Product Description

With an eye to the long-term health of pets, Dr Donald Strombeck outlines diets that the care giver can prepare at home or in the clinic. He offers nutritional and dietary guidance for animals with particular problems, from obesity, allergies, and gastrointestinal complaints to diseases of the kidney, pancreas, heart and joints. Each recipe includes nutrient content for proteins, fats and calories and all rely on unprocessed foods that are widely available and marketed for human consumption. Full of useful information about nutritional and dietary needs of cats and dogs, this book will be an indispensable guide for all those who are particular about what they feed their pets or their feline and canine patients.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36327 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 366 pages

Book Info
Univ. of California, Davis. Nutrition and dietetics book for owners, breeders, and veterinarians. Includes over 200 computer-based recipes, complete nutritional content data, special diets, and food quality and safety information. Softcover.

From the Back Cover
A pet's diet determines its health and life expectancy more than any other care. Home-Prepared Dog and Cat Diets is a first-of-its-kind nutrition and dietetics book. It offers owners and breeders a wholesome alternative to commercial pet food and provides veterinarians with a unique reference for counseling clients. Written in clear, easy-to-understand language, this comprehensive reference includes the following:

• Over 200 computer-balanced recipes to provide complete nutrition for healthy or diseased animals


• Nutrient content data for each recipe, including proteins, fats, and calories


• Nutritional guidance and descriptions of special diets


• Recipe categories for management of obesity and diseases that affect the gastrointestinal system, skin, kidneys, heart, liver and pancreas


• Invaluable food quality and safety information

About the Author

Donald R. Strombeck, DVM, PhD, is Professor Emeritus, University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, as well as an honorary member of the College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. He is widely published and has received numerous awards, including the Ralston Purina Award for research excellence in small animal diseases for his work in gastroenterology. Dr. Strombeck practiced small animal medicine for over 40 years.

Customer Reviews

Great nutritional resource
If you are feeding or thinking of feeding a homemade diet (raw or otherwise), and you want to understand the scientific and nutritional basis for these diets, this is the book for you.

Having read everything I could get my hands on about canine nutrition, raw diets and homemade diets, I was thrilled to find a book that explained the nutritional side of these diets. There are plenty of books that tell you what to do, but few delve into WHY.

This is not a book of stories about animals' lives changed by a miracle diet. It is a fully referenced book about the nutritional needs of dogs and cats, including the digestability and availability of nutrients in different types of foods. The author explains how this information is used by dog food companies to formulate their foods and the shortcomings of commercial foods that result. The book has an in-depth discussion the needs of dogs and cats with various medical conditions, as well as babies and seniors.

I have to admit that I have a background that made the nutritional information in the book easy to understand. I don't know how accessible some of the material would be for some readers. But even if you were to skim the technical information, you could get a lot out of this book.

The author has his own diet that he designed using computer programs that nutritionally balance the diet. Personally, I feed a raw diet, not the diet the author recommends. But his diet makes sense. Actually, this book doesn't discuss raw feeding at all. But now I have the scientific validation that what I'm feeding is correct from a nutritional standpoint. I've also made a few changes in the diet and supplements I feed based on the information in this book. I found it very helpful, and it gave me peace of mind.

Amazing book
I'm surprised at the amount of complaining with the cat recipes. I found the recipes for both dog and cat to be plentiful, well written, and easy to follow. I also obtained bone meal in powder form, but is it really that difficult to read the bottle, it tells you how much to give. I have used this book since purchasing it in June 2007 and have never been happier. We were about to lose our dog to Protein Losing Enteropathy (PLE)even though she was on a bunch of stuff from the vet, and this book is what brought her back. My vet was so impressed with the book that they bought a copy for themselves. I found it easy to find the recipes I needed just by going to the index. I had no dissapointments with this book and have recommended it to several people with both dogs and cats.

Disappointing
I have several dogs, have been feeding them a raw meat diet for 2 years and have read many books on the subject. I wanted to make sure that I am including the correct nutrients so bought this book for the recipes. What a shame! All of the recipes in this book were variations of the same recipe: Cooked meat, bonemeal tablet and 1 multivitamin. Don't waste your time or money on this book. This is the first time I've ever sent a book back for a refund.