JustFoodForDogsDIY Nutrient Blend for Homemade Dog Food, Fish & Sweet Potato Recipe, 5.92oz

This review is long, long overdue. I've been feeding the turkey and mac blend to my oldest dog for over 5 years and my youngest for 2. They absolutely love it and devour it so quickly. Tried to switch back over to kibble to save some money and my oldest is so spoiled and is like, "What the heck is this?!?" Once you switch to real food, they never really wanna go back to kibble, so BEWARE.I can get this recipe cooked in less than 15 minutes on the stove and then another minute or 2 to add the fish oil and nutrients. The big tip here is to use a food processor/blender. This is how I get it all done, so skip to the next paragraph if you're not interested: I boil a pot of water and cook drain the pasta. When that's done, I cook the liver in another huge pot on the stove. I throw that in a food processor/blender when it's done and add the ground turkey to the same pot. While that's cooking, I weigh out and roughly chop up the broccoli, zucchini, and carrots and add those to the processor, along with the cranberries. Blend those real quick and add them to the ground turkey before it's fully cooked. I let that cook all the way through and then let it cool. I come back to everything like 15 minutes later to mix it in with the oil and nutrients and it's done. Easy peasy! I also have the measurements broken down according to different sized ground turkey packaging and stuck onto the fridge, because I buy whatever is cheapest that week, and sometimes it's a 1 lb container, sometimes it's 3lb, and the one from Costco is a little over 1.5lb, so it's easy to figure out how much of each ingredient needs to be added without having to bust out a calculator.The scent is noticeable, but it's not bad. I think the new packaging is better than the old tin, but I understand people wanting a hard paper copy of the directions. I saved my copy and refer to it whenever I feel like making a full recipe, which isn't very often. They did change the recipe at least once since I started using it 5 years ago, so it might be a good idea to see if anything's changed every few months/year.Overall, I think it's a good value for what you're paying. Yah you might be spending a lot more than you would on kibble, but it's nice to know you're feeding your dog good, healthy products when you're buying your ingredients yourself.

Between cooking this food for my dog and a liver supplement, my dogs liver enzyme values decreased from 366 to almost normal at 175. In 1 year. My dogs LOVE it also.

Before we started this food, my dog had unexplained, elevated liver enzymes. Her levels were HIGH, far outside of normal range, and had increased dramatically two years in a row. This brand and the idea of cooking food for my dogs was introduced to me by a friend. And I’m so thankful. Before the switch to this product, we had multiple tests done by the vet to try to pinpoint the reason for the elevated liver enzymes. Every test came back negative and the vet wanted to run even more tests which was getting expensive and providing us no definitive answer. I did some of my own research and opted to try the turkey macaroni recipe since it was lower in fat than other recipes. Within a few months of switching to making her food and using this nutrient packet and recipe, my dog’s energy levels dramatically increased (she was running in the yard and happy to play ball again!) and, most importantly, her liver enzymes returned to normal, and the low end of the normal range at that! I continue to test her liver enzymes regularly and she’s still doing so well at 9 years of age.I bought the largest slow cooker I could find and I use that to make her food once a week. She LOVES it and I find it pretty easy to make each week.

My corgi is not picky, and he’s used to eating “people” food. Since he was a puppy, he’s gotten Kongs stuffed with healthy food & I don’t hesitate to give him healthy leftovers. I KNEW he’d love eating the recipe that came with this product, and he does.We recently purchased this item, so I can’t yet provide feedback on how it is health-wise for my boy. But, I did want to provide some cooking tips. First, I tried the full recipe in a 6 qt slow cooker. BIG mistake! Really need a slow cooker about double that size for the full recipe. (Do they even make one that large?) So, if you’re going to cook in a slow cooker I recommend making half the recipe. I ended up cooking part in the slow cooker & part on top of the stove because of the quantity. Messy & took a long time.Cut the potatoes quite small unless you cook them separately. I cut them in what would be bite-size chunks for my dog, but they didn’t cook well in the slow cooker. Ended up taking the undone potatoes out (kind of painstaking to separate out the hard potatoes) and cooking separately.If you’re making the full recipe, you need one heck of a big pot. Not sure what I’ll do next time - a half recipe won’t last us a full week.I think it’s a misnomer to call this a “kit!” It’s some nutritional powder & instructions for using it. I think of a kit as the parts needed to make something. This isn’t a kit, and it’s an exaggeration to call it that.

I’m so glad I found this! The recipe was very easy to follow and looks tasty. Although I am too scared to eat the livers and gizzards. Sparky has a very sensitive stomach but this supplement and recipe has not affected him at all! I give him 1 ounce of this and 2 ounces of the Costco freshpet food and his poops have been firmer, and less often during his walks!