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Thanks for the tip! I was not factoring in for the water loss, but makes sense. My kitties are eating 2oz per meal, but I'm thinking of bumping Esme down to 1.8oz or 1.6oz since she is starting to leave just a teenie bit, every now and then.Here is what I do, and works well:
I cut all the chicken, put into a large ziplock bag, and back into the freezer. Then all the lamb, and do the same thing.
After all the meats are into their large bags, I pull the small Ziplock bags and start the packing into portions.
Weight the meal sizes - TIP: Always leave about 20% in weight for water loss during defrost - especially on hearts!! Hearts lose a LOT of water, and the last thing you want is to find out you have less meat than you need when you defrosted! For the other meats you can leave around 15%.
I weight the portions and keep putting the bags aside. When I finish one meat, say the chicken, I flatten the baggies, squeezing the air out, close the baggies, wipe quickly with a paper towel and label them with a thick permanent marker.
Put them inside a large ziplock bag, and into the freezer.
Onto the next meat.
I pack all my cats meals together - for example:
I have 3 cats, who were eating 1.6oz each per meal = 4.8oz. + 15% = 5.5oz. All the chicken baggies will weigh that much.
At meal time, I just pull one from the freezer, defrost on warm water, supplement and serve.
As for instructions, in the beginning I had a menu in the freezer. Now I don't follow one - I just serve 2 white meats for the day, and one red.
And feed hearts often - they LOVE hearts, and it has a shock full of vitamins!
I do have a Kitty Instruction manual for the Petsitters, since I travel at least 3 weeks of the month and need to rely on them to feed the kitties while I am out of town..... It is pretty detailed.
Once you get used to it, you pretty much get into an auto-pilot - you know when you miss something in their food...... You have the feeling that "something is not right"
I do something similar when prepping their meals. I cut up, chicken for example and drop the bits into one big bowl to weigh it. Then I take out my little baggies and portion them into individual kitty meals, smoosh the bags, label them, and toss them into a large freezer bag (also labeled). I like to keep the mini bags labeled though, so if I have multiple meats thawing out for the day, I know what's what.';[pppppppppp <<-- had to keep that. Naku typed that in.
Carolina - So, you do not feed a 2nd secreting organ? I know you feed the FD liver treats, if you are not feeding the second organ, how many of those are you feeding? I'm just asking so I have a backup plan if the kidney doesn't work out, since I do have frozen chicken livers and Etta's FD chicken livers available (until I can look into another order with organs from Hare Today).