MAKE YOUR HOMEMADE DOG FOOD COMPLETE AND BALANCED

I'm Teddy. My human cooks for me. We've spent two years figuring out how to make home-cooked dog food complete and balanced without going mad — and the short answer is that you can't do it by eye. Meat + vegetables + rice looks like a complete meal. It isn't.

This guide is for people who want to home-cook for their dog properly. If you're feeding commercial kibble or a fresh-delivery brand, you don't need any of this — they're already AAFCO-compliant (in theory). If you're cooking yourself, read on.

What "complete and balanced" actually means

Two things have to be true at once:

Complete — every essential nutrient is present at or above the minimum. There are 36 of these. Protein and amino acids, fats and fatty acids, vitamins (A, D, E, K, plus all the Bs), minerals (calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, magnesium, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, iodine, selenium), and water-soluble cofactors like choline and taurine.

Balanced — nutrients are in the right ratio to each other. The classic example is calcium-to-phosphorus: minimum 1.0:1, ideally 1.2:1 to 1.4:1 for adults. Meat is naturally about 1:20 Ca:P — completely upside down. A complete-and-balanced home-cooked diet has to correct that.

"Complete" without "balanced" is still a deficient diet. You can hit your calcium minimum and still wreck the Ca:P ratio.

The nutrients home-cooked diets typically miss

If you cook for your dog without a balancer (also called a dog multivitamin or premix), here's the predictable picture:

The big shortfalls

• Calcium — fundamentally fixable by adding eggshell powder, bone meal, or a calcium carbonate source. The dose is small (around 1g per 100g of meat for adult dogs) but it has to be there.
• Iodine — Australian soils are iodine-poor, and the meat reflects that. A tiny pinch of iodised salt or seaweed-based source closes the gap.
• Vitamin D — dogs need dietary vitamin D. Salmon and sardines have it. Lean meat does not.
• Vitamin E — sunflower oil, almonds (ground), or supplementation. Lean diets are particularly deficient.

The harder ones

• Zinc, manganese, copper, selenium — these are micronutrients you can't reliably hit without a supplement. Some are in liver and organ meats, but the dose needed to balance them this way pushes other nutrients into excess (especially vitamin A from liver, which becomes toxic).
• Choline — egg yolks and liver have it. If your dog doesn't tolerate either, you need supplemental choline bitartrate.
• Iodine again — Australian-specific gap. Mentioned twice because it really is the most-overlooked one.

Three approaches that don't work

Before getting to what does work, here are three approaches I've watched people try that consistently fail:

"I'll just feed variety." The thinking is: different meats and vegetables have different nutrients, so over a week it'll average out. In practice it doesn't, because the same handful of nutrients are missing from all common meats and vegetables in Australia. Iodine, vitamin D, manganese — variety doesn't fix any of these.

"I'll match the ratios in commercial dog food." Looking at a kibble bag and trying to replicate the percentages misses that kibble is fortified with a premix of synthetic nutrients you can't see in the macro breakdown. Matching the macros doesn't get you the micros.

"I'll add a small calcium supplement and call it done." Calcium is the most-missed nutrient, and people often stop there. But calcium alone leaves the other 8 to 10 gaps wide open. It's better than nothing, but it isn't complete and balanced.

What does work: protein + veg + carb + premix

The simplest path to a complete-and-balanced home-cooked diet is a four-component formula:

1. A protein — chicken, beef, kangaroo, lamb, turkey. Lean cuts mostly, with some fattier portions for energy. Cooked, not raw.
2. A vegetable mix — usually 15-25% of the meal by weight. Sweet potato, carrot, broccoli, spinach, pumpkin, peas. Some greens, some starchy veg, variety helps.
3. A carbohydrate — rice, quinoa, oats, sweet potato (if you didn't use it in the veg). Provides energy and fibre.
4. A complete balancing premix — one measured scoop, designed to fill the micronutrient gaps in steps 1-3. This is the magic ingredient. Without it, the meal is incomplete.

The exact ratios vary by recipe. For a standard adult maintenance recipe, you're looking at roughly 60% protein, 20% vegetables, 15% carbohydrate, 5% fat from the protein source itself, plus the premix dose calibrated to the meal size.

This is exactly the formula our 5 recipes follow, with the specific weights worked out per recipe.

How to calculate what your dog needs

Daily calorie requirements (kcal/day) for adult dogs follow a metabolic-weight formula. The short version:

For most pet dogs at a healthy weight with moderate activity, the daily calorie target is about 70 × (body weight in kg)^0.75 × 1.42. A 10kg dog needs around 560 kcal. A 20kg dog needs around 940 kcal. A 5kg dog needs around 330 kcal. (The full formula, a feeding chart and the adjustments are in our feeding guide.)

From there you portion meals by weight (typically twice a day). With our recipes, 100g of finished food is around 130 kcal, so the 10kg dog above eats about 410g per day total.

You don't need to memorise any of this. Our calculator works it out from your dog's weight, age, body condition, and activity level.

The Australian context

Two specifics for Australian home cooks:

Source local meat. Australian beef, lamb, and kangaroo are excellent protein sources. Grass-fed where possible — the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is meaningfully better than grain-finished. Kangaroo is particularly lean and well-tolerated by dogs with allergies to more common proteins.

Account for iodine. If your premix is American-formulated, double-check the iodine dose for the Australian context. Eastern Australian soils are iodine-poor and our meat reflects that.

Common mistakes

Cooking the premix in

Don't add the premix while the food is still hot. Heat degrades several vitamins (especially B vitamins and vitamin C). Cook the food, let it cool to room temperature, then stir the premix through. We say "warm or cold, never hot" on our packaging.

Using the wrong calcium source

Calcium citrate, calcium carbonate, and bone meal are all fine. Antacid tablets (some are pure calcium carbonate) work in a pinch. Calcium gluconate is too dilute to be practical. Coral calcium is overpriced. Eggshell powder is great if you make it yourself (clean shells, dry, grind to fine powder).

Ignoring portion sizes

Even with a perfect recipe, feeding too much or too little undoes the calculation. A complete diet at 130% of caloric need still gradually makes your dog overweight. Weigh the food. Adjust portions every few weeks based on body condition.

Not transitioning slowly

Switching abruptly from kibble to home-cooked causes digestive upset for most dogs. The right approach is a 7-day transition — increase the new food by ~15% per day while decreasing the old.

Is this worth doing?

Honestly, only you can answer that. Home-cooked done properly takes about 90 minutes a week (one Sunday cook session) and costs around AUD $5-9 per day all-in (premix included) for a 10-15 kg dog. Compared to fresh-delivery dog food (around $12-18 per day for the same dog), the cost savings are significant. Compared to standard kibble ($1-3 per day), it costs more but gives you full control over what your dog eats.

If you cook for your family anyway, adding 15 minutes for the dog is genuinely easy. If you don't, this is more of a commitment than you might want.