# DIY Dehydrated Pet Food



## GoldenMom (Jan 2, 2005)

A few weeks back we were discussing the feasibility of dehydrating (raw) pet food (of course it's no longer "raw" when it's been dehydrated!). I decided to try a small batch just to see how it would work. I made a ground mixure of chicken necks (38%), chicken and venison muscle meat (45%), chicken liver (10%), chicken heart (5%), and eggs (2%).

*Step 1:* Grind all ingredients with the coarse plate, throughly mix, and run through the grinder again with the fine plate.

These are the two grinding plates:









This is what the mix looked like after the first grind:









After the second grind:









*Step 2:* Dehydrate. I put 1 pound of the ground mix (~2 cups) in my Excalibur and set the temperature to 150 degrees. It was no where near dry after 8 hours (it weighed 10 oz), so I turned it over and dried it for another 12 hours. After 20 total hours, it would break into small pieces but was still not dry enough (it weighed 5 oz). I ran it through the food processor to break it up as much as possible, then put it back in the dehydrator. After another 13 hours (33 total hours), it was very dry. I ran it through the food processor again and got about 1/2 powder and 1/2 very fine chunks (weight 4 oz, volume 1 cup).

On the teflex, before dehydrating:









After 8 hours:









After 8 hours (backside):









After 20 hours (crumbled/ran through the food processor, but still not fully dry):









After 33 hours (ran through the food processor again):


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## GoldenMom (Jan 2, 2005)

Step 3: Rehydrate. I added 1 cup of warm water and let it sit for 30 minutes. I will probably try less water next time, as it was still very runny after 30 minutes with 1 cup of water.

After 30 minutes of rehydration:









Step 4: Serve. Both dogs seemed to like it very much. I didn't try it on the cats, but will try them next time.

Yum!


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## GoldenMom (Jan 2, 2005)

I think I could probably "do" about 10-12 pounds of food at once in my dehydrator (9 tray excalibur). So a little less than a week's worth for my two dogs.

This actually turned out better than I anticipated. The necks were skinless, as was the muscle meat, so it was very low fat. Probably when/if I do a larger batch I will use necks that have skin on them and see what that gets me. I used skinless ones this time because I was just making a small batch of food for the kitties to eat while we are gone. I used necks from my own home-butchered chickens and I always skin them.


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## Willowynd (Mar 27, 2005)

Seems like a lot of work for every day meals, but a wonderful option for traveling or an emergency or camping.


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## longshadowfarms (Nov 27, 2002)

Willowynd said:


> Seems like a lot of work for every day meals, but a wonderful option for traveling or an emergency or camping.


Definitely! Let us know how it goes with the kitties if you aren't gone already, Sarah! My computer has died and I'm on my parent's now but I'll be sure to check back with this once I've recovered! I was thinking more along the lines of just drying strips of meat for the dogs but not sure how that would work without salt. Maybe if I do them very thin and then use one of those machines to suck out the air? I can get pork on the road too so that will be a help! I also just picked up some "Taste of the Wild" (or something like that) that our feed store has just started to carry. I have to go to the vet next week so I will see if they have that Royal Canin (or something like that) to try on our Lab. I will say though that lately he's been doing a lot better on the kibble if I do have to feed it. We've been kitchen-less for about a week and he's been on kibble that whole time and doing ok. That's new for him!


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## Skykomish (May 28, 2008)

Thanks so much for trying this! I tried dehydrating rabbit backstraps for the dogs and then I stored them in the cupboard, by the time I wanted to use them they were COVERED with mold. So, it was on to experiment #2, but you did it for me


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## GoldenMom (Jan 2, 2005)

Here's a picture of the kitties enjoying the second batch of dehydrated food (it's actually the same batch, but was frozen for them to eat fresh while we were on vacation-I had frozen an extra day's worth):










I'm definitely going to make myself up a big batch of this for emergencies. I'll never use it for normal feeding, but it will be nice not to have to worry during power outages, emergencies, etc. I'm going to store it in the freezer to prevent any mold, but at least it will be a lot more compact than whole food!

I only used about 1/2 as much water as food this time. It was not runny at all and I didn't let it sit before feeding this time. Probably 3 parts food to 2 parts water will be a good compromise (I do have a little bit of dehydrated food left to experiment with). 

This batch dried down to approximately the same weight as the last batch. Twenty ounces became 5 oz dried. There were 16.5 tablespoons of dried food (just over 1 cup). This came out to be 1.2 ounces of pre-dry weight per tablespoon (approx. 1/3 of each cat's daily ration). I think this is pretty similar to the last batch (it was just under a cup for 16 oz of pre-dry food, but I didn't measure it in tablespoons). I'll probably double check each batch for volume/weight and label the bags appropriately. I'm also going to try different "formulas"-venison/chicken, turkey/chicken, pork/chicken, maybe beef/chicken. I have to use chicken for the bone part of the diet because I don't want to ruin my grinder trying to grind bigger stuff!


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