DIY Pill Pockets for Dogs very much like Greenies

DIY Pill Pockets for Dogs very much like Greenies

I’ve always liked everything about Greenies Pill Pockets—except the price! They cost between 8 and 9 dollars for 30 pill pockets. That’s about 27 – 30 cents per pocket. Not so bad, perfect in fact, when you are feeding your dog pills for a short period of time. I highly recommend them. But if your dogs have allergies, for example, and need year-round medication it gets to be expensive. My wife and I have two beagles that both require allergy pills twice a day. That’s 4 pill pockets a day, so that 8- or 9-dollar bag of 30 pill pockets will only last a week in my house (with 2 pill pockets left over.) Hmmm. That’s more than $400 per year.

I wanted to make a pill pocket just like Greenies, but less expensive. I’ve tried many of the DIY pill pocket recipes on the internet, and while my dogs eat them for a while, they eventually reject them. But not Greenies. Maybe it’s the hickory smoke smell, or that they have chicken in them, but they’ve always liked them.

My Research

The Ingredients

In Greenies Chicken Flavored Pockets, the ingredients are listed as: Chicken, Glycerin, Wheat Flour, Wheat Gluten, Vegetable Oil, Dried Corn Syrup, Natural Flavor, Vinegar, Sodium Bisulfate, Natural Hickory Smoke Flavor, Mixed Tocopherols and Citric Acid (preservatives), Rosemary Extract.

Very nice! Healthy ingredients. No unpronounceable chemicals. I wasn’t sure about Tocopherols, but after researching it, I found it is an acceptable food additive, used as a preservative, and has been shown to be safe.

Following is what I found out about all the preservatives Greenies puts in their product.

Tocopherols

Tocopherols are basically forms of vitamin E, but are added to some dog food as preservatives. Many oils, including olive oil contain tocopherols. They work by reducing oxidation and extending shelf life.

Rosemary extract

Here is what a report from NIH says about it: “…Rosemary also has been reported to be an effective food preservative due to its high anti-oxidant and anti-microbial activities. These properties allow rosemary [to] prevent microbial growth while decreasing food spoilage through oxidation…”

Citric Acid

Citric acid acts as a preservative in many processed foods, keeping them fresh. It does this by slowing or helping prevent the formation of bacteria, mold, yeast, and fungus.

It retains a food’s color, flavor, and texture. This delays how quickly food spoils, increasing its shelf life.

A Question (and answer) about Preserving Chicken

Okay. So much for preservatives. The next thing I wondered is how they process chicken such that it can be stored at room temperature without spoiling. It must be something besides adding all those preservatives. As it turns out, manufacturers use a heating process that requires very expensive equipment. I’m not sure you or I could order some of this in small quantities.

“Well,” I thought, “what about dry dog food – i.e. kibbles?” That is stored at room temperature, and that has meat in it. So the heating process must have already been done.

I chose IAMS, because that’s what they eat anyway, and they list chicken as their first ingredient. Here are the ingredients listed in IAM’s chicken flavored mini chunks: Chicken, Ground Whole Grain Corn, Ground Whole Grain Sorghum, Chicken By-Product Meal, Dried Plain Beet Pulp, Natural Flavor, Flaxseed, Dried Egg Product, Chicken Fat (Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Caramel Color, Vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Ascorbic Acid, Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate (source of Vitamin B1), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Vitamin A Supplement, Niacin, Riboflavin Supplement (source of Vitamin B2), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (source of Vitamin B6), Vitamin D3 Supplement, Folic Acid), Minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Sodium Selenite, Manganese Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Potassium Iodide), Potassium Chloride, Carrot, Choline Chloride, Fructooligosaccharides, Calcium Carbonate, Mixed Tocopherols (Preservative), Rosemary Extract

Hmm. They also put tocopherols and rosemary extract in their product. Okay, IAMS it is. I ground some up in my Vitamix blender until it was a powder and had the start to my experiment.

Next, I bought several things from Amazon that I did not have.

This is absolutely critical. Please read this

You will need glycerin. First, use only food grade vegetable glycerin. And it must say somewhere on the bottle that it is safe for oral consumption. It turns out that some diabetics use it as a sweetener in their coffee or tea, for example. But not all glycerin is the same. Some is for external use only. So please, please check. Let’s not make our best friends sick. I bought a bottle of it. The one I chose is called Raw + Rare Vegetable Glycerin, USP Food Grade, Kosher certified, Halal certified, derived from vegetable oil. And it says on the bottle, “suitable for cosmetic application or oral consumption.” I bought a 32 oz bottle on Amazon, and it cost $13.97.

And next, I bought a bottle of “Hickory Liquid Smoke.” On Amazon a 5 oz bottle costs $7.79. The rest of the ingredients that I use I already had.

The Recipe

After some experimentation I came up with the following recipe:

• 2 Tbsp ground up IAMS dog food
• 3 Tbsp whole wheat flour
• 2 Tbsp food grade vegetable glycerin safe for oral consumption
• ½ tsp olive oil
• 4 drops liquid smoke.

 

Mix all ingredients together and knead in your hands until smooth.

It had about the same consistency as Greenies pill pockets and you can smell the hickory smoke, so now the ultimate test: I gave each of our beagles a portion of it the size of a pill pocket, and they both ate it with enthusiasm. Of course, if you have beagles, you know they will eat almost anything with enthusiasm! But still…

I decided that even though I had added olive oil which has tocopherols, and even though IAMS already has tocopherols and rosemary extract in it, I would 1) only make it in the small quantity that my recipe lists, and 2) I would keep it in my refrigerator. It’s easy to make, so I don’t mind mixing up another batch every few days. It takes all of about 2 minutes from start to finish, and only uses one small bowl, one mixing spoon, and the measuring spoons.

So, basically, I am taking dog food, where the main ingredient is chicken, and that already has food preservatives in it, and adding 4 more things: whole wheat flour, glycerin, olive oil, and liquid hickory smoke.

You can see in this picture below that I used the end of a beater from a hand mixer to indent a ball of the mixture with a pill hole, but you could also use the end of a chopstick or anything with that shape. And really I just did this to show you the comparison of my mixture with Greenies pill pockets. Actually, I just keep the ball, wrapped in plastic-wrap, in my refrigerator, and then tear off a small portion, put the pill in the middle of it, and wrap it around the pill. I then roll it between my hands to make the ball smooth.

So, how many pill pockets does one batch of dough make? First I weighed a Greenies pill pocket. It was about 3 grams. So that’s what I used. The entire ball of dough weighed about 90 grams, so about 30 pill pockets in a batch, just like Greenies.

I think the most expensive ingredient is the glycerin, and the 32 oz bottle has 64 Tbsp in it which is enough for 32 batches of pill pockets. I said each batch made about 30 pill pockets, so about 960 pill pockets altogether for $13.97 in glycerin.

Several weeks later

I’ve now been giving my homemade pill pockets to our beagles, Lincoln and Molly in their bowl of kibbles twice a day, and they always immediately go for it before eating anything else. As they say, “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.”

Conclusion

This is an easily made substitute for Greenies, takes only minutes to make, and if your dog likes Greenies, they will like these. Or, at least mine did. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope you will try it for yourself if you need to save money.