The poll is currently set to allow a maximum of 1 vote per forum member and I wonder if this may warrant changing. So please say if anyone would find the poll more helpful if the amount of per member voting is increased ?
I have changed my vote again! My dog has been steadily gaining weight on her usual diet. She doesn’t want to go out as much as she used so I feel the mostly raw diet may be not as suitable as it was when she was more active. I am feeding her whatever we have for her evening meal, minus sauces and spices. She is having half her raw meal in the morning mixed with oatmeal made with water. Still the occasional meal of cold pressed food too.
I hope home made is the correct categorisation. I am assuming that table scraps are a bit more random whereas I will be attempting to balance evening meals between veg, protein and a healthy carb source.
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Please everyone freely change your vote as often as you wish, if you’d want the poll to reflect a current diet you may be feeding.
It’s great to have the poll being used, plus any extra information in the replies is really helpful for everyone to read.
Thank you all very much.
Mostly home made, odd tin Lilys Kitchen mixed with Mc Adams. Raw chicken wing and marrow bone through the week. Voted.
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Like Tinyplanets, I have had a little tweak to my dogs’ diet since the poll began. This is because one of them has a tendency to gain weight and had put on about 400g - doesn’t sound a lot but it shows on a little dog and I wanted to nip it in the bud.
In the past I found that a home cooked meal in the middle of the day helped, with their dry complete reduced by 25%. The home cooked is 50% lean protein (chicken/fish etc) and 50% veg (I include a few blueberries in that figure). Last time I tried this I used to add sweet potato but this time I am omitting it as they have it in their commercial food and this has enough carbohydrate anyway.
I think it is always useful to keep a close watch on our dogs, particularly weight wise, and tweak their diet accordingly. Some dogs will be on the same food for a long time with no changes needed but others might need their food to be tweaked somewhat.
According to what I have read on a Facebook group for home cooking, when replacing some commercial food with home cooked, it is best not to exceed the figure of 25% or thereabouts in order to maintain sufficient calcium.
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Changing your votes to accurately portray your changing foods is appreciated, thanks. 
My first post on the forum - I just joined today and would like to thank you for a great post. I intend to be nice and active 
I am a home cooker at heart. I have alternated between that and a company that does it for you which I have found very useful.
My only concern when I home cook is the potential deficiencies that can occur due to the potential lack of mineral, nutrients and vitamins. I know adding in some ground up egg shell can help.
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It’s unusual to have someone on the forum who home cooks for their dogs. As this form of feeding interests both Tinyplanets and myself, it would be good to hear more about your methods/recipes. As you see, we have a home cooking section but it is not updated very much. 
I give my dogs some home cooked food but not exclusively - I still use commercial food as a fail safe, particularly as I don’t want to short change them on calcium. There is a lot of information about calcium on the Home Cooked Diets for Dogs Facebook group. It is important to get the ratio of calcium and phosphorous correct. They have plenty of fact sheets about this and other supplements. I read that it is OK to reduce the usual amount of commercial food by no more than 25% in order to top up with home cooked - that should not affect the calcium too much. This is what I have been doing and the dogs look really well on it.
Home Cooking for Dogs is another FB group with lots of information.
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I just want to keep up to date with all that is happening in the dog food space so this seems like the best forum for me to be on!
I am actually thinking about moving over to butternut box full time as it is very time consuming the preparation at home.
I will get more active on the home cooking section - it would be great to know how much time people actually spend preparing and where do they source most of their recipes from.
Thank you for all of the information on the calcium also. I have found egg shells are a good way of getting calcium back into to the diet as well.
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Thanks DeclanjjWhelan, and how lovely to hear the allaboutdogfood forum is the best for you! 8)
Your voting in the polls is much appreciated, and your helpful post and if you decide to use Butternut box please let us know how you progress as this too will help others who may be wanting to change foods.
It’s great to have the poll being used, plus any extra information in the replies is really helpful for everyone to read.
Thank you all very much.
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Would anyone like to **help ** by adding to the information in this poll?
And by taking part you are helping the results to reflect the current feeding trends. 
[And if you prefer you can vote in the poll without writing a post and that’s appreciated too.]
I have some suggestions on. It will be great if you prepare healthy dog food at home without any market sourced processed ingredient. And I I personally feel that when it comes to quality dog food, there is no value for the brand that has no quality ingredients in its food label.
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Thanks 02cash20, and it seems apparent from the voting in the polls thus far, that there are more folks who are feeding dogs some degree of home made food nowadays, than were so doing 5 years ago.
And if anyone would like to peruse that poll - showing what we were mainly feeding our dogs back then - the link is here: What did you mainly feed your dogs 5 years ago?
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Mostly raw +some dry complete +some home made
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Hello 909Dave and welcome to the forum!
Thanks for your input to this poll, and looking at the results so far, it appears your food choice of “Mostly raw +some dry complete +some home made” is a neck-and-neck favourite with a couple of other choices at the moment.
I wonder if this may change as others add their vote to this poll, or if indeed this remains a favoured popular choice!
I feed my dog home made food. I choose to feed him high protien diet that include meat, seafood and dairy products now a days. Some carbohydrate through vagetables and grains. I also started with essential fatty acids by feeding egg yolk or oatmeal. These all foods keep my dog healhty, strong and energetic.
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In the morning she gets 3/4 cup of dry. At lunch she gets 1 cup of human grade wet food (contains veggies and fruit) with a chunk of cooked sweet potato. In the evening she gets again 3/4 cup dry.
Depending on the time of year she will get pineapple or watermelon or cantaloupe as a treat. Otherwise I dehydrate boneless/skinless chicken breasts and give those as a treat.
Hope that helps.
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Our doodle dog was very fussy and had a sensitive tum. We moved her onto Butternut Box 6m ago and she has finished her food every time with no tummy probs since! Wish we discovered it sooner! It’s just cooked meat (60%) and veg (40%) with no nasties in! Highly recommended if anyone has fussy pooches or those with sensitive tums. My account has a 75% off link for anyone who wants to trial it butternutbox.com/Andrew267
I feed my dog home made food.
My dog copper gets fed on different dog, he has a sensitive tummy so this suits him very well.