Ever wondered what nutrients your dogs are consuming every day when you feed them commercial pet food, the pet food sold from your nearby pet shops or supermarkets?
Finding alternatives to a healthy diet for your dogs might just be the solution to improve their nutrient intake.
So what type of new food can your dog snack on to improve their diet? Well, you could always treat your dog to some homemade bone broth soup!
That’s right! Rather than having them chew on some rough sturdy bones during meals, make those bones into a warm broth and give a bowl of that slurpy goodness to your buddy while enjoying the companionship of each other’s company.
Is Bone Broth Good for Dogs?
You might be thinking, “What’s so special about bone broths? Are they even healthy for a dog’s diet?” Of course. It’s essentially the healthiest snack you could ever give to your dogs to consume. Here are 5 benefits on why bone broths are good for your dog’s health!
Benefits of Bone Broth
All Minerals in One Bowl
Your one-stop source of all the essential nutrients for your dogs can be found in bone soup. If your dog’s diet mainly consists of dried and packaged food, they are missing out on several nutrients as these commercialized pet foods are produced for the purpose of keeping your dog fed.
Bone soup can be a great addition to your dog’s diet as it contains all the important mineral nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and many more. Since these minerals are going to be consumed in the form of a liquid, it keeps them better hydrated and would encourage them to drink more water.
Immunity Booster
Not knowing when your dog might get sick could be a creeping concern. Keeping your furry family healthy is the way to go and giving bone broth to your pup will boost its immunity systems to help prevent it from getting sick.
Amino acids are the core components for building up protein blocks in a dog. Studies have found that large quantities of amino acids are stored in bones. When your dog consumes bone broth, it can easily absorb these protein builders that help to improve its overall health.
Immunity boosters such as Bone Broth Dr are superb as supplements. It is flavorful, nutritious and easy to serve, your dog will lap it up in a go!
Detox for Dogs
You may not know it, but a dog’s liver is constantly overworking to detoxify all the toxic chemicals that they licked off stuff on the ground out of pure curiosity. Their liver’s capacity to consistently detoxify these strange substances is limited to the amount of amino acid stored in their bodies.
Thus, a boost of amino acid from bone broth could help detoxify the chemical substances that it unknowingly consume while maintaining a clean liver for your dog in the long term.
A Gut Feeling for Good Digestion
Dogs consume their food way faster than humans and sometimes the food they swallow does not get digested properly. This may lead to some issues in the digestive tract and cause a clogged up or a leaky gut.
In some cases, an unhealthy digestive tract may lead to your dog getting diarrhea and potentially lose their appetite for solid food. This becomes even worse if your dog already has a poor diet from the beginning.
Luckily, bone broths contain a gelatin composition that acts as a protective layer in the walls of the intestines. This gooey substance has the properties to cover up any leaky holes in the gut. Thus plugging up the intestines’ surfaces from having leakages.
Get Those Joints Moving
Do you know what else does bone soup contain? Plenty of glucosamine! These joint-protecting compounds basically help improve the elasticity and flexibility of movement between the muscle joints in your dog.
Aside from that, bone broths are also packed with high amounts of chondroitin and hyaluronic acid which helps repair and strengthen their joints. This helps preserve your dog’s bones while preventing them from contracting certain bone problems such as arthritis and joint pain in their early in their life.
What Kind of Bones Do You Use for Bone Broth?
Chicken bones are the cheapest and most common ingredients used for bone broths. Chicken feet in particular contain a high amount of gelatin and are less expensive than other body parts sold in the market. If you happen to have chicken drumsticks or drummets for lunch, you can save the remains for a bone soup as these leg bones have large quantities of amino acid in their tendons.
If you had beef for one of your meals, keep the bones to be used for your broth. The most exquisite parts are the knuckles, joints, feet, and marrow bones as these bones are gelatin-rich. Your dogs will love you even more the moment they smell the sweet alluring scent coming out from your pot. For some extra added flavor, throw in some side meaty bones like oxtail, shank, short ribs and so on to enhance the savory taste in your bone soup.
Bones of younger animals are a fine selection as it contains a lot of soft cartilage. These soft cartilages are full of rich nutrients and are easy to digest in a dog’s stomach. For this reason, veal bones are particularly expensive for making bone stock.
Making a bone soup from raw bones is a labor of love for your dogs as you will need to have the patience to boil the broth at a low heat temperature. It involves a slow simmering process as you boil the contents of the ingredients to extract the amino acids, gelatin and other nutrients from the bones into the broth.
Bone Broth for Senior Dogs
Bone broths are exceptionally beneficial for senior dogs. As they transition into old age, their bones’ cartilage begins to wear out in their joints and deteriorates over time.
The joint-healing nutrients such as glucosamine and hyaluronic acid found in Bone Broth Dr. becomes a great source of nourishment for these senior dogs as it helps them maintain the durability of their fragile bones during old age.
Healthy Dog Bone Soup for Sick Dogs
Bone broths have been used to treat sickness in dogs. With diarrhoea being the most common symptom discovered in a sick dog, a warm bone soup is the best home remedy for treating these illnesses.
Sick dogs that experienced a loss of appetite need to be hydrated and drink lots of liquid. It is important to note that they would need more nutrients to help build back their immunity when they are sick. These nutrients can be found in bone broth.
Best Bone Broth Recipe
Homemade bone broth for your dog is easy to prepare as there are many recipes you can find online. Just in case all those recipes confuse you, we’ll get you started on an easy one that you can follow right off the bat:
All you need is a large pot or slow cooker with these ingredients prepared:
- 1 gallon (4 liters) of water
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) of apple cider vinegar
- 2-4 pounds (about 1-2 kg) of bones (poultry or beef)
- 1 cup of chopped and minced carrots
- 3 tbsp of olive oil
- Salt and pepper for some taste
Steps:
- Place all the prepared ingredients into a large pot or slow cooker.
- Add in 1 gallon of water and bring it to a boil.
- Reduce to a simmering heat and cook for 12-24 hours (12 hours if you’re using the stove and 24 hours in the slow cooker on low heat for simmering). The longer it cooks, the more nutritious it becomes.
- Let the broth cool for about 2-3 hours. Strain it into a large container and discard the solids.
- Serve a bowl of that broth for your pooch (and yourself) to lap up the wholesome goodness.
Helpful Tips:
You can mix a variety of animal bones to make your broth more nutritious.
Adding apple cider vinegar is useful because it helps to extract all the valuable nutrients out of the bones into the water, which is essentially what your dog will be consuming.
To enhance the flavor, you can also add some vegetables into your broth.
We hope this bone broth recipe becomes a wonderful addition to your dog’s diet. Although bone broth does test your patience during preparation, we believe the wait is worth your while. The moment you open that pot and all that fragrant aroma is in the air, your best buddy will definitely pick up that heavenly scent and be running over to you for a lickety-split taste.