How dry dog food is made
Kibble is cooked under pressure in a screw-driven barrel and puffs up the instant it escapes through the die.
- stations
- 7
- things upstream
- 3
- raw sources
- 3
- step from the ground
- 1
The short version
Dry dog food comes out of an extruder. Ground corn and other grains, meat meals, vitamins and minerals are mixed, then steamed in a preconditioner. Screws drive the dough through a barrel above 150 °C and out a shaped die, where a spinning knife cuts each piece. The kibble is dried to about 6 to 10% moisture, coated with fat and flavor, cooled and bagged.
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Hammer-mill the grain
Corn and other grains are ground in a hammermill to a fine meal. Particle size matters, because finer grinding damages more starch and changes how the dough cooks.
Goes in -
Weigh the dry recipe
The ground grain is blended with meat and poultry by-product meals, fats, vitamins and minerals into one dry mix. Cheaper recipes use less meat and more grain.
Goes in -
Steam the mix
In a preconditioner, paddles stir the mix while steam and water are injected. The meal heats, soaks up moisture and starts to soften before it reaches the extruder.
about 88 °C in one study
Goes in -
Force it through the die
Turning screws drive the dough down a heated barrel, where heat, pressure and shear cook the starch into a melt. At the end it is pushed out through a shaped die, water flashes to steam so each piece puffs, and a spinning fly knife slices it off.
above 150 °C
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Dry the kibble
Wet kibble rides through a hot-air dryer until most of its water is gone. Dry enough, it keeps for months in the bag without spoiling.
6 to 10% moisture
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Coat with fat and flavor
The dried pieces tumble in an enrober that coats them with melted fat and a dry flavor powder. Taurine lost during cooking is usually added back after processing.
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Cool and bag
Coated kibble is cooled, screened to remove fines, and filled into sealed bags.
Worth repeating
- James Spratt, an American electrician in London, made one of the first foods for dogs in the mid-1800s after watching dogs eat discarded ship biscuits.
- After World War I, canned horse meat went on sale in the US as dog food, a way to use up horses the army no longer needed.
- Greenhouse gas emissions from dry dog and cat food have been put at around 1.1 to 2.9% of the global total.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and dry dog food starts as these 3 raw sources.
Keep walking
Sources
- Dog food
- Extrusion Processing Modifications of a Dog Kibble at Large Scale Alter Levels of Starch Available to Animal Enzymatic Digestion
Cite this page: "How dry dog food is made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/dog-food