There are times when our Huskies are just not feeling very well. If they are just recovering from surgery, from illness, or they are just not feeling at their best, their appetites will most likely be off too. Some Huskies are just notoriously picky eaters that drive their Dog Parents crazy as they frantically search for ways to get proper nutrition into their Snow Dog.
Regardless of why you want to get some extra nutrition into your Husky, here is an extremely nutritious food that you can cook at home for not much cost but it you gives you lots of bang for your buck. The food is called Bone Broth and it is a very nutrient dense liquid that you cook and feed to your dog when he needs the extra calories or nutrition.
Though this food alone would be considered an incomplete long term feeding option, for short term feedings or as an addition to your dog’s regular balanced diet, Bone Broth makes an excellent food choice. This food is nutritious and brimming with the goodness of minerals, vitamins, collagen, and many other easily absorbed micro-nutrients. Best of all it is not hard to make, it can be portioned, and frozen to be used as needed.
Which Dogs Can Benefit From Versatile Bone Broth?
- For convalescing dogs, you can feed the Broth instead of their regular food while they are recovering.
- Dogs that cannot eat solid food at the moment, feed them the Broth instead of their regular solid food diet.
- For senior dogs who need some extra nutrition in an easily absorbable format, try supplementing by adding 25% to 50% percent of their daily caloric intake through Bone Broth.
- Dogs that do not like dry kibble. Wet down their kibble using some Bone Broth. It adds some moisture as well as extra nutrition. Add enough liquid to moisten their food to the desired consistency.
- Dogs that seem to be turn their nose up at all foods. Adding the some Bone Broth to their food may well prime them to become interested in eating their food. Add enough Bone Broth to satisfy their pallet.
What Are The Nutritional and Medicinal Benefits Of Consuming Bone Broth?
Joint Support
Bone Broth provides naturally good and easily absorbable sources of chondroitin, glucosamine, and hyaluronic acid. These compounds are all essential in helping to building and keeping joints healthy.
Liver Detox
Bone Broth is a rich source of the amino acid Glycine which helps to detox the liver of the many toxins found in foods and our environment.
Optimization Of Gut Function
When Bones are rendered down, they produce a thick substance called gelatin. Gelatin coats the lining of the stomach and intestines keeping undigested food and toxin particles from attaching themselves to cell walls where they can cause Leaky Gut Syndrome.
Immune System Support For Weak, Frail, Or Sick Dogs
The gelatin found in Bone Broth helps to regulate gastric acid which in turn creates better absorbable nutrition. And the gelatine contained in the Broth provides support for strong immune system functioning.
How To Make Bone Broth
What You Need
- A crock pot OR a large stock pot
- A medley of raw meaty bones. This can include a selection of poultry wings, necks, gibblets and feet, ox tails, beef bone, or lamb bones. Include a lot of joint bones as they are a rich source of collagen. Make sure that you use very few marrow bones as they will release a lot of fat into the Broth making it too rich for many dogs.
- Raw apple cider vinegar or lemon juice. (Adding the acid helps to leach the minerals out of the bones)
- A fresh assortment of herbs:, parsley, rosemary, oregano, sage, basil, fennel seed, and thyme. (about one flat tablespoon of each except parsley. You can use about a small palm full of fresh parsley.
- * and an assortment of dog friendly fresh vegetables: carrots, green beans, broccoli, kale, beet greens, spinach, sweet potato, kelp etc. Feel free to add other vegetables as long as they are dog friendly.( you want to use a good sized handful of the leafy greens and about 2 to 3 carrots and small sweet potatoes.) * the veggies are optional to use.
Instructions For Making Bone Broth
- In either a crock pot or large soup stock pot, fill the container about half way up with the assortment of raw bones.
- Add enough water to adequately cover the bones plus an additional 2 or 3 inches of water.
- Add about 2 to 4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice to the water.
- Add fresh herbs.
- Add fresh vegetables* (optional). If you are using veggies you may need to top up the water level so it fully covers the ingredients.
- If you are using a crock pot, set your crock pot medium low and let the mixture cook very slowly for up to 12 hours.*If you are using a stock pot on the stove, your cooking time is about 8 to 12 hours on a very low simmer. Remember to stir your soup at least once an hour to keep ingredients from sticking or scorching on the bottom of the pot. Do not leave an attended pot cooking on your stove.
- Once the Broth is cooked, (it will have a very thick consistency to it), strain the bones and other solids out of the soup. *NEVER* feed the cooked bones to your dog. Cooked bones will easily splinter and can cause intestinal blockages or the shards can cause punctures of the stomach or intestine.*
- If there is meat on the bones, hand strip the meat off the bones and save to add back to the strained Broth.
- Any vegetables still whole can also be cut up and later added back to the strained Broth.
- Place the Broth into the fridge to cool. When the mixture cools it will become very thick and gelatinous making it very easy to divide into serving sized portions.
The Broth can be kept in the fridge up to 4 days or you can place serving sized portions into freezer bags and freeze until you need to use the Broth. This is great to have on hand for when you dog suddenly falls ill.
To unthaw the frozen Bone Broth, just unthaw in the fridge overnight or immerse the freezer bag into a bowl of hot water until the mixture becomes warm enough to use.
As always, we welcome you questions, comment, and stories regarding this topic. When we share our stories we may just be helping someone who is struggling with their Snow Dog.
Helping ALL Snow Dogs … one owner at at time.
great, thanks for this – I’m going to try this with our too-skinny 17 1/2 year old Siberian, Sky. I feed him home made recipes (www.completeandbalanced.com 100 recipes and supplement that has to be used with recipes) as well as Halo Salmon puppy kibble – and usually half of my meals because he is a fussy, picky eater but whatever’s on my plate is still better in his eyes :) Open to any/all other ideas to get weight back on him Shane, Vancouver, Canada
Well 17.5 years old is a VERY respectable age for a Sibe. In senior dogs sometimes their senses start to fade and they are less interested in food because they cannot smell it or taste it as well. It sounds like you are doing all the right things though be really careful what you are giving off your plate because Sky does not need a lot of salt in her diet. And you will want to be very careful with feeding puppy kibble because it tends to be high fat which the liver may have trouble processing. Seniors could often use a bit more Zinc in their diet so offer foods naturally high in Zinc.Sometimes the overly thin and picky eating Sibe is low in Zinc
I would suggest removing the option of lemon juice…. citrus is very dangerous to all dogs and cats.
Richard, two tablespoons of lemon juice in that quantity of water is negligible. Also you may want to read refer to this article https://ottawavalleydogwhisperer.blogspot.ca/2013/01/fresh-lemon-good-for-dogs-many-health.html