Cost Optimization of Homemade Diet for Dogs

Abstract

Nowadays, people raising pet animals in Turkey is increasing daily. The feeding of dogs, which are members of the houses as valuable assets, is at least as necessary as family members. Calculation of dogs' daily nutrient requirements, maintenance, growth, pregnancy, lactating, working, etc. are very variable and require an intense estimate. Feeding pet dogs only with industrially prepared foods can affect the economy of the family and the health of dogs negatively. Mainly, it is continuously questioned by the animal owners whether foods and additives that may harm health are used in industrially prepared foods. Desktop, web, and mobile-based software are used in the animal feeding area. Nevertheless, according to the researches, there is no web-based software that is used for dog diet preparation that can be used by dog owners who can calculate precisely the daily nutrient requirements of dogs and meet these requirements with available ingredients so far. The data used in this study were taken from Selcuk University, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Science and Animal Nutrition Department. In this study, a linear programming model is proposed to calculate dog diets that both can meet the nutrient requirements of dogs and can engage cost optimization. User-friendly web-based dog diet preparation software is performed.