Here are some reasons why I make my own and why you might want to consider doing it too.
Value-Homemade treats are not that expensive to make. Commercially available biscuits vary in price and quality. With homemade, you are not paying for labor, packaging, advertising and profit mark ups.
Quality-When you make your own treats, you know exactly what you put in them. They will not have preservatives or other additives. They contain just the basic ingredients you need to make them (and the ingredient list is usually not very long!) Once you are familiar with the recipe, you can experiment with changing or adding other ingredients. Because they don't have all those preservatives, their shelf life will be much shorter. Don't let that stop you! Freeze them and thaw out what you need for the next few days. And if you wish, you can make your recipe with organic ingredients.
Safety-There's been quite a bit of news about contamination in pet food. We had the Chinese melamine contamination in the past. Many dogs and cats died from the toxin. Right now there are concerns about jerky treats containing an unexplained "something" that seems to be making animals sick. There are also continual recalls that pop up for products that have too much of something, too little of something or have a hazardous contamination from things like salmonella or toxic molds.
I have been making homemade biscuits for quite sometime now. My dogs love them and my cat even eats them! They are not hard to make. My pets are small, so I use a small dog biscuit cutter, but any appropriately sized cookie cutter (not necessarily dog bone shaped) will do. (Some larger ones are pictured here) You can even pat it into a pan to desired thickness and cut the dough into appropriate size pieces. Hint: I often leave them in the hot oven after baking, with the oven turned off with the door cracked open. This allows them dry out more to get them crispy and hard. You might have to experiment with bake times depending on the size and thickness of your biscuits, ingredients used and your oven characteristics.
Below is the recipe I use that I first found on DIY.
http://www.diynatural.com/homemade-natural-dog-treats/