Hi Caz. Not only is it okay, it’s actually recommended by some veterinarians as a way to mitigate the risk of poor balance in homemade diets and faults in commercial diets. Mixing home-made, raw and commercial diets is not done more only because most people are firmly in one or the other camp.

Caz

Hi Peter. I looked back at the diet and Balance IT was added at a rate of 5g per 350g of cooked food. Therefore, it looks like your calculations are quite close- 15g would be for around 1kg of food. I’m sorry it’s so expensive for you. There is an alternative listed but it’s a little more hit and miss.
However, I feel I must also say that it’s unlikely that your dog’s skin problems are caused by diet. I’ve tackled that here. To check if they are, you need to use an elimination diet for 8 weeks (follow the link for how) which over this timeframe doesn’t have to be perfectly balanced.

We have an 18 month old Rhodesian Ridgeback who has an allergy to something. It results in itchiness and redness on his skin and lots of chewing and scratching. We have tried a number of vet prescribed drugs, but would prefer to avoid non-natural fixes if possible. He is currently on Apoquel, which is showing limited benefits/difference. We are trying your raw food diet. in the recipe you suggest using Balance IT and say to use their directions to determine the quantity. We recently received our order of Balance IT and on the container it says to consult your vet to work our how much to add (it’s not a grams per kg type of thing). So, we are at a loss. On the Balance IT website, it allows you to input your dog’s diet to calculate the amount of additive to include, but not all of the ingredients are listed. From that site, with the ingredients I could add, it suggests 15 gm/meal. This means the $70 container will last us less than three weeks. I hope that’s not right.

Are you able to provide some advice on the amount of Balance IT we should use?

Linkon (the dog) is around 38kg. He is 18 months old. He eats twice per day and each meal currently includes:

100gm turkey mince (raw)
100gm rice
100gm pumpkin
50gm carrot
50gm apple
15gm peas

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Peter

Hi Mary – it’s both very hard and very easy! At the beginning you really have to just make an educated guess for what looks right, but the important thing is to weigh your dog at the start and then regularly (at least every two weeks), adjusting the amount until their weight is stable. Read more about feeding the right amount here.

Hi Belinda. Thanks for the suggestion! I will start writing.

Thanks for this article. It is a very confusing subject. Great job on illuminating this for the regular concerned pet owner.

It would be great if you could point dog owners to a resource that indicates how much of each supplement we should feed, given the size/weight of the dog. I don’t want to feed my dog a raw diet, but I do want to make a home made diet for my dog. The recent media on Advance Dermocare episode (I saw you on ABC News) has prompted me to consider feeding my dogs home made cooked meals. I’d like to make that meal as well designed as possible!

Many thanks in advance.

Thanks Laurel. It’s great to hear success stories like this. Regarding the need for science to settle arguments, I’ve explained my take on it in several articles on understanding scientific papers, making sense of natural remedies and the Bravecto controversy.
All the best. Andrew