Karen Shaw Becker - Dr Beckers Real Food For Healthy Dogs & Cats: Simple Homemade Food

Our plan is based on our analysis of the ancestral diet. Our goal is to provide a simple plan for a fresh food diet that supplies most nutrients in whole food form, using ingredients that are easy to find. Where there are shortfalls we give you ways to supply those nutrients.

This program was formulated using 2014 AAFCO and NRC guidelines. If you are growing a puppy that will be over 60 pounds as an adult you may want to consider using the standards of the FEDIAF (European Pet Food Industry Federation).

In the main text, there are lots of tables. You need to read these tables to find out how to put together the pieces of your pets diet. Most of the time, once you find the information you need and enter it on a customized diet card for your animal (found in Appendix IV), you wont need to consult that table again.

Analyses of specific versions of our recipes are found in Appendix II. They provide you with details including protein and fat content, how many calories are in a pound of food, mineral and vitamin content, fatty acids and other useful information. We havent included every possible variation, only the ones we thought would be either useful or interesting. There may be times when an animal may need to eat only turkey for a while, or has some other limitation. These analyses will help you to customize those programs.

This book is used by a wide variety of people, from those just getting into fresh food to veterinarians who need all the facts. If youre in the new category dont be intimidated. The day may come when you want to know all the information contained in those tables!

We want you to be able to see where you need to fill in the gaps in a fresh food diet, not just to take our word for it.

Some mineral and vitamin supplementation is needed in a fresh food diet. Mineral supplement A for dogs or cats given in Appendix I covers the rotation given in this book. Use mineral supplement B if you are unable to include all recommended ingredients in the recipe. If you use products other than those we describe, the serving size would change and youd have to go through the whole process to figure out the serving size (complete with a gram scale), so we suggest you stick to the products we list. You can certainly take the information given in the analysis appendix and formulate your own version.

To get the most out of this book, please read all the text before using the recipes, even if youve used previous versions. Its very tempting to just go to a recipe and start putting it together, but you need to understand the program before beginning. Weve found that most of the answers to questions we received were to be found in the text people had not read.

We cant include enough specifics to make the perfect page of directions for your particular animal, so weve added some diet card template at the end of the book. Use them to write down each animals diet program with amounts of meat mix, eggs, sardines, veggies etc. to make a meal, and include the amounts of bone replacement, mineral supplement, fatty acids, vitamins and any other supplements youre using.