Mixed feeding: why we dose the fresh bowl and not the split
Growlrr doses the home-cooked bowl. We do not support mixed feeding as a daily pattern, and we do not publish a split. Commercial food has two legitimate roles — the thing you transition off, and an occasional substitution when circumstances require it. Not the standing other half of a diet.
This is a statement of what we can and cannot calculate. It is not a claim about the safety of commercial food.
1 · The operating rule
The sachet goes with the home-cooked bowl. No bowl, no sachet.
That removes all arithmetic for the owner and is safe in both directions. A commercial meal is already complete and needs no correction, so none is given. A home-cooked meal gets its calculated dose. Commercial food in the same bowl is not counted and is not corrected — if it is more than a garnish, treat the meal as a commercial meal and skip the sachet.
A skipped dose needs no making up. The dose is built around habitual intake rather than any single meal, and micronutrient stores buffer over days to weeks.
2 · Why we publish no split — and the reason is not safety
A complete-and-balanced label tells you a food meets published minima. It does not tell you what that food actually delivers above those minima, which nutrient forms it uses, or how bioavailable they are in that matrix. Pet food in India also sits outside FSSAI, with BIS IS 11968 unenforced as a binding specification regime, so the declaration is not independently verified by anyone.
We can compute a correction against a bowl we specify. We cannot compute anything against a product whose actual delivery we do not know.
Any split we published would be a guess presented as arithmetic. It is not that the combination is dangerous — two nutritionally complete systems mixed in any proportion still clear requirement, and the headroom to safe upper limits is generally wide. It is that we would be stating a figure we cannot stand behind. We would rather say we cannot calculate it than calculate it badly.
3 · Transition — commercial food’s first legitimate role
Moving from commercial food to a fresh bowl is a gut-microbiome change, not merely a menu change. Transition over 7–10 days for dogs and 2–3 weeks for cats, replacing about a quarter of the commercial portion with the fresh bowl every three days, and raising the dose with the fresh fraction. Loose stools during transition are usual and settle; if they do not, step back to the previous ratio and hold longer.
Cats: a cat must never be fasted into a diet change. Cats are neophobic and can refuse an unfamiliar food outright, and an overweight cat that stops eating for a few days is at risk of hepatic lipidosis. If a cat refuses the new ratio, go back a step and go slower. Never withhold food to force acceptance.
A transition ends. That is what distinguishes it from mixed feeding.
4 · Occasional substitution — the second legitimate role
Travel, a hospital stay, a flood, a power cut, a day you simply cannot cook: a commercial meal is not a problem. Feed it, skip the sachet, resume when you are back.
We state this as an event rather than a percentage, deliberately. A stated percentage reads as a computable split and invites a permanent arrangement we will not dose for. An event is what it actually is — a substitution, for a reason, for a period, after which the normal pattern resumes.
5 · “I cannot cook every day”
This is the real objection behind most mixed-feeding requests, and the answer is not a split. Batch preparation is the answer. Cook for the week, portion, refrigerate or freeze, and add the correction to the warm bowl at serving. Cooking becomes a weekly task rather than a daily one.
6 · What we do not support, stated plainly
A permanent split — half commercial, half fresh, every day — is a reasonable thing for an owner to want. We will not publish a dose for it. The builder is designed for a home-cooked bowl, and we are not going to invent a number for the other half. You remain free to feed your animal however you judge best; what we will not do is sell you a correction for a bowl it does not correct.