Add In Chunks Of Bone To A Ground Raw Diet?

[david23]

Hi all, I've been making a ground raw diet with chicken and chicken bones as per recipes from Anne Jablonski and Lisa Pierson. I've also been reading about the benefits of chunks of meat and bone on slowing the eating process and on the teeth.

I thought it might be an idea to add in some larger bone chunks (e.g. chicken wings, ribs etc) - maybe hack a chicken wing to 2 or 3 pieces. It's really hard to know how to do this while keeping everything in balance.

Just wondering if anyone else does this and whether you could share any tips?

 

[Ardina]

I add chunks in a couple of ways. For my chicken and turkey mixes, since I have to dilute out the excess bone content in the ground mix with boneless meat anyways, I use chicken hearts and boneless thigh chunks.

My kitten loves chomping on chunks and bones, so for her, I also occasionally give whole prey like day old chicks as well as chicken wings. I just make sure to keep the chicken wings under 10% of her diet, since it's not balanced. My other cat eats the chunks and hearts in the usual ground mix, but hasn't quite gotten the hang of whole prey or chicken wings.

It can take some time for a cat to learn how to eat chunks - to teach my cats, I started with small chunks of meat and gradually increased the size. Then I added hearts and gizzards, since they're chewier. Once they'd built up some jaw strength, I added in chicken wings and day old chicks.

Good luck!

 

[david23]

Thanks Ardina . I need all the luck I can get.

Re the chicken wings, do you just given them to the kitten as is, or do you chop them into a few pieces?

 

[Ardina]

I give them as is. In the beginning, she would eat the meat and chew on the joints but not really eat the bone. After a few times of this, she figured out how to eat the bone and now consumes the whole thing. You can certainly try chopping them up to start with - I didn't, mostly because I don't have a good cleaver.

 

[orange&white]

You could probably keep things balanced if you reduced the thigh bones in a recipe by one or two (if you are using thighs) and substituted chicken wings. Most of the guesswork in making a balanced raw diet is trying to figure out what percentage of bone is actually in an RMB like a chicken wing. A wing tip is mostly cartilage/collagen, fat and only a little actual bone calcium. The next piece of the wing with the two bones I would guess at about 40% bone by weight. Recipes usually come out to 10% bone by weight, but cats do all right in the range of 5-15% with that target being in the middle. You have a little wiggle room.

Or it does keep things simple if you just want to offer 10% of the weight of food in any type of treats. So for every 6 pounds of food, you could offer a little over 1/2 pound of any combination of meat chunks and bones that make the cats happy.

 

[lalagimp]

Just stopping in to say I haven't given the boys chicken wings, but I did take a chicken neck out of my bird and cut it in half and split it between the two boys. They loved it. Stewart thought he'd killed it himself.

 

[david23]

Gave the boys some chopped gizzards for lunch - mixed with the ground stuff. Gave them the shock of their lives, realizing that they actually had to use their jaws instead of vacuuming down their food. They ate about half of the gizzards. We'll see what happens at supper time.