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The Honest Kitchen

3K views 7 replies 7 participants last post by  DogsR4Life 
#1 ·
Hi DT folks.... Especially those that keep up with feeding our pups!

I have a question. For quite a while, my youngest has been fed Acana Meadowland (Wild Prairie for you Canadiens). He has totally thrived on this as a basic food. Still, I have an obsession to supplement his diet.

He gets eggs, pureed pumpkin, organic yogurt, nonfat cottage cheese, organic applesauce, fresh berries..... the list goes on. For a year I have been adding a couple of tablespoons of Newman's canned dog food. It is a 5 star organic tinned food.

Its not cheap and opening cans of food seems like a waste.

So..... When I picked up McCoy's monthly bag of kibble from my local store I asked about an alternative and they gave me some samples of The Honest Kitchen freeze dried food. I fed it to McCoy (as a topping ) after hydrating it and he loved it.

Any thoughts? I would love to lose the cans, Yet I get a total kick out of varying his mealtime routine.

One other thing.... McCoy has never had intestinal issues. And, he will pretty much eat anything that I put down for him. I am basically just asking if anyone here has had any experiences with this product: The Healthy Kitchen.

Thanks,

John
Portland OR
 
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#2 ·
John, I don't have any experience with the Honest Kitchen, but wanted to share our family's feeding program.

When Chaos was diagnosed with cancer in 2011, we had to come up with creative ways to encourage her to eat. My husband and I started making our own dog food, which we call casserole.

My husband makes "doggie casserole" a couple times a week. Essentially its a stew or stir fry that we would eat.
example:
- slow cook an entire chicken in the crock pot, then debone. Add 2 or 3 vegetables, carrots, sweet potato, peas, cabbage, etc. Then we mix this with brown rice.
- ground beef, penne, and vegetables.
- Egg omlettes with cheese and veggies are a quick breakfast.

We free feed a high quality kibble in addition to 2 hot meals a day. None of our dogs are overweight or underweight. Incredibly healthy and fit. No skin issues. Little shedding. Our vet is on board with our feed program (and would like to come back as a dog in their next life and live on our farm)

It sounds like McCoy is a good eater, and has already experienced many different foods. Yes, its a little extra work to make their food, but we enjoy watching them get excited for meal time, and the results speak for themselves.
 
#3 ·
@ flaming

When our dog, Butcher (RIP) was a puppy my son had a freezer full of venison and elk. We only ate the choice cuts and ground up most of the rest as we used it to make sausage. It still left quite a bit of game. So I used make what I called "Butcher Stew". Meat, brown rice, apples, carrots, cabbage,, squash, you name it. Eventually, I started buying whole pork butts on sale and upon occasion a freshly shot duck would make it into the stew.

One day my son's girlfriend (now his wife) came over and asked me what I was cooking that smelled so good. I said Butcher stew. She said great! She grabbed a bowl and ate a huge helping of fresh Butcher stew ala John.

It became a regular joke around here. We still laugh about it.

When I was a kid we had an American Eskimo. For years, my mother kept a pot of food for the dog to which she would add all the meat and vegetable scraps. She called ti the "stock pot". She would bring it to a boil once a day take out a couple of servings and then refrigerate it. To my knowledge, she never threw it out. She just added to it.

Ah.... The things we do for our dogs!

John
Portland OR
 
#4 · (Edited)
We feed Kelly, Orijen Regional Red kibble & wife home cooks meat/veggy stew.
- once/week the ingredients are thrown into a crock pot
- servings are frozen in Zip Lock bags
- every morning she gets the home made / she wolfs it down :))
Treats are only 100% dehydrated Liver & she gets some human food treats.

I feed former Amy a 50/50 blend of kibble, but I sold pet food once...variety helps, in a dogs diet.
- we tried her on the NRG dehydrated (Canadian made), for a 6 month period / here is a link:
http://www.petperfectexpress.com/dehydrated.html
^^ It was a 2.5x price premium, over a decade ago.
Amy was use to eating kibble dry / so the natural stuff with water added, was different.
- never did see any added benefits, for the price / her Holistic kibble, was working well on her

Also, I found with top brand kibbles, made in Canada / much fewer recalls...a Mfg. Plant in TX, was the worst.
- exactly why Orijen was appealing, to us

Orijen Regional Red
The top 5 ingredients included in Orijen Regional Red Dog Food are: Boneless Angus beef, boneless wild boar, boneless lamb, beef liver, and boneless pork. Below you will find a brief explanation of each of these ingredients:
Orijen Regional Red Dog Food Review & Ingredients Analysis

Champion Petfoods and Orijen are known for producing “Biologically appropriate pet foods from Fresh Regional Ingredients.” They operate on the principle that dogs should eat a diet that contains foods similar to what they would eat on a natural diet in the wild. The food contains lots of meat protein. Orijen foods have 75 to 80 percent meat and they contain 38 to 42 percent protein. This is more than most dog foods. They only have 18 to 22 percent carbohydrates which is very low. They are made with up to 40 percent fresh meats which is virtually unique. And they use a minimum of five fresh meats in each formula. There are really no other foods, especially kibbles, that are similar to Orijen.
 
#5 ·
I have used the Honest Kitchen to stuff Kongs :) I simply rehydrate, then fill Kongs with that and other goodies. My kibble fed dogs do just fine on it (it's rehydrated raw). It's certainly not a cheap food, but I think if he likes it, go for it. Keep in mind that it's intended to be a complete diet, so you will probably need to reduce his regular food just a bit depending on how much you add - just check calorie amounts.
 
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#6 ·
I have fed Honest Kitchen with three dogs, all my dogs liked it but it gave them really big poops.

My current Great Dane is my last dog that I fed Honest Kitchen to, but he has a very fast metabolism and he needed more food than he could comfortably eat with Honest Kitchen, and he was occasionally vomiting and always had loose stool due to too much food in his stomach (we fed 3x a day). We moved to a more concentrated kibble in the AM and raw at night and he is doing much better. Granted, this dog has always had a sensitive stomach, so this might be unique to him. Did not experience this with the other two dogs, another Dane and a Doberman.
 
#8 ·
I use Honest kitchen when I travel or if I run out of RAW (hard to keep up with two dogs!). Chase loves it, Ive been using it for years and rotate the proteins. I feed less than what is recommended, no issues with digestion here. I sat in a seminar lead by the CEO, a really nice company :)
 
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