Baked Dog Food?
Have you ever ever heard of oven-baked pet food, and even considered how pet food is made? Pet food is baked, pressed or run through an extruder. It’s rather a lot inexpensive to extrude or press pet food than to bake or “kibble” it. All pet food that’s mass-marketed is extruded.
Oven-Baked Dog Food – The method starts with the meat protein (chicken, lamb, trout, etc.) ground right into a very small meal. This small meal is mandatory for the blending of the kibble. Consider attempting to mix up a meat loaf without thawing the meat first. It might be inconceivable; the identical is true for mixing a baked kibble. When all ingredients are blended the kibble is baked in “shortbread cookie” (small 2-inch biscuit) form after which broken into smaller, irregular kibble ranging in size from tiny morsels to about ½ inch. Baking temperatures are from 350° to 475°.
Extruded pet food is cooked by steaming it as quickly as possible, often lower than 2 minutes, then extruding it with high pressure through a machine with shaped die holes. The food might be uniform in shape. Oils are sprayed on to extend palatability so pets find it more appealing. You possibly can sometimes feel the sticky oils whenever you handle the food. If low quality oils are used they will develop into rancid. Extruded pet food cannot contain greater than 50% meat or it can clog the machine.
Oven cooked canine food changes hard-to-digest molecules of “raw” starches into easy to digest dextrins. This process acts as a pre-digest of the kibble food, leading to less strain on the dog’s digestive system and produces a greater degree of food absorption. It isn’t mandatory to spay anything on the food for flavor. The oven baking retains the flavour.
Digestibility and Palatability
It has been shown that baked food scores within the high 90’s for digestibility and palatability. Most extruded food is within the low 80’s on a scale of 100. This implies dogs will typically eat less of a food with higher rating and just like the taste.
It’s true that oven-baked kibble with natural preservatives has a shorter shelf life.
The shelf life could also be shorter but does pet food actually need a shelf life longer than the dog eating it?
You possibly can see, smell and feel the difference in oven-baked and extruded canine food.
Some dogs do higher with oven-baked kibble while extruded is sweet enough for other dogs.
