Confused About Balancing Homemade Dog Food? You’re Not Alone.
I’ve noticed so many discussions lately where dog owners struggle to understand what it actually means to balance homemade dog food and how to make healthy homemade dog food that provides all the nutrients their dogs need.
Yes — a homemade diet needs to provide the nutrients your dog needs. But there is a new marketing message that seems to be everywhere:
“You can’t properly balance your dog’s food unless you buy our expensive supplement.”
That is another marketing trick.
You do not need to spend a fortune on expensive supplements just because you prepare your dog’s food at home. Supplements can have a place, but balancing a diet does not automatically mean buying a long list of expensive products.
So I built a free tool to make this easier.
So I built a free tool to make this easier.
This tool is specifically designed for homemade dog food, because I’ve seen how many owners want to prepare fresh food but don’t know where to begin when it comes to balancing nutrients. If you feed your dog a raw diet, you can use my separate raw feeding calculator instead.
Nutrient data was collected mainly from USDA FoodData Central, along with other sources, and the calculations were built around AAFCO nutrient recommendations.
The calculator also includes cooking retention factors (source: USDA Nutrient Retention Factors) to account for nutrient losses during cooking.
🍳 Cooking assumption
The calculator assumes short cooking at relatively low temperatures, with little or no draining of cooking water. When possible, cooking with a small amount of water and keeping the liquid in the meal can help preserve water-soluble nutrients.
A few things to know
This is not a fancy, professionally designed app. It’s basically a spreadsheet that I turned into a tool.
It’s not perfect but what matters is the data and the math behind it. I collected the nutrient information, applied the appropriate nutrient targets and cooking-retention factors, and let the spreadsheet do the calculations.
NutriPaw Calculator for Balanced Homemade Dog Food – User Manual
Follow these steps to use it effectively:
1. Input the Time Frame
- Navigate to the first tab and select the length of the period for which you prepare meals. Choose one of the following options:
- Daily
- Weekly
- Monthly
- This time frame determines the total amount of ingredients needed for your selected period.
- DAILY is not the preferred input. A diet does not need to be perfectly balanced in every single meal or on every single day. What matters is achieving nutritional balance over a longer period, such as a week or a month, through variety and rotation of foods.
2. Add Ingredients
- Input the ingredients you plan to feed your dog during the selected time frame.
- Enter the total amount of each ingredient in ounces (oz), except for eggs.
- Eggs should be input as pieces. For example, if you feed your dog one egg every second day, enter 15 for a monthly period.
- Remember, the amounts entered should reflect the total for the selected time frame.
3. Switch to the Nutrition Tab
- After entering all ingredients, switch to the Nutrition tab to view the calculated nutritional breakdown.
4. Understand the Nutrition Tab
1. Pay attention to the colored cells.
🔴 Red cells indicate that a nutrient is too low or missing.
🟡 Yellow cells indicate that a nutrient is too high.
Pay special attention to both red and yellow cells when adjusting your recipe.
2. Calcium is a must in home-cooked diets.
Pay close attention to adding the correct amount of calcium to your dog’s food. The calculator will calculate exactly how much calcium you need to add per day based on the foods and amounts you enter, using either calcium carbonate or eggshell powder.
How to make eggshell powder? Watch HERE.
5. Get Help with Results and Join My Community
- If you need assistance interpreting the results or have questions about balancing your dog’s diet, I am happy to help!
- Join my FREE community, where you can get detailed explanations, watch my courses, and ask additional questions.
Thank you for using the Nutri Paw Calculator! This is version 1.1 of the calculator, created to help you make healthy homemade dog food and better understand your dog’s nutritional needs. Updates will be made based on feedback and suggestions, which are always welcome.