With all the pet food health scares, many pet owners are turning to homemade pet food and treats. Done right, these home-cooked meals are far healthier than commercial food. If you’ve got a freeze drier, you can make healthy recipes for your cat or dog and easily freeze dry it in individual or daily portions.
Dr. Ruth Roberts, a South Carolina holistic veterinarian, believes that home-cooked pet food can cure or alleviate the symptoms of most common pet problems such as obesity, skin allergies, cancer, diabetes and more. Dr. Roberts developed a one-pot meal for cats and dogs called “The Original Crockpet Diet”. These recipes have all the nutrition your pets need when you add in a multivitamin. Because freeze drying doesn’t damage nutrients in food the way dehydrating does, it’s safe to freeze-dry individual portions of this recipe.
Dogs and cats need different nutrients, so be sure to use the appropriate version for your pet. If you want a one-on-one consultation with Dr. Roberts before you dive in, she’s happy to do email consultations. You can get The Original Crockpet Diet eBook here.
The Crockpet diet consists of a protein such poultry or ground beef (or fish for cats) combined with vegetables, kidney beans, calcium, spices, coconut oil. You can add brown rice if your pet isn’t trying to lose weight. There’s no washing or chopping involved, just toss everything in a large crock pot, cook on low for 8 hours, mash with a fork or potato masher, let cool, then freeze dry in individual portions. Each 7 quart batch costs about $15 to make and will last two cats or a medium dog about two weeks. Dogs absolutely love the food and cats can be convinced more quickly if you add a little tuna or anchovie paste to get them interested.
If you’re freeze drying your own pet food or treats, we’d love to hear about it. Post your pet’s photo on our Facebook page and share your tips.
I am trying to provide a more safe and healthy food for my 2 dogs. I hope my recipes turn out good
I want to do this
If I want to freeze dry an already formulated BARF meal that contains raw bone, meat, veg and fruit.
My question is, what happens to the bone shards during the freeze-dry process? Do they become dry and sharp and dangerous at this point, because if hydrated, they are considered almost ‘soft’ and digestible. I just want to check that it does not become dangerous for the digestive tract after drying out completely.
Just interested
Thank you
I have the same question as Faye. If raw ground bone shards are freeze dried, are they now dangerous to feed to my cats?
I have a chocolate lab who is allergic to ” we think chicken,wheat & grain” so for the last 6 months, due to him having yeast infections in his ears, we have been cooking all his food (mince beef, potatoes, Carrots, peas) & he has had no infections at all, he was happier & very healthy, in fact perfect. My question is, we are going away touring Europe in a motorhome for 3 months so we have tried him on hypoallergenic dog food but unfortunately his ears are really bad again so we need to put him back on the homemade food so could this be freeze dried in some way that we are able to batch cook before we go & someway dried so we can give it to him like a dry food.
Thanks
Nadine