What not to put in Home Made Pet Food

What not to put in the food you serve to your pets may be as important as what you do put into your Home Made Pet Food. With a little searching on the internet there are literally hundreds of foods that can be found to cause discomfort, illness or death in your pets. I will try to focus on a few of the more common foods specific to the dogs and cats.



The seven top foods I will focus on in this article are: Chocolate, Grapes & raisins, Onions & Garlic and Chicken and fish bones. These are the common foods that I seem to run across the most in my research.

THIS LIST IS BY NO MEANS COMPLETE AND IT IS UP TO THE READER TO DO A MORE THOUROUGH RESEARCH EFFORT, AND/OR CONSULT A VETERINARIAN IN ORDER TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE FEEDING THE PROPER DIET TO YOUR PET.

Chocolate, in as little as an once consumed by a 30 pound dog, can be fatal, according to one source. Other sources state that a 50 pound dog eating 9 ounces of chocolate could begin to see signs of toxic response. Dogs seem to be more susceptible to it than cats, however it is recommended that neither cats or dogs be fed chocolate. Our cat drives me to distraction when I have a chocolate sundae, he would happily feast on that chocolate, right into a comma I am afraid. The darker the chocolate the more severe the effects may be. Chocolate can be traumatic to the nervous system and heart, and cause seizures, comma and death within a matter of hours.

Grapes and raisins can cause acute renal failure in dogs and cats. The ranges of harmful consumption amounts range far and wide, it would seem from my research. One source states a single serving of raisins can cause death. Another source gives a range of 8.5 to 25 ounces of grape consumption for a 50 pound dog can be in the toxic range. Grapes and raisins seem to be more harmful to dogs than cats. However, the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center suggest that there is enough uncertainty that grapes and raisins should be avoided.

Onions and Garlic contain thiosulphate, which can cause a type of anemia that can be difficult to successfully treat. Again, the amount of onion ingested varies. Garlic seems to be less toxic than onions, and I have even read of small amounts of garlic fed to pets to control internal parasites and worms, again you pays your dime and you takes your chances. We love to cook with onions and garlic so anytime we do, the watchword is “no table scraps for the dogs and cat tonight”. So we make sure that no table scraps go in the Home Made Pet Food that day.

Last but not least is bones. Chicken and fish bones are particularly dangerous as they can shatter and become lodged in a pets throat and suffocation can occur, or the bone can lacerate the internal organs, both of which can be fatal. When I was young, one of my dad's dogs got a chicken bone caught in his throat and my dad found him dead. So I have always had an aversion to giving pets chicken bones.

Web Sight sources:
http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/health/dietno.htm

http://cats.about.com/cs/catfood/a/humanfood.htm

HTTP://vetmedicine.about.com/cs/nutritiondogs/a/chocolatetoxici.htm

http://www.vetinfo.com/dtoxin.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape_and_raisin_toxicity_in_dogs

http://www.petalia.com.au/Templates/StoryTemplate_Process.cfm?specie=Dogs&story_no=257#ct-4

Why make Home Made Pet Food from Home Made Pet Food

Why make Home Made Pet Food from Home Made Pet Food

 

Why should you make your own Home Made Pet food? Is the health of your pet important to you? If you recall the large pet food recall from 2007, you may recall that there was at least 14 confirmed deaths from the faulty pet food. One online database gave a figure of 3600 deaths. See the Wikipedia.org - 2007 Pet food recalls

 

Advantages of making your own pet food.

• Knowing what is in the food you feed your animals.
• Giving your pet a fresh healthy diet. 
• Probably the best reason that you should make your own Home Made Pet Food is that you can make sure that the 75% carbohydrates and 25% protiens that you use for the reciept is all healthy for your pet. 

Disadvantages of making your own pet food.

• You must educate yourself on the nutritional needs of your pet. Simply giving your pet a diet of table scraps may not allow your pet to receive all of the necessary nutrients that he or she needs.  
• Making sure that your pet gets all of the nutrients that are necessary for good health can be difficult.  
• Putting the wrong ingredient in the food can be harmful to your pet.
• Depending on the ingredients used, it could be more expensive than store bought dog food.

Meat from diseased and euthanize animals are often used to make the commercial dog food. Along with the meat and meat byproducts come the drugs and a variety of nasty microorganisms. These bacterium do not always die during the manufacturing process, however, the manufacturing of the dog food can destroy much of the nutritional value of the meat. Moldy grain has also been rumored to have been placed into the mix.

 

Some of the effects of these unhealthy additions to commercial dog food are vomiting, loss of appetite, and diarrhea. And that is the better end of the spectrum. Add such tongue twisting ingredients as butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), and ethoxyquin to the food and your dog could risk cancer, organ failure, and all this leading up to death. The a fore mentioned tongue twisting chemicals are all legal in the dog food in small dose.

  

Signs of a pets food allergies can be, but not limited to:

• Even though your pet has no flea's, he or she is constantly itching.
• Bad smells coming from the ears.
• Red, itchy, watery eyes.
• Biting the soles of the feet and in between the toes.
• Small bumps and hives over the pets body.

Learn more about how you can make Home Made Dog
Food by visiting the Home Made Dog Food Blog often.