Using Nutritiondata.com to balance home-made dog food

In this post I will explain how I use Nutritiondata (hereby shortened to ND) to balance a home-made diet for my dog.

*WARNING*
If you mess up your dog from following information in this post, it's entirely your fault. Not mine, even if you follow my information to the dot. It's your decision to make your dog's food instead of feed commercial, and with that choice comes the risk of not feeding the right nutrients and creating deficiencies because you followed information on some random person's blog.
I am not a vet, I am not a nutritionist.
Keep that in mind if you decide to do what I do in the post below.

Another disclaimer:
First thing you will need to do before you even get started is RESEARCH! That might not be what you want to hear, but it's a very good thing to get into the jist of doing. You should know the proper calcium-phosphorus ratios for starters, and many other "basic" things before you dive into feeding your dog a home-made diet to prevent creating a problem that never should have existed in the first place.
When I first began feeding raw and home-made foods, I just used websites written by random people on the internet (like me!) but as time progressed, I used sites written by vets (most are anti home-made/raw, be warned), then on to actual scientific studies. (There is a "resources" section at the bottom where you can acquire things like these.)
It can be time consuming to sort through the nonsense, hatred, and woo, surrounding feeding your dog a home-made, and especially raw diet. But in doing that, you learn how to recognize those things, and can get a better idea of what is real, usable information and what is not.


Onto the actual post!


You need one of these: 1985 NRC numbers or 2006 NRC numbers spreadsheet
I use the spreadsheet (I did not make it) since it uses the 2006 numbers and is more customizable to my dog and his activity level. Before that I used the 1985 numbers. They are relatively the same, so it's up to you which one you use.
You can use the AAFCO nubers instead of NRC but I do not know how to convert those into actual usable numbers, and I prefer the NRC ones anyways since the AAFCO are based off them in the first place.*

Now go to ND and make yourself a profile. It's free and easy. Once you've done that, on the grey toolbar, go to My ND, and in the drop-down click on My Preferences, and scroll down to the Individualized Daily Values section. In the Custom Entry Default thing at the bottom, click on Advanced Entry.


1985 numbers.

You need to figure out your dog's weight in kilograms and multiply that times the number for each nutrient. Make a note of which column is for adults and which for growth. If your dog isn't growing anymore, use the adult maintenance column on the NRC number page. Take note of the form of measurement the nutrients use, some of them are different on ND (grams, mg, IU, ug, mcg...) Familiarize yourself with how they convert over and use an online converter if you have to.
Note: If you are feeding a puppy, I recommend you use the 1985 growth numbers.

Conker's numbers in ND

Now punch in the numbers for each nutrient into it's respective box.
Hit Save All Preferences.

2006 spreadsheet numbers.

If using the 2006 spreadsheet, open it up and type in your dog's ideal weight in the yellow box. (I outlined it in red). You can also put in their name if you wish in the blue box to the right and save it under a different name if you have multiple dogs. You will need to have a separate ND profile for each dog if you want to input and calculate out meals for them individually.

Now scroll down and over to "Box 1" (the big arrow is pointing to it) and get the number for your pet's activity level. Type that into the box on the left of the large arrow (also outlined in red, says 140 in it, ignore that) and hit enter.

Conker's 2006 numbers

A bunch of numbers in the yellow columns below and to the left of the arrow will pop up. These are the numbers for the nutrients your dog needs. You want the numbers from the left column, the one with red text. (outlined in red)

Some of the values are different on ND and the sheet so pay attention to what they are on both and use an online converter if you need to.

Some of the Vitamins will be a little tricky.
Vitamin A will be low. Multiply it by 3.33 to get the correct number or use the 1985 value.
Vitamin D will also be low. I instead used the 1985 number for it as well.
Pyridoxine is B6
And since dogs don't have a true need for Vitamin K you can leave that one out of you want.
No need to convert Folate, just use the spreadsheet number.

Hit Save All Preferences.

Now you are ready to formulate a recipe!


If you are feeding your dog raw foods, you will need to know the daily percentage of body weight he or she gets in every meal. For example:
Conker gets 2.5% of his body weight in raw foods, or 10 ounces, every day. He also gets 3.5 ounces of cooked foods. In total, he eats 13.5 ounces of food a day. This is what he needs, your dog's food intake will vary depending on their age, activity level, and what you are feeding them.
These numbers are in the 2006 spreadsheet below where you input your dog's weight.
Also in the 2006 spreadsheet is the general 80/10/10 guideline that goes along with the "Prey Model" diet. It will give you a rough idea of how much meat/bone/organ to use for your dog.
Note: I do not know if the body weight thing applies to entirely cooked meals or if it's just raw foods.

Blank recipe ready for planning

Go to My ND, and click on My Recipes in the drop-down. Click on the orange "Create Recipe" button.

Search for the ingredients you want to use and input amounts according to how many ounces of whatever your dog needs. Take note of what "type" of ingredient you select. There's a ton of different "chicken thighs" and if you are using it raw, or baked, or whatever you do, you need to select that. There's also a "without skin" option, so be sure you select the correct one.
Tip: Before I made recipes, I searched through ND and found all the foods I commonly use. I added them to "My Foods" so they were all in one place and I didn't have to sort through a million things before I found what I wanted for a recipe.

Recipe for "Chicken Tight"

When you are satisfied with the recipe, hit Save. NOT Save & Analyze. It will take you to a page that uses general human numbers, not your dog's numbers, and will confuzzle the shiznit out of you.
Note: Chicken Tight actually uses .3 ounces of oyster, not 1 oyster. My mistake.

Go to My Tracking in the My ND drop down.

Hit Add to Tracking, then select the My Recipes button thing and put in the recipe you just made. Use the whole thing, unless for some reason you selected to make it worth several servings (don't do that until you get the hang of using this)
Now hit Save & Analyze.

The next page has a ton of stuff on it. I skip all that and go straight down to the nutrient information.

Nutrient profile of "Chicken Tight"

Notice how this recipe does not cover all the bases. That is because it is incomplete. Sure, I am using chicken in this recipe, which is not exactly the best meat to use due to low mineral content, and if I used pork or beef the minerals would be boosted. I do use some pork and beef but often "cut" it with chicken due to costs. If I could afford it, mainly beef would be better, but still lacking in a lot of nutrients. 
So I add in another recipe I call "Oat Mash"  It is my basic grain meal that hardly ever needs to be changed.

Note: I cannot source a lot of things other rawfeeders can. If I could get some of these, I may be able to feed a "complete and balanced" version of it without things like mollusks and oats. But I can't, and according to some research I have done, most raw diets are lacking in some nutrients even if they have other items like lung and kidney anyways.*

Nutrient profile for "Chicken Tight" and "Oat Mash"

See how that looks a lot better?

Note: I have mentioned this before, but the B's are fine to have in pretty high amounts. They are water soluble and any excess will just get pissed out. You do want to make sure that all of them meet the minimums though, don't want to have a deficiency happen.
Second note: Calcium... If you feed entirely cooked foods with no raw bone, you will need to supplement it in. I will not give you the number for that, look it up on your own, there are several good sites to find it on, and the amount to use varies widely with what your source of calcium is. It's very important that you get it right when supplementing it in, even when using raw bone.
Third Note: I  try not to make the fat go way over protein and vice versa. You can monitor them more closely though, and formulate recipes out to certain ratios if you really want to.


I do not stick to just one set of recipes. What I give Conker depends on what I can get, is on sale, or has Y amount of X nutrient.
Speaking of nutrients...

If you find that no matter what you do, you can't get a certain vitamin or mineral up to acceptable levels (which for me, tend to fall at least in the 110% - 135%range), ND has a very useful tool to solve this problem. In the grey toolbar, go to Tools, then to Nutrient Search Tool in the drop-down.

I only search for foods that are highest in X nutrient, since that is usually the only thing that is relevant. If your recipes tend to be really high on a nutrient, you can also select for things that are low in that one to prevent adding more of it to the recipe. You can select a couple other nutrients as well.

Searching for Iron

When I searched for Iron, I was given a whole plethora of potential ingredients. I scoured through them to find one that would work in a relatively small amount that was easy to find and not too expensive. I ended up narrowing it down to one food category at a time (that I would actually use) and looked through what there was to pick from.
For me, this ingredient turned out to be canned clams.

Reformulate your recipe with this new ingredient, and if it doesn't work, cut it out and try again. You'll eventually find something that works.


Now if you can't find the profile for something like bone, you will have to find an alternate source. I found a couple sites with the breakdown of the calcium content in a couple different types of bone and have input them into ND as a Custom Ingredient.

To do this, go to My ND, My Foods. In the section where you can narrow the visible foods down to type, click on Custom Foods, Add New Food, "enter your own food".

Part of the Custo Food thing

You will be given a nutrient profile to fill. You don't have to add everything, just what your custom food uses. Anything left blank won't register in your recipe. This is basically the same as inputting your dog's numbers into ND. Watch out for measurement differences, and try to get as full of a profile as you can.
Note: In the picture, Advanced Entry is selected. It's friggin huge and unnecessary so use Basic Entry instead.
Fun Fact: I have punched in several different kibbles and commercial foods as Custom Foods and guess what? My home-made food is more "complete and balanced" than all of them! Go figure.

Once you are done putting in your custom food, add it to your recipe and see how everything comes out. And when you are finally done with a recipe, make the darned thing and feed it to your dog!


It can take me hours to make a recipe I am satisfied with, but again, that is because I am OCD about this and research everything I possibly can. It gets easier the more you do it and I find it to be a load of fun.
When people find out how much work you put into feeding your dog this way, they will call you crazy.

I think of that as a compliment. It shows how dedicated I am to getting this right.


If you have a question, feel free to ask! Or if it seems like I left something out, or it's not very clear, let me know and I will go back and edit/add it in.

*The NRC numbers are not the law on canine nutrition, but they are the best out there and are backed by scientific research. They are also guidelines, not rules, it's okay to go over a bit on some things, but try not to go under, and try to keep the nutrient ratios as close as possible to "normal". Meaning, don't go way over in Zinc, or Copper, or whatever. That'll mess up the other minerals and create problems.
This is actually a good thing to know. Add it to your list of things to research. How certain nutrients can affect each other is also important, and what the signs of deficiency and excess are.
Also, these numbers depend on plant foods and/or grain to be included. These can contain anti-nutrients (I forget the real name) that can alter the proper balance needed. This may or may not apply to raw-only foods. I don't know the answer to this, so I take a precautionary approach to it and try to cover all the bases as best as possible, even if it means feeding the eeevil grains every now and then.



Resources.

1985 NRC Nutrient Requirements of Dogs
The entire 1985 book on canine and feline nutrition is available online. It is quite extensive and can take a long, long time to read. Full of good stuff, but you don't have to read the whole thing if you don't want to. (The link starts on page 44 which has the nutrient requirement tables on it.)

Doctors Foster and Smith Pet Education
This site has some good stuff on it. Things like mineral and vitamin requirements and the basic signs of deficiencies.

Dr. Strombeck's Home-Prepared Diets For Dogs and Cats
Pretty good site for some home-cooked meals, and has some for dogs with medical problems as well. They do tend to include things that I personally would not feed, but are a good starting point regardless of that.

Doctors Foster and Smith Pet Education
This site has some things like mineral and vitamin requirements and the basic signs of deficiencies, and some general dog nutrition stuff.

Dog Aware
I do not know how reputable this site actually is. Has information on raw and home-made diets, as well as links to many other sources.

Canine Feeding and Nutrition
General information on feeding dogs.

Micronutrient Information Center
Very good place for learning about all sorts of nutrients and their function, signs of deficiencies and excesses, and interactions are. For humans, but the information is still good for dogs.

The Journal of Nutrition 
Great site for looking up nutritional studies.

Nutrition Journal
Another great site for nutritional studies.

Vitamin Converter
Useful if you don't now hot to convert vitamin measurements, which are different for every one of them.

Recipe Cost Calculator
Handy thing for determining how much each meal costs you.

Weight Conversions
Online tool for converting weights.