The 10 Percent Rule of Homemade Dog Food
The 10 percent rule of homemade dog food is a rough rule of thumb that recommends that, protein aside, no one ingredient should make up any more than about 10% of any one meal or of your dog’s overall diet.
The origins of the 10 percent rule
For anyone feeding their dog commercial dog food but adding homemade food on top as a “topper” or treat (like boiled chicken, eggs or vegetables), the 10 percent rule comes from global veterinary nutrition guidelines. This unscientific threshold was established by major veterinary bodies, including the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) and the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA).
Commercial pet foods are precisely formulated to meet strict minimum nutrient profiles. Veterinary nutritionists determined that up to 10% of a dog’s daily calorie intake can come from “unbalanced” sources (like homemade scraps or treats) before it significantly dilutes or upsets the critical synthetic vitamin and mineral ratios of their primary diet.
More a guideline than a biblical imperative
This is not a hard-and-fast rule. Instead, the 10 percent rule of homemade dog food is more of a rule of thumb, a general guideline if you like. It’s a simple, logical rule that doesn’t actually have to be strictly adhered to if you feed your dog a fresh food diet, but nonetheless, it’s always a good idea to keep it in mind, especially if you’re new to this method of feeding.
When is a rule not a rule?
While I teach pet parents new to making homemade food for their dog about the 10 percent rule of homemade dog food, I prefer a simple common sense rule. It’s a well known fact that it is extremely difficult to create nutritional imbalance in homemade dog food if you stick to three basic rules. Those rules are balance, variety and moderation.
When apportioning our own food, I doubt very many of us ensure that no one ingredient exceeds 10% of a meal or of our overall diet. Instead, we balance our diet by using common sense, ensuring that, “over time”, we have a reasonable balance of all the foodstuffs we require from our diet, because that will provide us all the nutrients we require to keep us healthy.
It is no different when feeding your dog a fresh food diet.
The exception to the rule
The one exception to the 10% rule relates to the amount of protein in your dog’s diet. When making homemade food for your dog, I suggest that somewhere between 50 and 70% should be protein. That is the one “golden” rule. Personally, I feed my dogs 70% protein.
Actually, there is another rule and that relates to liver, but I’ll save that for another time.
Those things aside though, if you choose to feed your dog 15% quinoa or 20% green beans in any one meal, thereby exceeding the 10 percent rule, quite frankly, it is not going to make any different to your dog’s overall health. Your dog’s health is not suddenly going to decline because you add to many carbs to any given meal. The worst that can happen is that its stool might differ from one day to the next, but then doesn’t that happen to the best of us?
In summary
In summary then, bear in mind the 10 percent rule of homemade dog food when making food for your dog, but don’t obsess about it.
Think about the way you feed yourself and the rest of your family. I grow a lot of our own fruit and veg. It has been known for my husband and I to sit down to an evening meal containing nothing more than a steaming pile of freshly picked, lightly cooked green beans drizzled with butter. I’m not saying you should feed your dog that way, but it hasn’t so far done my husband and I any harm, and eating seasonally is just the way that we and our dogs have eaten for centuries!
The Dog Chef Guide to Homemade Dog Food
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