Dog Food, the Next Step

I am going to try and make my own dry dog food.   At the moment I pay $43 for 8kg of decent dry dog food, this is about 64 cups by volume.  Based on a recipe I found that will make 60 cups of dry dog food, I can do it for less than $20.

The reason I am going to do this is because I was struck by how expensive decent quality dog food is and how awful smelling the cheap stuff is.  It was as I was buying my latest 8 kg bag that I wondered what it would take to make my own and if their would some sort of recipes online.   I got home and found quite a few to try, I am going to start with a recipe from this page.

The core of all the recipes is effectively making a dough that gets baked into a hard cracker.   The doughs all contain a fair amount of fat which means it will go rancid fairly quickly, but if I make a reasonable amount at a time this will not be an issue.   Louie eats about 3 cups of kibble along with 1.5 - 2 cups of wet dog food each day.   A 20 cup recipe should be enough to feed Louie for about a week, though I suspect I will make more like 40-60 cups of the food at a time, the bin we have for the dry dog food can hold about 80 cups.  I wold prefer not to have to make dog food each and every week.

I will post some pictures of the kibble and write about how it all turns out especially the verdict from the hound.