
If you’ve had a chance to order your dog’s supplement, then add this to the recipe, but don’t worry if you haven’t got round to this yet as it’s not crucial to use supplements when feeding occasional meals alongside complete processed foods.
Dr Joe's top tips
Supplement
Sign up for free to get your dog's recommended supplement so you can balance every meal to perfection.
Variety is the spice of life
Feed a range of recipes - mixing up protein sources, vegetables and other ingredients helps ensure long-term health, wellbeing and happiness.
Stay safe
Make sure you stick to proper vet-recommended recipes and supplements as it is possible for a homemade diet to lead to long term nutritional deficiencies that can seriously impact a dog’s health.
How did it go?
With a greater understanding of your dog’s nutritional requirements and how home-cooked recipes can meet these, and a couple of cooked meals behind you, you’re hopefully starting to feel more confident about home-cooking for your dog. If so, it’s time to move on to week 3 and look at increasing the amount of fresh food in your dog’s diet, using batch cooking and storage to make it as easy as possible. If you don't want to wait for the email to come through, click here to skip forwards to week 3.