Bottomless Pit

[ldg]

They have a great variety! It was just a "heads up" kind of thing.

There's a local buying co-op here too - I just don't like any of the food available through it.

 

[mschauer]

The PMR recommendations for variety are based on common sense backed up by science.

How many potential prey species account for the bulk of the diet of mammalian predators? Implications for stable isotope paleodietary analyses, J. A. Pérez-Claros and P. Palmqvist, Journal of Zoology, February 2008

Big Predatory Mammals Such As Felines Need Between 5 And 7 Different Types Of Prey To Meet Their Dietary Needs, Science Daily, July 2008 (Study Review)

Quote: “However, five to seven prey species account for the bulk of the diet of most stalking felids and also for those omnivorous canids that are not pack hunters.” ‘The novelty of the study lies in the confirmation that the large felines, such as lions and leopards, need “from 5 to 7 preys to fulfill their nutritional requirements,” the researcher points out.’

Even cats instinctively know they need more than a single prey source.

First, to be clear, those 2 links both refer to one source, the study in the first link. And the first link is to just an abstract of the study.

Secondly, no where in the study do the words "[color= rgb(70, 70, 70)]large felines, such as lions and leopards, need “from 5 to 7 preys to fulfill their nutritional requirements,”[/color]   or anything like them appear. The full study text is copyrighted so I can't post it. I've purchased it and read the entire thing. There is no discussion what so ever of the nutritional needs of the animals. The study is entirely about estimating the[color= rgb(24, 24, 24)]  typical number of prey species consumed by hypercarnivores (> 70% of diet from animals) and their relative proportions in the diet.[/color]

[color= rgb(24, 24, 24)]As for what the study actually does say about the variety of prey seen in felid diets:[/color]

Felids, on the other hand, have a reduced dentition of only 30 permanent teeth, showing upper and lower carnassials with no crushing surfaces, extremely specialized for slicing flesh. For this reason, felids cannot supplement their diet with sources other than vertebrate flesh and must include more small prey species as secondary food items. As a result, in those cases in which several canid and felid species live in sympatry, the former tend to have a more opportunistic feeding behavior, consuming invertebrates and fruits, while the latter concentrate more on mammals, prey they are phylogenetically adapted to capture

Given that among modern cats the diversity of prey species consumed seems to relate to the number of available prey, ...

In short, the reason given by the study for variety in the felid diet is because as obligate carnivores they need more prey which will have the consequence of them consuming more varieties of prey when variety is available. Again, the question of nutritional needs is never mentioned.

There was also an exception of to the large variety in felids:

.. with the exception of the lynxes, which basically prey on rabbits, hares and small sized ungulates ..

It is also worth noting that the felids in the study are large felids (cheetah, cougar, lion, tiger, etc) not house cats.

 

[harleydiva]

This topic of how many types of protein to feed is a confusing one.  I am still in the learning stage, so have been trying to rotate several proteins.  I'm ordering quail (new), rabbit, a chicken and beef mix, and turkey this month.  My guys seem to be not excited about chicken the last couple of weeks, so I'm leaving it out as a separate protein this month.  I have also tried duck and goose, but they weren't a big hit.  Rabbit is the favorite here....so I feed it most often.  When I start getting all tweaked about how many proteins I am getting in them.....I remember that Dr Pierson feeds only chicken, turkey, and rabbit.

 

[mschauer]

When I have seen the need for variety mentioned by a source I consider credible the reason given was to account for the unknown nutrient compositions of what is fed in the typical homemade raw diet. In others  words, to make up for the fact that we don't fed a cat's true natural diet of whole prey which was raised on their natural diet. By feeding from a variety of animal sources we can "fill in" nutrients that may be lacking in one animal source by feeding an animal that has more of that nutrient. Of course without information on exactly what is missing and which animal can supply what is missing we can't know that the variety we choose is doing the "filling in". This is what I was referring to with my comment about randomly selecting ingredients in the hope of providing complete nutrition.

Edit - Recipes such as those provided by Dr P are the result of analyzing a diet to obtain its nutrient profile and resolving identified deficiencies with added supplements.

Another reason for variety is to try to account for possible deficiencies that we don't know about due to the current limits of our understanding of nutrition.

 

[mschauer]

My guys seem to be not excited about chicken the last couple of weeks, so I'm leaving it out as a separate protein this month.  I have also tried duck and goose, but they weren't a big hit.  Rabbit is the favorite here....so I feed it most often.

Combining proteins can sometimes help if a particular protein isn't well accepted. My guys aren't wild about chicken either. They *love* a 50/50 mix of chicken and rabbit though. 

 

[harleydiva]

Combining proteins can sometimes help if a particular protein isn't well accepted. My guys aren't wild about chicken either. They *love* a 50/50 mix of chicken and rabbit though. 

They do like beef, so I ordered a kitten mix this month that has beef, chicken, egg, heart, and liver.

I will have to add organs to the quail, beef, and turkey....can't find a local source for secreting organs around here, so it will have to be liver this month until I can get a delivery from MPC (4/26).  I'll stock up on liver, kidney, and pancreas so I will have them.  What is the reason for 1/2 liver, 1/2 secreting organs.....what is different about the secreting organs?  I know the liver offers Vit A and D(?), but what is in the others?

Do kittens go through phases where they want more food?  I have upped the amount of food I was feeding after getting that advice here.....but they were not eating much of the lunchtime meal.  All of a sudden in the last 2-3 days, they are scarfing down everything I put out.  Do they have growth spurts?  

 

[mschauer]

The whole 80-10-5-5 thing is the approximate meat/skin-bone-liver-other organ composition of a mouse although I have seen differing percentages. A PMR feeder might be able to better answer but I think the main reason for essentially saying 5% liver and 5% "whatever else you can find" is that liver is pretty readily available and is very nutritious. Secreting organs dump various substances (bile, digestive enzymes) into the body (other organs?) and so contain things non-secreting organs don't. The thyroid is the main repository for iodine for instance.

Most of my experience with kittens is with fosters and I don't recall any of then ever leaving food. As long as they don't go off their food for long periods of time I wouldn't worry about it. Just always give them as much as they want. If they leave some behind it just means they are getting plenty!

 

[ldg]

Yes, kittens have growth spurts.

 

[ldg]

The whole 80-10-5-5 thing is the approximate meat/skin-bone-liver-other organ composition of a mouse although I have seen differing percentages. A PMR feeder might be able to better answer but I think the main reason for essentially saying 5% liver and 5% "whatever else you can find" is that liver is pretty readily available and is very nutritious. Secreting organs dump various substances (bile, digestive enzymes) into the body (other organs?) and so contain things non-secreting organs don't. The thyroid is the main repository for iodine for instance.

Most of my experience with kittens is with fosters and I don't recall any of then ever leaving food. As long as they don't go off their food for long periods of time I wouldn't worry about it. Just always give them as much as they want. If they leave some behind it just means they are getting plenty!

This is the only table I'm aware of that has tissue percentages: http://catcentric.org/wp-content/up...ge-of-some-Common-Prey-of-the-Cat-06-2002.pdf

I have some studies somewhere, but they only had bone percentages of various small animals.

 

[ldg]

When I have seen the need for variety mentioned by a source I consider credible the reason given was to account for the unknown nutrient compositions of what is fed in the typical homemade raw diet. In others words, to make up for the fact that we don't fed a cat's true natural diet of whole prey which was raised on their natural diet. By feeding from a variety of animal sources we can "fill in" nutrients that may be lacking in one animal source by feeding an animal that has more of that nutrient. Of course without information on exactly what is missing and which animal can supply what is missing we can't know that the variety we choose is doing the "filling in". This is what I was referring to with my comment about randomly selecting ingredients in the hope of providing complete nutrition.



Edit - Recipes such as those provided by Dr P are the result of analyzing a diet to obtain its nutrient profile and resolving identified deficiencies with added supplements.


Another reason for variety is to try to account for possible deficiencies that we don't know about due to the current limits of our understanding of nutrition.

Resolving identified deficiencies as defined by the AAFCO (or NRC). I think this is important to note, because many prey model raw feeders don't put any stock in the AAFCO guidelines to begin with - and one of the reasons is we simply don't know all aspects of what's in - well - anything we eat and how all those nutrients we know about - and all the components we don't know about - work together.

Can people thrive on just lard or processed carbs (for caloric energy) and vitamin supplements alone? :dk:

For the ground diets, though, it's more than just that. Some of the supplements are there to account for nutrient loss from the oxidation due to the grinding, and like the vitamin E, to help prevent further oxidation during freezer storage.
.

In short, the reason given by the study for variety in the felid diet is because as obligate carnivores they need more prey which will have the consequence of them consuming more varieties of prey when variety is available. Again, the question of nutritional needs is never mentioned.

Also interesting. I forgot about the Plantinga study in this context.

For those not familiar, Plantinga et al. (2011, British Journal of Nutrition "Estimation of the dietary nutrient profile of free-roaming feral cats: possible implications for nutrition of domestic cats") analyzed the diets of feral cats by taking 50 feral cat diet studies, culling them down to the 27 that included information from diets of cats that had 5% less of their diet via access to human-provided food/waste and.... well, there were a lot of qualifications for the studies to be included, I don't remember them all. But the point is, it provides a pretty accurate analysis of a feral cat diet. It doesn't include a summary of all nutrients. Here's the study, for anyone interested: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8404219 The full report is free now, it's just you can only link to the abstract.

I do remember, however, that in some instances, the feral cats had limited access to a variety of prey animals. On Marion Island, nesting seabirds were 96.6% of the biomass consumed by the cats. And in another study, rats represented 95.8% of the total consumed biomass.

Table 2 in the Plantinga study is really interesting in this regard - it lists the biomass by % of what was consumed in each study included.

 

[mschauer]

Resolving identified deficiencies as defined by the AAFCO (or NRC). I think this is important to note, because many prey model raw feeders don't put any stock in the AAFCO guidelines to begin with - and one of the reasons is we simply don't know all aspects of what's in - well - anything we eat and how all those nutrients we know about - and all the components we don't know about - work together.
 

Also important to note that many prey model raw feeders are dismissive of the AAFCO/NRC guidelines despite that some, unfortunately not all, of the requirements are the result of definitively established needs of cats. 

It should also be noted that we don't actually know by what means Dr. P established the ingredients of her recipe.

 

[ldg]

:lol3: Both good points.

 

[harleydiva]

...And when I don't have some wood handy, I knock my head.

Just FYI, MPC sells all kinds of interesting things - tripe, beef kidney, ground beef pancreas (my cats LOVE this - it's fatty, which is part of why I think they like it so much) - they sell chunks of spleen... if you want to rotate sources of liver, they have pork liver, lamb liver... wow - they even have lamb spleen and hearts! Wow - when we get paid on our next consulting contract, I may order a bunch of organs from them.

LDG....do you feed the pancreas by itself, or mixed into a ground mix?  I assume that I can mix 0.9oz liver and 0.9oz other organ per pound...right?  (Based on the 1.8oz per pound organs you gave me before)  I saw they also have spleen...but I think that is non-secreting.....is that correct?  The coop offers pizzles.....but that is meat, correct?  I'm kind of grossed out about it anyway.....  I did order bully sticks for the dogs tho....lol.

 

[ldg]

Secreting organs: liver, kidney, pancreas, spleen, brain, thymus, thyroid, testes...

Non-secreting: heart, lung, gizzard, tripe

I have no clue what pizzles are. The same as bully sticks? :dk: I know testes are often sold as "rocky mountain oysters." :lol3:


I haven't purchased spleen by itself before, which is what's cool about MPC. I purchase ground green tripe with spleen from Hare Today, but as I have no idea how much spleen is in there, I don't count it as part of the organ I feed the cats.

The pancreas I buy ground from HT when it's available. I feed mostly a PMR diet (they get four ground meals a week). When I use pancreas instead of kidney, I just plop it in the dish along with the meat and liver.

 

[harleydiva]

I have no clue what pizzles are. The same as bully sticks?

I know testes are often sold as "rocky mountain oysters."

 

Here ya go.......I just can't bring myself to do it...lol

http://store.rawpaws.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=RPBPiz

 

[Willowy]

Ewww. . .:lol3:. Well, I hear some people like to dry their own bully sticks. . .I assume that would be muscle meat.

 

[peaches08]

I've had beef testicles, popular food during cow culling. Seriously, they aren't bad.

 

[mschauer]

The whole 80-10-5-5 thing is the approximate meat/skin-bone-liver-other organ composition of a mouse although I have seen differing percentages. A PMR feeder might be able to better answer but I think the main reason for essentially saying 5% liver and 5% "whatever else you can find" is that liver is pretty readily available and is very nutritious. Secreting organs dump various substances (bile, digestive enzymes) into the body (other organs?) and so contain things non-secreting organs don't. The thyroid is the main repository for iodine for instance.

This is the only table I'm aware of that has tissue percentages: http://catcentric.org/wp-content/up...ge-of-some-Common-Prey-of-the-Cat-06-2002.pdf
.

That link shows the meat-bone-liver-other percentages of a mouse to actually be more like 80-5-4-11. So where did 80-10-5-5 come from??

 

[ldg]

I don't know, but I would think the "guideline" would be the average of the three, not just the guideline for the mouse. ??? Of course, cats can clearly subsist on mostly rats, birds, or rabbits (per Plantinga 2011).

Oh - I guess I didn't have to pay for the bird body mass vs bone mass study. It lists mammals as well: http://193.146.160.29/gtb/sod/usu/$UBUG/repositorio/10320232_Prange.pdf

It does only address body mass vs bone mass, but has slightly different data.

I remember the topic came up, but I don't remember where.... and I think the consensus was that it came from the B.A.R.F. diet for dogs, originally. And I think this is why AC often says the bone can be less than 10% (in fact, I believe she says most cats are most comfortable at 6% - 8%, but she'd have to confirm that).

 

[mschauer]

I don't know, but I would think the "guideline" would be the average of the three, not just the guideline for the mouse. ??? Of course, cats can clearly subsist on mostly rats, birds, or rabbits (per Plantinga 2011).
 

I thought I'd always heard the percentages were for a mouse but