When you cook for your pup it’s important that bonemeal for dogs are included in their meal. Most of the meals on Wag The Dog UK should cover your dog’s nutritional needs, however some essential nutrients will be missing. Supplements are needed to ensure that we dogs nutritional needs are met.
Here at my house we purchase a bonemeal supplement. This way Trina knows that my nutritional needs are met. I eat twice a day, breakfast and dinner, and Trina adds only half of my daily supplements, to each of my meals. She measures the correct amount for me and mixes it into my meal and I don’t taste a thing. If you want to add bonemeal to your dogs homemade meal or commercial mix, make sure you check with your veterinarian who will recommend a proper amount depending on your weight and what type of food you eat. If you eat homemade meals your bonemeal will need to be higher, depending on the commercial dog food, it will be less. If you eat like me, I have home cooked meals with a high quality kibble, so my supplement is somewhere in the middle.
Why Bonemeal?
Bone meal is made from ground bones and provides calcium, phosphorus protein, and trace minerals. We dogs have a greater need for calcium than humans do. So when feeding us a home-prepared diet, a daily calcium supplement is required – it will help your dog meet their calcium requirements. It’s also important that if you are eating commercial food that it too contains enough bonemeal to keep you healthy.
Benefits of Bone Meal for Dogs
- Help your dog’s body to better absorb other nutrients and aid digestion.
- Soothe difficult digestion in dogs with flatulence and diarrhea.
- It also contains calcium, which your dog needs for strong bones and teeth.
- In addition to minerals, bone meal contains a rich supply of fat and protein.
A bottle with meat and bone meal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Make your own Bonemeal for Your Dog
To make bone meal at home:
- save the cooked bones from your chicken or turkey dinner.
- Chop them into small pieces while they are still soft and moist
- Dry the bones thoroughly
- grind them to powder in a spice grinder.
Poultry bones are a good choice, since they splinter and break easily. You’ve probably heard that you’re not supposed to give chicken or other poultry bones to your dog; that’s because they could easily splinter, injuring their digestive tract. However once the bones are ground up into bone meal, you don’t have to worry about this.
Other bones?
You don’t have to use leftover bones from your meal. Beef and other bones you can get from your local butcher, and then follow the same process. Boil or steam raw bones to soften them before you cut them into smaller pieces.
If you don’t want to be bothered grinding up bones, then simply boil them for several hours to extract all the nutrients. You can then feed your dog this liquid in the place of bone meal.
We also add egg shells to our bonemeal, due to egg shells are a high source of calcium as well.
