B Complex

[kitty2cat]

Eww. Apparently B vitamins smell like toxic waste to my four cats. Most recipes I've seen/approximately followed require some kind of B complex supplement.

Try as I might, no one will eat anything mixed with mashed B vitamin or else they will eat it and promptly vomit. I use about a twentieth of a pill (each whole pill contains 3 mg B1 (thiamin), 3mg b2, 20 Niacin, 2 mg b6, 6mcg B12, 10mg Pantothenic Acid) mashed up for the 4 cats a day spread out over 2-3 meals.

Is it a big deal if they won't eat the B vitamins if their diet is as follows?

75% beef or chicken muscle meat. I have started to sear the chicken quickly (~10 seconds) to kill bacteria and then cut into pieces--searing also seems to stop my most sensitive cat from throwing up chicken (Although, now I am wondering if just taking it off the bone and cutting it into small pieces is what keeps him from throwing up). The inside is raw, but the skin is not. I take out the bones now.

25% kidney, heart, and liver (beef or chicken)

Eggshell Powder sufficient to reach ideal phosphorous to calcium ratio--I can't get them to eat uncooked bones. A couple tried it, and decided now that it's no longer worth their time.

A bit of salmon oil.

Vit E

75mg taurine/day/cat to replace what was lost during searing and also just to be on the safe side.

Most recipes call for egg yokes, but no one will touch them or even eat anything dipped in them. So I have given up on that.


Also, if anyone notices something else that I am missing, I would really appreciate any feedback.

Thank you for all your support.

 

[auntie crazy]

That's a rather restricted diet. Can you add more products, like turkey, pork, quail, and/or rabbit?

Also, heart is a muscle meat, not an organ and organs should not be more than 10% of the diet - 5% should be liver and 5% any other secreting organ. (Too much organ meats in a single meal will quite often make cats throw up.)

My cats are all on a frankenprey diet, and I don't feed them any supplements at all.

Are you grinding the food?

How did you start offering bones? Cats have no jaw strength to speak of and have to work up to bones fairly slowly most of the time. Quail bones are good starters.

I don't sear my foods - cats don't have a grill out in the wild and totally don't need one. Since you say it's the difference in the skin being cooked that you think has stopped the throwing up, can you forgo the searing and just remove the skin?

 

[sharky]

Originally Posted by kitty2cat

Eww. Apparently B vitamins smell like toxic waste to my four cats. Most recipes I've seen/approximately followed require some kind of B complex supplement.

Try as I might, no one will eat anything mixed with mashed B vitamin or else they will eat it and promptly vomit. I use about a twentieth of a pill (each whole pill contains 3 mg B1 (thiamin), 3mg b2, 20 Niacin, 2 mg b6, 6mcg B12, 10mg Pantothenic Acid) mashed up for the 4 cats a day spread out over 2-3 meals.

Is it a big deal if they won't eat the B vitamins if their diet is as follows?

75% beef or chicken muscle meat. I have started to sear the chicken quickly (~10 seconds) to kill bacteria and then cut into pieces--searing also seems to stop my most sensitive cat from throwing up chicken (Although, now I am wondering if just taking it off the bone and cutting it into small pieces is what keeps him from throwing up). The inside is raw, but the skin is not. I take out the bones now.

25% kidney, heart, and liver (beef or chicken)

Eggshell Powder sufficient to reach ideal phosphorous to calcium ratio--I can't get them to eat uncooked bones. A couple tried it, and decided now that it's no longer worth their time.

A bit of salmon oil.

Vit E

75mg taurine/day/cat to replace what was lost during searing and also just to be on the safe side.

Most recipes call for egg yokes, but no one will touch them or even eat anything dipped in them. So I have given up on that.


Also, if anyone notices something else that I am missing, I would really appreciate any feedback.

Thank you for all your support.

The formula/recipe you are using appears to be a Cooked / Homemade diet ... Not a raw diet... Auntie and I use to different raw formulas neither of which is close to yours, I use a 70% muscle , 10% bone 10-15% organ and up to 5% veg matter... of that ONLY the veg matter would be cooked in any manner ...

If you are actually wanting a homemade diet you are on the right track... PM me if you want some help on that type of diet

 

[kitty2cat]

Thanks for the advice.

I will reduce the amount of organ meat. I was using figures from a site that suggested 25% organs including heart and secreting organs. My break down is roughly 8% heart, 8% liver, and 8% kidney. That leaves me at about 16% secreting organ, which is higher than your recommendation but right around most places that I have read (usually 80-85% muscle meat and bone including heart and the rest secreting organ or 75% muscle meat and bone excluding heart and 25% organ meat including heart-- I have seen the 90% muscle meat & bone , 10% secreting organ, but just less so). I will try bringing the kidney and liver down to 5% each with raw chicken and see if that solves some of their problems.

I do not grind the food. I sort of mix the supplements and the chunked meat together in a bowl and then divide it between the 4 cats. If I am feeding chicken (with bones that they won't eat), I leave some meat on the bones and take some off and chunk it for the cats that haven't quite figured out how to rip meat off bones yet.

As for bones, I started using chicken wing tips and necks. That didn't really seem to work. I also tried breaking them up a little with a butchers knife, a couple kitties nibbled on those, but were pretty unimpressed with the crunch. Two of the four are clearly excited about bones--they take them and run away with them to a corner like they are some sort of prized possession, but all they do is rip the meat off and bat the bone around. I have read a couple of places that feeding them raw will build up their jaw muscles so that they will eventually be able to handle the raw bones. I just don't think they are quite there yet.

I will look for quail again. If I can't find it, I will try cornish game hens. I don't actually know how big quails are, but cornish game hens seem sufficiently smaller than regular chickens to at least make a bit of a difference.

I will add Turkey and see if I can find rabbit. I am worried about Pork because I have read conflicting opinions about it. Unfortunately, I don't have access to quail and cannot get meat delivered where I live.

I definitely want to do raw feeding, but one cat (and sometimes his brother) have trouble with the raw chicken (they throw it up). I have also read some sites that advise transitioning slowly from cooked to raw. Although, if after switching to less organ meat, the one cat still throws up raw chicken, I will have him tested for an allergy. If it comes down to it, I guess I would rather do raw beef, now raw turkey, and sometimes cooked chicken for variety than just the raw beef and the raw turkey.

To be clear, I do not cook the beef at all, just the chicken muscle meat which is pink and raw on the inside, just not on the outside. I am only doing this to add variety while I try to figure out why one of my cats (and now sometimes two of my cats) throws up whenever the chicken is raw. I will also now try raw chicken without the skin and see if that helps.

In terms of vegetables, they eat wheat grass and swipe unseasoned veggies from us: fresh cucumbers, steamed green beans, steamed carrots, etc. Occasionally. It is definitely less than 5% a day.

I guess I don't understand the difference between a raw prepared diet and a a raw diet. Is it the supplements? (Obviously, in an ideal world, with the cats handling the chicken fine, the chicken would not be cooked at all). I have read a lot of arguments against supplementing, but not by pro-raw vets. I have also read a couple of "theories" that even freezing breaks taurine down. I don't know if this is true--it sounds bogus--, but I would rather overshoot the taurine a bit than under do it.

I take the point about more variety and see how more variety could avert nutritional deficiencies. I am still freaked out about veering too far from a vet written "raw recipe" because I don't want to deprive my cats of any important vitamins and I haven't read published recipes/diets that don't require supplements unless they are whole prey models.

Do you, Auntie, also not supplement?

 

[furryfriends50]

Here is a good site to read: http://rawfedcats.org/ Very simple guide for raw feeding.

I feed frankenprey raw and use the 80/10/5/5 model. I'm not very picky with the percentages but try to get as close as I can.

Mine get sardines (canned in water w/ no salt added) once a week - one sardine per cat. A lot of mine also LOVE to eat fish oil capsules plain which they will each get one in the middle of the week.

A lot of my cats also like to eat plain taurine tablets and lysine tablets. I have no idea what they see in them...I just have some very strange cats.

Unlike a lot of people I will feed plain yogurt every other week. Each cat gets about 1.5 ounces. I have found that it helps a lot with mine who suffer from feline herpes.

 

[auntie crazy]

Originally Posted by kitty2cat

Thanks for the advice.

I will reduce the amount of organ meat. I was using figures from a site that suggested 25% organs including heart and secreting organs. My break down is roughly 8% heart, 8% liver, and 8% kidney. That leaves me at about 16% secreting organ, which is higher than your recommendation but right around most places that I have read (usually 80-85% muscle meat and bone including heart and the rest secreting organ or 75% muscle meat and bone excluding heart and 25% organ meat including heart-- I have seen the 90% muscle meat & bone , 10% secreting organ, but just less so). I will try bringing the kidney and liver down to 5% each with raw chicken and see if that solves some of their problems.

Check out this thread for more detailed info about menus and percentage break-downs: Natural Diet Information Resources.

I'd be curious to know where you're getting your numbers, as I've rarely seen anything other than the 80/10/5/5 rule - and even then, it didn't go as high as you're quoting on the organs. I've never seen a recommendation that didn't include bone. In fact, if you have, run - not walk - from that site, as a meat/organ only diet is very unhealthy for your cat.

Originally Posted by kitty2cat

I do not grind the food. I sort of mix the supplements and the chunked meat together in a bowl and then divide it between the 4 cats. If I am feeding chicken (with bones that they won't eat), I leave some meat on the bones and take some off and chunk it for the cats that haven't quite figured out how to rip meat off bones yet.

As for bones, I started using chicken wing tips and necks. That didn't really seem to work. I also tried breaking them up a little with a butchers knife, a couple kitties nibbled on those, but were pretty unimpressed with the crunch. Two of the four are clearly excited about bones--they take them and run away with them to a corner like they are some sort of prized possession, but all they do is rip the meat off and bat the bone around. I have read a couple of places that feeding them raw will build up their jaw muscles so that they will eventually be able to handle the raw bones. I just don't think they are quite there yet.

I will look for quail again. If I can't find it, I will try cornish game hens. I don't actually know how big quails are, but cornish game hens seem sufficiently smaller than regular chickens to at least make a bit of a difference.

Quail can sometimes be found in Asian markets, but Cornish game hens will work too. Offer the wingtips and ribs first, as they are the smallest and easiest to chew. Cats can get discouraged quickly so you want to make it as easy as possible for them. You might have to offer it several times and you may also need to "incentivize" it with tuna juice, parmesan cheese, a smear of canned food - whatever your cats REALLY like - to get them to eat the bones.

Once they're eating the little quail/Cornish hen bones, you probably want to leave them on those for a while to both build up their jaw strength and technique as well as bolster their confidence. You want them to have as many successes as you can before moving up to something more difficult - if a cat doesn't think she can bite through something, she's quite likely not even going to try (in fact, I'd stop offering anything that has bone in it EXCEPT the bones you think they can break).

Originally Posted by kitty2cat

I will add Turkey and see if I can find rabbit. I am worried about Pork because I have read conflicting opinions about it. Unfortunately, I don't have access to quail and cannot get meat delivered where I live.

Not sure where you live, but if it's in the US, Canada or Australia, there's nothing to worry about. The US and Canada have just about totally wiped out trichinosis, and Australia's never even had it. I have a reference site that goes into this in more detail, but I can't remember which one it is right now; if you want more detail, let me know and I'll dig it up.

Long story short - pork, in those countries and more (I just don't remember which ones specifically) is safe to feed to cats.

Originally Posted by kitty2cat

I definitely want to do raw feeding, but one cat (and sometimes his brother) have trouble with the raw chicken (they throw it up). I have also read some sites that advise transitioning slowly from cooked to raw. Although, if after switching to less organ meat, the one cat still throws up raw chicken, I will have him tested for an allergy. If it comes down to it, I guess I would rather do raw beef, now raw turkey, and sometimes cooked chicken for variety than just the raw beef and the raw turkey.

To be clear, I do not cook the beef at all, just the chicken muscle meat which is pink and raw on the inside, just not on the outside. I am only doing this to add variety while I try to figure out why one of my cats (and now sometimes two of my cats) throws up whenever the chicken is raw. I will also now try raw chicken without the skin and see if that helps.

There are many, many reasons cats throw up: eating too much, eating too fast, swallowing chunks too large for the tummy to handle, the food is too cold or too "rich" (too much organ), the cat's tummy has gone acidic 'cause she hasn't eaten in too long a time, the cat's been eating a diet designed for an omnivorous animal and her digestive system is all messed up with enzymes out of wack and a bowel that is no longer capable of handling it's natural diet (since it's been "processing" cookies and mush all it's life), etc., etc.

If I were you, I'd stop cooking the chicken, reduce the amount of organ (and maybe chop it up so it mixes in good with the rest of the meat), stop feeding chicken skin, reduce the size of the chicken chunks and, if I could, reduce the size of the meals but increase the number of meals (how often ARE you feeding?) and see how that goes.

Originally Posted by kitty2cat

In terms of vegetables, they eat wheat grass and swipe unseasoned veggies from us: fresh cucumbers, steamed green beans, steamed carrots, etc. Occasionally. It is definitely less than 5% a day.

I guess I don't understand the difference between a raw prepared diet and a a raw diet. Is it the supplements? (Obviously, in an ideal world, with the cats handling the chicken fine, the chicken would not be cooked at all). I have read a lot of arguments against supplementing, but not by pro-raw vets. I have also read a couple of "theories" that even freezing breaks taurine down. I don't know if this is true--it sounds bogus--, but I would rather overshoot the taurine a bit than under do it.

Actually, I don't know the difference between a "raw prepared diet" and a "raw diet" either, UNLESS by "prepared", you mean cooked, in which case, it's not a raw diet any more.

If the veggie content is less than 5% a day, I guess it's not worth worrying about, but cats have no need and can't properly digest anything that isn't animal-based, so I wouldn't even give them that much.

Originally Posted by kitty2cat

I take the point about more variety and see how more variety could avert nutritional deficiencies. I am still freaked out about veering too far from a vet written "raw recipe" because I don't want to deprive my cats of any important vitamins and I haven't read published recipes/diets that don't require supplements unless they are whole prey models.

Do you, Auntie, also not supplement?

If you're feeding your cats a completely raw diet using the 80/10/5/5 rule and a variety of meats - some of it heart - there is really no need to supplement. You can throw some taurine in there if it makes you happy, since the stuff is water soluble and you can't overdose your kitty, but I truly wouldn't worry about any of the rest of it. In fact, I don't.

This is what I feed my six cats:

Breakfast
Monday, Wednesday & Friday: 13oz chicken hearts or beef heart chunks.

Tuesday & Saturday: 13oz of beef round or stew meat chunks.

Thursday & Sunday: 13oz of pork loin chunks.

Lunch
Monday & Saturday: Two or three pieces of chicken wing each, depending on their size. I use only the wing tips and the middle pieces and I cut the middle pieces in half between the two bones (not across them).

Tuesday & Friday: 6oz of chicken or beef liver and 6oz of chicken gizzards.

Wednesday: Three chicken breasts-with-rib halves divided between them (I remove about 3/4s of the meat first).

Sunday & Thursday: 6oz of beef or pork kidney and 6oz of chicken breast.

Dinner
Monday: 13oz of chicken breast chunks.

Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday: All the meat from a skinned chicken quarter is divided among them.

Wednesday, Friday & Sunday: All the meat from a turkey drumstick is divided among them.

Once a week, I dump two or three dozen crickets in the tub and let the cats pick them off as they wish and every weekend, they each get about 3/4 of a wild-caught, packed-in-water sardine. Every now and again I'll drizzle eggs over their food and once in a blue moon I'll bring home something unusual - bison meat, for instance - to add a bit of variety.

Hope you find some of this helpful, Kitty2cat! You're really researching your cats' needs and asking thoughtful questions - kudos to you!!!

 

[kitty2cat]

Thanks Auntie. I will follow your advice. Your feeding routine seems a lot more manageable than what we've been doing here.

I am really interested in your menu. I didn't realize the break down between bone, meat, and organs could be spread out over the week. I was trying to recreate the breakdown (substituting the bone with the eggshell powder) every meal every day of the week using a kitchen scale to weigh out the portions.--They eat 3 times a day and sometimes they get a midnight snack if they are meowing in the kitchen.

The sites with the breakdowns that excluded the bone always required that the bone be replaced with bone meal or eggshell powder to balance calcium and phosphorous every meal.

As far as pork goes, I was always told that cats can't digest pork and don't end up getting very much nutrition out of it. On the list of digestible meats, it is supposed to be last or near the end.

(oh no. As I am writing this, someone is throwing up!)

Better go see who it is. Thanks so much for your help.

 

[sharky]

Originally Posted by kitty2cat

Thanks Auntie. I will follow your advice. Your feeding routine seems a lot more manageable than what we've been doing here.

I am really interested in your menu. I didn't realize the break down between bone, meat, and organs could be spread out over the week. I was trying to recreate the breakdown (substituting the bone with the eggshell powder) every meal every day of the week using a kitchen scale to weigh out the portions.--They eat 3 times a day and sometimes they get a midnight snack if they are meowing in the kitchen.

The sites with the breakdowns that excluded the bone always required that the bone be replaced with bone meal or eggshell powder to balance calcium and phosphorous every meal.

As far as pork goes, I was always told that cats can't digest pork and don't end up getting very much nutrition out of it. On the list of digestible meats, it is supposed to be last or near the end.

(oh no. As I am writing this, someone is throwing up!)

Better go see who it is. Thanks so much for your help.

Cats do NOT digest Pork FAT ... Your correct about it not being very digestible over all... I just avoid it which is easy as I myself am allergic to it

No you do not need to balance EVERY meal ... my vet who actually has a nutrition degree drummed that into me... You want a balance over 4-8 weeks

Bone meal is very low nutritionally to dangerous.... it is the processing...

egg shell powder is poorly absorbed...

mine love chicken thighs ( they are no neck eaters and as mine are able to swallow tips of wings they also do not get them)_

 

[auntie crazy]

Originally Posted by sharky

...
No you do not need to balance EVERY meal ... my vet who actually has a nutrition degree drummed that into me... You want a balance over 4-8 weeks...

Four to eight weeks? Did you mean four to eight days?

- - - -

kitty2cat - My cats' diet balances out their needs over a seven-day period. And real bone is far more nutritious than any substitute, so it's pretty desirable to get them on it, even if that means breaking the bones down into itty bitty pieces with kitchen shears (if you don't have a set, I highly recommend the purchase - it makes working with bone-in meals a snap).

And, yeah, I'm all about making this as easy, logical and non-stressful as possible, for myself and anyone else interested in feeding their cats a natural diet. :-)

Regards!

 

[sharky]

Originally Posted by Auntie Crazy

Four to eight weeks? Did you mean four to eight days?

- - - -

kitty2cat - My cats' diet balances out their needs over a seven-day period. And real bone is far more nutritious than any substitute, so it's pretty desirable to get them on it, even if that means breaking the bones down into itty bitty pieces with kitchen shears (if you don't have a set, I highly recommend the purchase - it makes working with bone-in meals a snap).

And, yeah, I'm all about making this as easy, logical and non-stressful as possible, for myself and anyone else interested in feeding their cats a natural diet. :-)

Regards!

No I meant four to eight WEEKS... she showed me a number of journal articles relating raw and having all of it balance over 4-6 weeks in two and 6-8 weeks in another couple.. I was attempting daily, imagine telling the cat she needed to eat 1/2 more bone that day

... the weeks is mainly for micro nutrients vs the macro that should be balanced weekly to bi weekly for obvious reasons