BalanceIt is a product developed by a veterinary nutritionist to supplement homemade diets so that homemade diets are correctly balanced with vitamins and minerals. So I thought this would be a good place to look for guidance about the amount of copper supplementation that should occur in a nutritional homemade diet for dogs.

As it turns out, BalanceIt contains about 2 mg of copper per day for a normal dog.
2 mg per day also meets 100% of the daily requirements for copper for a normal human.

Commercial dog foods currently contain 2-10 times that amount of copper. Furthermore, copper sulfate (a fungicide) is the source of copper frequently used.

Copper supplementation increases shelf life. Copper sulfate is the least expensive form of copper.

How much naturally-occurring copper was presumed to be in the homemade diets the Balancelt was developed to supplement?

A good question, but not one I can answer generally. BalanceIt offers many recipes for a canine diet. Check out their website. wwww.balanceit.com

The BalanceIt recipes I use have nearly no copper, and neither does the BalanceIt supplement I add to those recipes.

Humans generally consume .3 to 1.3 mg of copper in day in their diets, which is sufficient that copper deficiency is not a problem in our country. We just don't need a lot of copper to flourish. No evidence that dogs need more than we do.

So I researched copper deficiency in humans, and it is uncommon. If babies are fed only a cow's milk diet with no supplementation of copper, they can develop a copper deficiency. Oversupplementation with zinc can cause a copper deficiency because zinc can neutralize copper in the diet.