Dr. Becker's Real Food For Healthy Dogs & Cats: Simple Homemade Food

by Beth Taylor, Karen Shaw Becker

Based on the ancestral diets of dogs and cats, this book provides a rotation plan and recipes for a meat-based diet that includes appropriate levels of vegetables, fruits and supplements to complete the diet, analyzed to make sure that nutrition needs are met.

Genres: Animals, Nonfiction, Dogs, Cats, Health

190 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2009

Reviews

[Terri Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

recommended on mercola website. irony = vegan (for ethical reasons) who refuses to compromise pets' health grinding & feeding raw meat to them because they're truly obligate carnivores (as opposed to humans) and need it for their health.

great information! could be a little easier to follow. had to highlight and dogear pages, then go back and take a few pages of notes to get down to the nitty gritty, or meat, of the matter. (waits for laughter - i'm here all week). this would be perfect with two more chapters. one that only lists recommended products/brands/websites. i had to take notes and create my own list of their recommended brands for vitamin and mineral supplementation, then search online for each and price compare. a page with the brands woulda at least been helpful. and second, a chapter with a chart that brings it all together, ala my amahzing notes. sorta a bottom line kinda deal: feed muscle meat, organ meat, and veggie/fruit mix in this ratio; add in these required supplements in such and such ratio; then add in these optional optimizers. that was lacking, so i did the work myself. at least the basic information was all there for me to gather! kudos.

a must read for anyone interested in feeding the animals in their lives an optimal fresh food diet.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book and a pretty straightforward easy way to feed a well balanced homemade diet for your dog or cat. All the ingredients are easily found and I love that the diets are analyzed to both the AAFCO and NRC standards. NRC standards are much higher than AAFCO so I'm glad that he'd recipes exceed those. Great Book!

[dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written and so much useful imformation.

If you are seeking for complete information about feeding raw food to your gods, this is the book you must read.

[Naia · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, this is the best book I have read on how to create a raw food diet. It is very straight forward and explains how to actually feed real food to your animals. Most books try to persuade you to feed your dog better food. Whereas, this book is a very straightforward step by step and assumes are are already convinced. Highly recommended, I wish I would have found it years ago.

[SammisMom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guide to proper preparation of food when home-cooking for a dog.

[Piyash Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked your book so much that I also wrote a blog on this topic. You can see it from my website if you want...

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[Murphy McCann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the ideas that Karen has about feeding but other than the fact that it jumps around too much making it a complicated read, I found the section about feeding meat with bones very wish washy because says she has a recipe for whole chickens and turkey but there really isn’t one. The confusion comes in when she says to only grind up neck bones and not the actual whole chicken/turkey, but she then says to add boneless meat to the mixture. This is not the only section that has uncertainties but because I want to grind whole birds, I was most interested in the exact facts and recipes. With that said, I think the 6 people she said read/reread it many times to edit and make it better should take part in the reason behind the ratings.

[Christi · Rating 4 out of 5]

So first, I would not recommend getting this book as a digital read, as I find it hard to flip back and find things as compared to an actual book. I liked the information and found it very helpful and informative, but when I was making my dogs meal plan card thing I felt like it took me forever to find the needed information and amounts. Just wish that in the recipe section it also listed amounts for things like bone replacement, meal servings size per dogs weight, krill oil, etc. I realize they are already listed in the book, but I guess I wanted a quick recap of all of the amounts so that I could quickly reference them. Otherwise, great book. Can’t wait to get my dog on this diet!

[Solarkat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is packed with information, though I found it hard to read in the electronic format. I bought the paper copy, which made it much easier to flip between the sections to review recipes, supplements, etc. The authors presented very technical material in a way that I was able to grasp fairly easily (and keep straight by taking notes - there's a LOT to sort through).

[Kyndal Alley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my go-to bible for my raw fed dogs. Read it. You'll be thankful

[Charlsie Pecoraro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great information.

If you are looking to migrate from commercial food to real food for your pet this is a must read. Great recipes for home preparation.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Solid Beginners Guide to Raw Feeding.

It is a good starter book for those beginners in raw feeding for their pets. Also, a good refresher to read once a year for raw feeders.

[Suzy Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

For what it is this book did its job, although I was hoping for something a little more direct.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wish I weren't so lazy.

[Manda · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, this is not a cookbook in the traditional sense. There are maybe 10 pages of recipes and the rest is all about the nutritional requirements of cats and dogs and the various components of a species appropriate diet and how to correctly combine them. It's an excellent and thorough resource but a little overwhelming. There's a lot to consider in terms of appropriately balancing your pet's diet if you want to switch to a raw/prepared food diet from a commercially produced pet food diet. Worth it if you can find the time to figure out how to source the ingredients and manage all the meal prep.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the recipes they give for cats are more meat-heavy than the dog ones, the doctors still give vegetable recipes for cats, which I question. Cats are obligate carnivores! However, there is other useful information, such as how much food to feed your pet based on weight as well as general information on transitioning your pet's diet. There is also a section on raw vs. cooked diets. I don't make any of the recipes. I just consult the rest of the book as a reference.

[Maria Duval · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is quite disorganized, and it takes a while to make sense of all the information, but I'll give it 3 stars because in the end I was able to assemble balanced meals for my dog fairly easily. I wish there was more variety in terms of recipes for both meat and veggie mixtures. For example, it would be great to have rabbit and bison options, especially for dogs allergic to more common meats.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book - I think it gives good information about feeding home-prepared pet food. I do think that Dr. Becker tends to go a little bit overboard on the supplements, but as with all health care books, I sift it and take with me the information that I feel is useful to me and my family.

[Stacy Curro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great resource for home prepared diets for pets.

[Erth · Rating 4 out of 5]

very informative but a bit over whelming. Not very many recipes