Advice On Feeding Whole Raw

mingking

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Hello! I haven't been on this site in ages! I loved TheCatSite and was online all the time.

Anyway... I recently was successful in transitioning my cat to frozen raw. Right now, he eats the frozen pork nuggets from Primal plus the freeze dried versions when I'm not able to watch him eat as I head off to work.

I have two questions:
1. Does anyone leave their cat's raw food out longer than 20-30 minutes? I did a quick google search way way back and read somewhere that someone leaves food out for about 2 hours. I'm just purely curious if anyone else does it.

2. Any tips on getting kitty to eat some BONES? I gave him a chicken tip but he would just lick it. And then I cut it up in pieces and he still looked at me like what on earth was I feeding him? Finally I gave in and just cut some of the meat off of the wing itself and he ate it up.

Thanks in advance!
 
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mingking

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Wow! From the very mouth that feeds us (regarding the Primal site)!

I might be more relaxed then with how long I leave out his food. I feel bad that his food is butt-cold when I serve it so it would be nice for it to be at room temperature.
 

LTS3

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You can warm up the nuggets before serving. Place into a baggie and put the baggie into a cup or bowl of warm water. Let sit for a couple of minutes to take some of the chill off.

My cats eat NV raw straight from the fridge. The cold doesn't bother them. They also gobble up their raw within a few minutes. I think someone here on TCS uses the Frosty Bowl to keep raw food out for a few hours:think:
 

1 bruce 1

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If she's interested in the whole foods, and is licking them/checking things out, I would keep offering it because she obviously knows it's food, but doesn't exactly know what to do with it.
Will she eat boneless cuts, if you set down a boneless skinless chicken thigh for her, what do you think she would do? If you set down thin strips of meat of any kind that she had to chew once or twice to get down, do you think she'd get into this?
 
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mingking

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If she's interested in the whole foods, and is licking them/checking things out, I would keep offering it because she obviously knows it's food, but doesn't exactly know what to do with it.
Will she eat boneless cuts, if you set down a boneless skinless chicken thigh for her, what do you think she would do? If you set down thin strips of meat of any kind that she had to chew once or twice to get down, do you think she'd get into this?
Yes, he'll eat the meat if I offer. It does take a bit for him to figure it out but he'll eat it eventually. I guess I'll keep offering him the wings cut up and in different varieties of meat and bone :)
 

sabrinah

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I leave raw food out until she eats it or until the next meal time. Sometimes she eats it all in 5 minutes, sometimes she needs a nap and doesn't finish for 4 hours. Unless she gets sick or starts refusing food I'm not going to worry about it.
 

goingpostal

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Raw wouldn't last out 2 hours around my cats, but they do regularly hop in my ferrets room and swipe items that have been out for hours or sometimes days (ferrets stash food). Also to get them eating bone in, try what 1 bruce suggested. Work up their jaw strength and get them used to chewing with strips and larger pieces of bone less, then add bone in. I generally feed softer bones like ribs from rabbits/game hens unless the cat is a real chewer. Wings and necks are extremely boney, I'm more along the lines of feeding smaller bones covered in meat as they don't need a lot of bone content.
 

Gizmobius

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As for trying to get your kitty to eat bones, maybe try with something smaller first. A chicken heart or a gizzard to try to entice him to start getting into the habit of really chewing something that he isn't used to. If he responds well to that maybe he'll finally get that a chicken wing is something yummy that he could chew on. Hopefully that works! My boy has been trying to convince me that he's starving and ravenous his entire life even though he is a very well fed boy so he had no problems mowing through a chicken wing when I first introduced it to him. :lol:
 

1 bruce 1

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What we've sometimes done in the past for puppies and kittens is taking something like a neck, or a wing, and using a meat mallet (or a hammer) and mashing the piece up so it's intact, but the bones inside are pretty much crushed. This makes it easier for them to work at it without having to actually chew THROUGH bone.
Either use a cutting board you don't mind getting messy or keep the pieces in a plastic baggie. :biggrin:
 

MargoLane

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I definitely leave raw food out longer than 20 minutes. It comes straight from the fridge on to the plate, so it's pretty chilly when Busy Cat eats the first half. Sometimes it takes her over an hour to eat the second half, sometimes she eats the whole thing in one sitting. I think it really depends on what kind of meat it is. With something like beef, that is calorically dense, she gets a much smaller portion and wants to eat it all in one sitting.

As for raw bones, I mix between chicken necks and wild freshwater smelts. She often doesn't finish an entire bone but since I'm doing it for jaw and tooth health (and since they're cheap) I don't worry too much.
 
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