Homemade Dog Food- Beef and Veggies

So my poor Ava is missing some teeth, so she has a tough time chewing kibble. I started making her food about a year ago, for a few reasons, one so it is easier for her to chew, two we live in a pretty remote area and there are no pet food choices that fit my preference in food (I will probably do a post about that at a different time.), and three it is fairly cost effective.

TBT When Ava was a young whipper snapper!

I make her enough to last two weeks, I keep one weeks worth in the fridge and freeze the rest. She's 7 pounds and doesn't eat much, for a large dog my recipe probably would not last as long depending. She gets a quarter cup in the morning and a quarter cup at night. I figured out the serving by starting with what I deemed an appropriate amount and adjusting it depending on if she still seemed hungry/ gaining or losing weight.

She really loves the homemade food and knows when I am cooking it, I let her lick the pan at the end (after it cools of course)! This is a pretty standard recipe I use, sometimes I mix it up, but I will share my beef and veggies recipe with you!

Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef
1/2 cup carrots diced small
1/2 cup peeled apples diced small
1/2 cup sweet potato diced small
1/2 cup broccoli diced small
A few sprigs of fresh parsley
1 Tblsp of coconut oil
The coconut oil is good for their skin and coat, you can also put some on their paw pads in the winter to avoid drying and cracking.
Then I use either a cup of oat meal or a 1/3 cup of brown rice.

Finally a supplement of some sort, I use GNC Ultra Mega Superfood Complex plus Joint Health, she's supposed to have 1/4 scoop a day, so 2 weeks worth is 3.5 scoops. This is to make sure she is getting appropriate vitamins, she also has pretty bad arthritis so on top of the Superfood Complex she gets a half a GNC Hip & Joint Health pill a day. Other good supplements are The Missing Link and Nupro.

Just wanted to show you the bottles in case you are interested...now let's get cooking!

Put coconut oil in pan and brown meat, while you are doing this steam veggies/fruit. If you are doing brown rice, cook your rice too. Once meat is browned add parsley, then veggies and your rice or oatmeal depending, if adding oatmeal, add water until desired consistency. If it looks too dry in general, I will add some water until I like the consistency. Then After all is said and done I mix in my supplement. I split it in half and freeze one container and refrigerate the other.

Typically ends up looking something like this. 

Ava eats it up, this winter she will probably be getting some wild game in her diet as well, to mix up her protein. You can use ground turkey or chicken as well. The nice thing about this is you know what your dog is eating.

Happy Thursday all and enjoy!