Alternate calcium sources

[karma2222]

I need some help with figuring out what I can use as a calcium sources for my very sensitive kitty in homecooked food. 

Background: Boomer has IBD and is sensitive to ALL but one brand of canned food (nature's variety instinct - pork and rabbit).  I had two flavours I switched between but hey just discontinued one of the flavour and there are rumours they are discontinuing the other as well .... which leaves me with no food I can feed my kitty.    This website helped to determine a lot of his issues are from the thickeners and yes he seems to react to guar gum, agar, carregnan etc.  Cant handle kibble at all - even one piece will throw his digestion way off.  I have been trying to get him on raw for the past 5 years with no luck at all - he chewed on some raw duck meat once but nothing since so I have to cook everything. 

Which leads to my major issue - balancing calcium/phosphorus levels when I cant use the bones since they will be cooked.  He throws up when eating beef so that knocks bone meal out as a supplement.  He also throws up chicken eggs so cant use eggshell, and duck eggs are WAY too pricy to use - $30 a dozen. 

I'm thinking oyster shell is a possibility or can I use bone broth to dissolve the bones before feeding?  If I cook the bones until they crumble and have no sharp pieces and they use all the water they were cooked in .... would that maintain all the calcium in a useable form? I will be using rabbit, duck and pork as proteins since he is good with them - probably heavy on duck since pork sometimes doesn't agree with his tummy and rabbit is super expensive.  I tend to buy a whole duck and roast in oven for 3 hours then pull all the meat off the bones and toss the leftover bones.  Obviously this wastes a bunch of the meat and making bone broth with it would also limit the waste. 

Does anyone have any tips or comments about any of the above?  I hope the rumours are false and I can just feed him what he is getting now but also with the pork being discontinued and having to only feed rabbit my daily food costs are insanely high for this one little kitty.  I started looking into home cooking a long time ago but when I realized how difficult it would be because of his allergies I stopped and just add meat and organs as toppers, but I may have no choice and now scrambling a little bit.

(PS - the natures variety instinct LIT Pork I list as discontinued is only discontinued in the dog 13oz cans I use - my cat eats 13oz a day and is still a little underweight so buying in the 5oz is not possible since its more expensive.  The rabbit I hope is only the LIT rabbit or kibble being discontinued - because I can feed pork he likes the regular rabbit cans.  But rabbit is undersupplied right now and many companies are having trouble supplying enough)

 

[LTS3]

Would calcium carbonate be an option? You can buy this at a health food / vitamin type store. I found some info on alternate sources of calcium:

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/263426/...hydroxyapatite-to-balance-meat-or-meat-organs

TC Feline has a pre mix for special needs cats, namely kidney cats. It also uses calcium carbonate. Adding fresh eggs is optional. http://tcfeline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/TCfeline-SPECIAL-FORMULA-brochure_2016.pdf It's for raw meat but there is a recipe on the TC Feline web site somewhere on how to use cooked meat.

I don't think bones completely dissolve if it's cooked for hours. You'll still have small fragments.

 

[dc1346]

Natural sources of calcium include yogurt and cheese.

Have you consulted your vet? 

Oh and sorry, but no - mussel shells cannot be boiled down. 

 

[LTS3]

I don't think yogurt and cheese have enough calcium for a cat's daily requirement. Additionally, cats are lactose intolerant so yogurt and cheese made with cow's milk aren't good to give.

 

[karma2222]

Yes I have found eggshell powder and heard of MCHA.  The problem is my cat throws up anything with eggs in it - no go for eggshell.  I thought of using duck eggs for the eggshell but they are hard to find and about $30 a dozen - too pricy for me.

MCHA is bone meal - it is derived from beef bones.  Boomer is sensitive to red meat and has never been able to stomach any food with beef, vension, lamb etc in it.  I tried a supplement a year ago that had colostrum in it and he got extremely sick - we are talking 3 days of throwing everything up and liquid diarrhea from a 1/4 dose of the supplement ....  It is highly unlikely a bone meal supplement would NOT have atleast some level of beef protein in it - hence why I'm uncomfortable using it.

I do not know of any (good) calciium supplements that aren't bone meal of some sort.  Calcium carbonate is not but it is so poorly absorbed by the digestive tract it is almost useless to use.  Yes even for people .... hence my problem :/

My bone broth is just about soft enough to blend .... we shall see how it comes out.  Hopefully blended up small enough kitty will eat it and be able to absorb the nutrients.

 

[laura mae]

Primal makes dehydrated raw food that is safety treated to reduce the risk of pathogens. While it is "raw" it behaves like cooked to me. The meat sources are what is on the package, so for example the pork is pork. and the turkey is turkey. It does include ground up bone from the named critter on the bag. www.primalpetfoods.com to see the ingredients for yourself.  You mix it with warm water to a consistency of canned food. They come in bars that you break up in a dish and then pour over water and mix with a spoon.  They have pork and a turkey choice

Another one is Stella and Chewy's is also freeze dried raw. It comes in little balls and you mix up a portion for your kitty and also re-hydrate with warm water.  The duck duck goose is chicken free and the tummy ticklin turkey is chicken free.  These are more pure protein than Primal, but I mix the two for variety.

Stella's also has a frozen raw that is 100% rabbit. That you have to thaw and the cats who like the freeze dried don't dig the frozen at all.

 

[mschauer]

I would suggest you try eggshell as your calcium source. I wouldn't assume that because he throws up eggs he will not tolerate eggshell. Eggs and eggshells are very different things. 

Many other calcium sources such as calcium carbonate and oyster shell, which can be purchased in powder form btw, may contain levels of lead higher than you may want. Unless the manufacturer is willing to state that their product is lead-free you may not want to use it. If they just say their product contains '< 1 ppm', that isn't good enough.  There is some controversy about how much of a problem lead in calcium supplements is especially for adult animals.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1695147/pdf/amjph00532-0085.pdf

Calcium carbonate is a fine source of calcium (other than the possible lead problem). I don't know where you got the idea it is poorly absorbed. It may have lower absorption than other sources but not by much:

http://www.wholefoodsmagazine.com/s...primary-bone-minerals-calcium-and-strontium-0

 In healthy individuals with sufficient calcium intake, the rates of ionization and absorption of different calcium salts are similar. For example, mean apparent calcium absorptions (as a percentage of intake) have been calculated based on 3–8 studies (for each of four calcium salts) and 12–14 studies (for carbonate and milk calcium): carbonate, from 26.4 (fasting) to 29 (meal), citrate/malate from 32 (fasting) to 37 (meal), citrate 23.5 (fasting), lactate/gluconate 24.5 (fasting), chloride 30.6 (fasting), milk 32.4, cheese 32.8, mineral waters 32.3 (3). Although these numbers must be interpreted cautiously (as studies have been performed using different test groups and study parameters) it is clear, when averaged over several studies, calcium absorption is limited to about one quarter to one third of ingested dose.

  As you can see none of the sources have great absorption. That quote is referring to studies with humans but the results for cats would likely be similar.