A few people said they'd be interested in the recipe my vet had for an at-home kidney diet for dogs.

Here's what she gave me!


It's an older recipe (from the 80s), but she says it's still solid in terms of the proportions of protein/fat/carbs that do best for kidney issues. The source is Hills.

What makes this kidney-friendly is that it's a restricted protein diet.

Ingredients:
1/4 lb ground beef (do not use lean/chuck)*
2 cups cooked white rice, no salt**
1 hard-cooked egg, finely chopped
3 slices of white bread, crumbled
1t (5g) calcium carbonate***
Add a dietary supplement for vitamins and minerals

Cook the beef, stirring lightly until browned. Stir in the rest of the ingredients until mixed well. Add water (not milk) if the mixture is too dry. Yields about 1 1/4 lb of food.

* It seems like it's hard to find anything OTHER than lean ground beef, and chuck (80%) I don't think is considered "lean." I think you can generally find 73%, which is what I think we'll try. I'm guessing this recommendation is because you want the higher fat content.

** Specifying both white rice and white bread does not surprise me. That was one of the things that did surprise a lot of the family when my grandmother had to be on a renal diet, that you want white rice and bread, not brown or whole grain.

*** The bottom of the page helpfully suggests going to a grocer to purchase eggshells for the calcium carbonate. My vet has helpfully written in "Tums" as an alternative, haha. This works out to five tablets, at least of the type we have, since they are 1000mg each.
I wasn't sure why this quantity of calcium was recommended, but a quick search says that it's a common use in dogs and cats with kidney disease, because it helps to bind to the extra phosphates in their blood. (Creatinine being the one that she said was most elevated for Cy.)

Analysis of the recipe:
Protein 6.9%
Fat 5.5%
Carbohydrate 21.1%
Moisture 65.5%
750 kcalories/lb of food

Now, for Cy's weight, he'd need to eat a bit more than the recipe yields per day (though it could scale up fairly easily, and we would probably be cooking it in bulk anyway.)

Unfortunately, rice was already a significant part of the diet we were giving the dogs (since Bella is allergic to wheat), but Cy has decided to go on a rice strike, and now refuses to eat it. We'd actually just started replacing it with bread, which he loves! So maybe we'll try substituting in more bread and less rice.

We are giving him the kidney foods we got samples of (she gave us three cans and three ziplocs of different dry foods.) We had him try a few of each of the kibbles, all of which he liked, and he got to try some of the Royal Canin wet food, I think with some of the same brand's kibble mixed in as well for dinner tonight, and he *cleaned* that bowl. So he likes the food.

But as everyone else pointed out, and I already knew, it is *expensive*. $120 for a case of 24 cans, with feeding guidelines to feed *three cans per day* for a dog of his weight? That's about $15/day, and unfortunately... I don't think we can afford that.

Now, beef and eggs are also pretty expensive! But it's going to be a lot less than $15 a day.

I'm also thinking about maybe combining the two. We typically feed twice a day, so maybe the home diet once per day, and the commercial food once per day? Primarily the home recipe, but with a half a can/a small serving of the kibble per day added in? That would maybe let him reap some of the benefits of the commercial diet (additional supplements that they include, etc.) while not being AS big a budget blow for us, while still making sure that everything he's getting falls within the guidelines for a better diet for him.