How I decide on what goes into Conker's food

I've gone into it a couple times but never really in detail.

Over the past year I have learned a lot about canine nutrition through talking with other dog owners online, websites, and most importantly, scientific research. Never leave that last one out. Having scientific facts to back you up is a lot better than "some person on the internet".
Granted, there are some truly knowledgeable people I have gotten information from, but again, it's better to understand why they say something than to just follow it blindly.
And I am so totally into the why of things, it's why I do so much research.

This is quite long, so I am putting it under a break.


A bit of history:
When I began Conker on raw and home-made foods he was about 6 months old. I did this because he was having digestive problems on both kibbles he was fed. The first was a Science Diet formula (he came with it) and the other a supposedly top-quality kibble called Orijen. Despite the switch to an "amazing" kibble, Conker continued to have problems. To top that off, he was itching, shedding, and licking quite furiously all the time. This is a common sign of allergies, but I have not determined if Conker truly has any or not. I just say he does since it's easier to explain to people that way.
I decided I didn't want to play the "kibble roulette" game and began to do a bit of research into home-made dog food. I settled on the idea of going with raw food.

I started feeding Conker raw chicken on Christmas day, 2011.  For the first few months Conker only ate raw foods. Meat, bone, and organ in roughly an 80/10/10 ratio. I added in other things here and there but nothing stuck to the "routine" I had developed.  At that time I was feeding him something people like to call "Prey Model Raw" which is based off of what wolves eat in the wild. I liked this idea but knew it was lacking in some nutrients due to my own research on the subject.

Sometime around then I got the 1985 numbers* from the National Research Council's book: Nutrient Requirements for Dogs and Cats.  I have read a good chunk of this book and have a general understanding of how some nutrients react to one another. It also lists the optimal ratios of certain minerals and whatnot.
I decided to break away from the "raw foodies" and develop my own "brand" of home-made dog food that wasn't dependent on myths (or debunking them), beliefs, and woo.

I calculated out what Conker's daily requirements would be (and did it about six times to be sure they were correct) and punched them into Nutritiondata.com.  This site is helpful with figuring out how many and what nutrients are in a given food item and planning out a "recipe" for the day.  It also helps point out where your diet might be lacking.
I spend a good deal of time on that site plotting out what would be best to feed Conker. I could just follow someone else's meal plan but I prefer to know exactly what I am feeding my dog and why. It's also a good idea to do some research on digestibility of raw and cooked items, the bioavailability of nutrients in a certain food, and how they might affect your dog.
For example: Conker cannot have any wheat. He always reacts badly to it and corn (digestive wise). Occasionally he has a bad reaction to potatoes when they are prepared certain ways, and if fed too much cooked chicken, he will begin to shed, lick, and itch.

That is how I go about making plans for a meal. Research the food item, figure out what it's nutrients are,  and give a couple test feedings to ensure Conker can eat it without exploding on the back end. If it passes, it's added to the menu.

Speaking of the menu...
It constantly changes. What I feed Conker two weeks ago may no longer be on the list. This is mainly due to availability and price, but also depends on if I have found another item that supplies those nutrients that is cheaper or more effective.
For example: I could depend entirely on gizzards for Conker's iron content. I would have to feed a lot of gizzards to meet his daily requirement, and over time that would begin to get expensive. Instead, I used the "Nutrient Search Tool" on NutritionData and found that canned clams have a TON of iron in them. When compared to the amount of iron in a gizzard, I would have to feed two ounces of gizzard to just .2 ounces of clams to get the same iron content.
Another example: Many animal-based foods are low in manganese. It would be hard to meet Conker's daily requirement with just those, and I would be doubling up on many other nutrients and sending things out of whack if I did. So I again used the nutrient search tool and found a food that was relatively high in manganese.  I settled on oat-based foods since I tend to eat a lot of them myself and I wouldn't be going out of my way to buy them.
Oat bran is very high in manganese, just .7 ounces of dry oat bran (it needs to have the hell cooked out of it first, remember to research digestibility!) has more than enough of Conker's daily manganese requirement in it. Regular rolled oats are also high in manganese, and cheaper than bran, and I often use these instead. Bran just tastes better in my opinion so I share it with Conker.

See how I differ from the raw foodie group? I am not feeding my dog based on what he would eat "in the wild", I'm basing it off what he needs and how I can supply it.

But, grains are eeevil!
Are they? Sometimes, yes. In the case of wheat, definitely yes.  I eat a low-carb high-fat diet, and so does my dog. This is a personal choice but the dog food just happens to come out that way. Yes, I do try to avoid feeding too much veggie matter (costs too much XP) and I do think that dogs are carnivores. However, I don't think they are strict carnivores (like cats) and can utilize nutrients from some vegetable foods.
The reason I think this is that while a dog might enjoy munching on grass, he doesn't really digest that grass, does he? If he were an omnivore he would digest it better. In order to better get the nutrients from that grass, it's gotta be cooked to break down the cell walls, or whatever, and that's where my carnivore thought stems from. (I'm just using grass as an example. I don't cook it for my dogs.)
But as you can see from the text above, just because I think my dog is a "meatatarian" doesn't mean I won't feed him grains, or veggies, or fruits. I just try to see if there's an animal-based item that can supply the nutrient before I look into other food types.

On the subject of veggies and fruits, I don't regularly include them in meals since it's difficult to get many nutrients out of them without feeding a buttload of 'em. Meat works best in most cases, and grains fill in the gaps the meat leaves. Veggies and fruits just don't have a place in the diet. I do give them on occasion but only as snacks or something to amuse Conker.

As you can see from my write-up, deciding upon what I feed to Conker can be a rather lengthy process. I try quite hard to get all the nutrients from whole-foods but some things like omega 3's and Vitamin E I cannot supply without using a supplement.
Which is an entire subject on it's own, but I will briefly run over some things here.
The two supplements I always use are: Salmon or fish oil capsules, Vitamin E capsules.
Other things you could consider supplements, since they are there for only one or two reasons are: 
Canned fish (sardines, mackerel, salmon) I only feed these to get Vitamin D. Rarely for anything else.
Chicory root: With grain-based foods, helps increase digestibility. Chicory is a type of prebiotic, inulin, FOS, whatever you want to call it, that gut bacteria feeds on.
Coconut oil: Good source of fat and a few other things. I only use this if I am feeding incredibly lean meat or a commercial food like The Honest Kitchen.
Heavy whipping-cream: Another source of fat that I sometimes include in grain-meals or with commercial food, but it's not a regular addition.

Speaking of commercial food, I have dipped into that subject a bit. Not because I want to find something Conker can eat in order to switch him to it, but if I need to, for some ungoldy reason, board him, or I have to go somewhere and I can't take him with me and have to leave him home. It would be much easier for the person who has to feed him to use a commercial food than to remember to thaw his raw meal every night and prepare his oats every morning.
I have a strict criteria that must be met by commercial foods that I will not talk about here, but the few brands that have been deemed "Conker safe" are:
The Honest Kitchen,  ZiwiPeak,  Freshpet Vital


Anywho, that's the general gist of it.
Aside from the obvious benefits of feeding Conker a home-made diet (improved coat condition, no tartar on teeth, less or no digestive upset, great energy without being hyper... those are only a few) I find it to be a load of fun. One of my hobbies is researching things I am interested in, and another is dogs and just about everything that has to do with them. That is how I am able to pull this off easily, because I find it fun, and I greatly enjoy preparing meals for my dog.


*I have since found a source of the 2006 numbers and now use those.