Cooking for your dog at home offers many advantages, including transparency in ingredients, variety in meals, and control over nutritional content. These benefits are driving an increasing number of pet owners to explore home-prepared diets.

It can be challenging, however, to craft a complete and balanced diet that meets all of your dog's nutritional needs. Whether you choose to cook at home or opt for a ready-made option like Lyka, the goal remains the same: a healthy, happy pup thriving on a diet suited to their needs.

Who to speak to about home-prepared diets

Preparing food at home should always be done with the guidance of a qualified and experienced animal nutritionist. Consider speaking to a board-certified veterinary nutritionist (BCVN). We recommend Laura Gaylord from Whole Pet Provisions in the USA.

Wholefood consultants are holistic or integrative veterinarians, with experience designing home prepared diets. While they’re not board-certified, they can provide you with individualised counselling on your dog’s nutritional needs — a professional animal nutritionist with a master’s degree can also assist you in this.

The people providing you with information should have the qualifications to safely advise on how to prepare food for your dog in a complete and balanced way.

How to cook for your dog at home with the right balance of ingredients

Home-prepared diets need to be made up of at least 45% protein, as well as vegetables and superfoods. Rotate these ingredients on a regular basis so your dog gets the optimal balance of nutrients.

All dogs are different with individual needs, so use these tips as a starting point only — making sure to discuss and verify your approach with a veterinary nutrition expert.

1. Protein

45-60% of the food should include lean cuts of skinless meat, rotating between white and red meats. Different types of meat contain different amino acids, so your dog will need a variety of protein sources.

Human-grade protein is critical to your dog’s bodily functions: holding cells, muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, organs and cartilage together. From regulating blood glucose levels to healing, aiding in digestion and more, the amino acids in protein are essential.

It’s best to stick to muscle meats and liver, as these have the most vitamins and minerals (like iron, riboflavin, vitamin B12, vitamin A and copper). Offal (like liver) is very rich and contains fat-soluble vitamins, and copper, that can be toxic in overdose. If adding offal, make sure less than 4% of the recipe is liver.

To get started, bake your human-grade meat at a low temperature with no added seasoning or oil. You can choose from:

• Chicken

• Beef

• Lamb

• Kangaroo

• Fish

• Turkey

Sardines and mackerel can be a great addition, making up 10% of a home-prepared diet. Both ingredients are a valuable source of calcium, salts, and omega oils. If sardines are on the menu, we recommend MSC-certified, BPA-free canned sardines in spring water: with the spring water rinsed off.

Protein can also be found in plant sources like spinach and broccoli — but since dogs are omnivores, these vegetables are best served alongside animal protein sources.

2. Vegetables

You can serve up the protein with a side of vegetables. Up to 50% of the recipe can be vegetables, but if they cause flatulence, diarrhoea or even weight loss, readjust the amount. Add plenty of colourful, above-ground veggies (rather than root ones).

Steam your pup’s vegetables separately to help preserve their nutrients, then add them to the protein before serving. You can also blanch these, before mashing, pureeing or chopping them.

These ingredients are chock full of phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that your pup needs to thrive:

• Purple or red sweet potato aids in heart function and brain health. They’re filled with fibre, and low in sugar. Purple sweet potato is preferable as it contains more phytonutrients to benefit your pup.

• Spinach or kale if you’re adding 5% or less. Eating too much kale, which is high in oxalates, can lead to health issues like kidney stones. Oxalates bind to calcium in the body, creating calcium oxalate crystals: the main components of urinary stones.

• Butternut squash: mashed, or in chunks (depending on your dog’s texture preferences). We use butternut squash in Lyka’s Chicken, Turkey, and Kangaroo Bowls.

If you’d like to add a small amount of low sugar fruit, blueberries or raspberries can make a tasty addition. Look at Lyka’s list of dog-friendly ingredients for more inspiration on what you can add.

When choosing vegetables, variety is key. Low carbohydrate vegetables are the healthiest choice: but you can include well-cooked carbohydrates like cooked quinoa, steel cut oats, brown rice and cooked barley, which have a slower release of glucose into the bloodstream. Never feed these ingredients raw.

3. Superfoods and toppers

Superfoods and toppers are an essential part of the home cooking process, as they help to prevent your dog from suffering nutritional deficiencies.

Make sure your dog's diet includes the optimal omega 6:3 ratio. An excess of Omega 6s can lead to inflammation in the body — Omega 3s have anti-inflammatory properties, balancing this out.

Essential fatty acids

Every meal needs to have the appropriate mix of essential fatty acids from this list:

• Fish oil

• Flaxseed oil

• Krill oil

• Hempseed oil

• Chia seeds

• Organic cold pressed safflower oil

To get the correct amount for your dog, you will need to consult with a veterinary nutrition expert.

Superfoods

• Turmeric

• Shiitake mushroom powder

• Beetroot powder

• Ginger

• Kelp

• Hemp seeds

• Spirulina

Toppers

Common herbs and spices, such as curly leaf parsley, turmeric, and basil, can be used to add variety to your pup’s meal – just a pinch! You can add:

• ¼ tsp turmeric powder

• 3 organic blueberries

• ½ tsp fresh curly leaf parsley

This mix is for a 10kg dog per day, so you may need to increase or decrease amounts to suit your dog’s weight.

To make your dog’s food complete and balanced, you can also source supplements, or multivitamins (either synthetic or natural) at wholefood and health food stores.

Avoid these foods when preparing meals for your dog:

Onion, grapes, and chocolate are toxic to dogs. Take care with garlic too, however as it’s a dose-dependent toxin, discuss with your veterinarian if you feel you want to consider using it as a functional food.

Advantages of complete and balanced home preparation

• More control over ingredients and how food is prepared, as the contents of highly processed commercial options can be difficult to verify — the pet food industry is unregulated in Australia.

• Some studies have suggested that wholefood diets maximise longevity and wellbeing in dogs, but more research is needed. Wholefoods can prevent chronic inflammation and promote a healthy microbiome. Dogs eating lots of high GI ingredients (like grains found in highly processed diets) are more prone to an inflamed digestive system.

• You can provide higher levels of vitamins and minerals, going above and beyond what AAFCO recommends. When done right, home preparation can provide the optimal balance of phytonutrients and superfoods for your dog to take advantage of.

For more on these nutrients and the areas of health they support, learn about our ingredients and why we use them in our meals.

When is home cooking not appropriate?

Before you start preparing meals for your dog at home, it’s worth considering whether a home-prepared diet is right for your dog.

Here are a few reasons it may not be the best option for you and your dog’s needs:

• For large breed puppies and dogs that are pregnant or lactating, there is a greater risk of nutritional deficiencies or imbalances.

• Home-cooked diets can take a lot of time and cost, with the process of sourcing and cooking quality ingredients — especially if you are not buying in bulk.

• If you don’t have the means to engage a veterinary nutrition expert, reconsider home preparation as a method. Every home-prepared diet examined in this study had deficiencies in at least one critical nutrient, so attempting this without consultation could come with risk of nutritional deficiencies over time.

Get in touch with our friendly Customer Care team to get a full picture of your dog’s dietary needs. They can provide helpful insights on what to weigh up, as well as putting you in touch with a holistic veterinarian if you’d like a second opinion on fresh feeding.

Lyka: making life easier for home cooks

Want more hours in the day playing with your pup, and less time spent in the kitchen?

It can take time and money to cook your best friend’s food at home — whether it’s going back to the supermarket because you’ve forgotten a key ingredient… or worrying that you’re feeding the wrong balance of nutrients.

Lyka makes all of this easy. Our meal preparation service (with home delivery included) does the thinking for you, with portions personalised to your dog and their health needs. Each pouch contains a minimum of 18 ingredients, including high-quality protein and superfoods.

Our vet co-founder Dr Matthew Muir works with an expert team of board-certified veterinary nutritionists. We’re proud to give dogs on Lyka the healthiest blend of vitamins, minerals, and essential amino acids, with ingredients fit for human consumption. Your pup deserves it!