Need some help with weight of cooked food please

I'm currently feeding home cooked food, predominantly chicken and need some help please.

With raw I know it's 80% meat, but with cooked food would that be the same? Would it still be 3% of her bodyweight coz that's a heck of a lot of food to give a dog throughout the day for mine She's 38 kgs so that would equate to 1 kg a day (spread over 3 meals for me).

She can't tolerate a lot of food in one go, she eats too quickly (methinks she likes it too much), even though I've resorted to putting it on a great big meat plate and spreading it around so she has to hoover it up, and one cooked chicken breast only weighed 200grammes Christ, that means she needs one whole chicken a day and some??!! Can't believe that bit quite honestly, even I wouldn't eat that!

I have been giving her say half a chicken over 3 meals with some potatoe and veg, and she gets a small handful of kibble at night, just to put my mind at rest that she's getting some proper vits/minerals, even though she has her half teaspoonful of probiotic powder in one meal a day which also covers lots of vits and minerals.

This is new to me, she seems hungry at night, and although I've never weighed my kibble, she's always looked and done well on it, shiny coat, full of energy, blah, blah, blah, and I don't want to be upsetting the boat.

So, if you were feeding a 38 kg dog home cooked food what would one day's food look like if put on a normal dinner plate please? About the same as a human would eat - surely not! Let's put it this way, when on kibble she would get 3 x 1/2 scoops a day with some bits of meat in each meal, but I'm totally lost with this human food bit! I really want to get away from that kibble and have one lined up if I change my mind! She doesn't get biscuits, apart from a charcoal bonio once a day and maybe 2 markies some days, apart from that it's raw carrots and fish sticks (3 a day?).

I tried mixing it with Chappie the other day and it didn't suit her, the poo went sloppy the next day, and normally her rear end's been good.

Heeeeeeeeeeeelp!

Weigh your food before you cook it.............

would you feed a wet food then you've not got to worry about if shes getting all her vitamins etc. Foods such as naturdiet, natures harvest and so on (am i right in thinking you want to stay away from dry because it swelles up?)
i soaked some of that acana that i use for training and it didn't seem to swell up!

Yup, I would presume it was the pre-cooking weight you'd go by. Generally you'd just lose water and fat in the cooking process. Not sure if the amount of fat lost would be enough to affect the diet negatively but I wouldn't imagine any water lost would be a big deal, so just weigh the food before cooking it to allow for this.
Any particular reason you're going down the homecooking route rathe than raw? Sorry if I've missed it somewhere else.

Heck let me stop for breath.---It's really not that complicated.A rough guide is 2% to 3% raw food of dogs adult weight depending on it's activity.It also depends on the caloific content of the food you feed as well as the weight.It is only a guide and not an exact science.If your dog is underweight or overweight adjust the amount of food accoringly.Don't compare complete kibble with raw food nor raw with cooked .Each has a difference appearance and density.

I'm not sure if this will help as my dogs are a lot smaller than yours! Parker weighs just over 16kg and is slightly overweight (though not noticeable really) and Cherry weighs 14.4kg and is the right weight.

This is what they have on their home-cooked diet, they have this for their evening meal and they would have half this amount for breakfast as they get 2 meals a day. They also have 5 Spiller's shapes biscuits mid-day and a dental chew, plus a few home-cooked treats to reward Cherry for being calm around other dogs.

The dish shows-turkey mince (cooked in slow cooker) plus wholemeal pasta and broccoli and carrots and a bit of hard-boiled egg all cooked in steamer.
I couldn't feed mine raw as the bones upset their tummies but they do well on home-cooked.

Ahhhh perfick!!! Thanks for the pic, I can relate to that lol!

Now going on your bowl of food there, Zena would get 3 of those a day, but the meat content would be more each time.

Thanks for the tip about weighing BEFORE blooming cooking, I never thought of that, so we're now down to about the amount of meat I originally had in mind split into 3 meals.

Kirsty, yes I had problems with the kibble that I'm not having since doing the cooking, and I'm still umm'ing and arr'ing about whether to order that Acana, because Dave said it won't be good to just change her food over, whereas she's always had some cooked food every day either mixed with kibble or on its own. That's good news about it not swelling up though, and it's definitely the one I will choose IF and when.

Thank Krlyr, but I don't want to go down the raw route, mainly because she's not that keen when I've given them mince on the odd occasion, it's too complicated for me ( as if this isn't lol!), and bones really scare me, except the large marrow bones, plus don't want another freezer etc.

Thanks for the help, especially that picture!!

I thought about putting the 3 meals together in one bowl and seeing what it looked like imagining she was fed just one meal a day, and to be honest, I suppose it would be about right judging from that pic.

I'm off to look at that Acana again and order some I think!

You could always just add a handful of acana (or whichever you decide to get) into the home cooked food and gradually add more each time
Its so hard knowing what to feed them isn't it as you just want to do whats best but theres too many choices!!

Wow, that looks delicious. I could eat that no probs

Helena, when you talk about 'kible' are you refering to the granules that come in a big bag and which most manufacturers claim are scientifically designed to give a proper 'balanced' diet

I know our two don't really like the granules but I always thought it was a good idea to include this in the diet to make sure that they got all the things they need tobe healthy.

Of course we give them other stuff too, chicken risotto is a favorite, and when we buy whole chickens and cook it I find that one chook will last two days, that's a quarter each for two meals. Removing all bones of course(Plus the granules, tinned, and rice sometimes)

We found a tinned food that turned out to be 95% vegetables and that did help with Baras runny tum so we've continued with that, OH won't serve raw either and we've had to switch from Royal Cannine granules as they were too rich for Bara, I don't weigh their dinner but they seem to do well on what we give them and I try to vary it a bit so they don't have the same every day.

We can get turkey necks here and they love them (Cooked of course) We haven't weighed them for a long time but I would say they are about the correct weight, they never bother us for food during the day but once their taste buds are awakened in the evening they can be a bit of a pest wanting treats and things, even after they've left some granules in their bowl