Calories in a mouse? RodentPro's Nutrition Analysis

[nwc]

I was reading that as 5.25 kcal/gram of mouse, not all those complicated figures. Maybe contacting Rodent Pro to see how they meant it would be best.

I have, and they say to just feed according to 2-4% body weight. Moreover, my cats still seem to be very hungry after eating a 30gram prey animal, which seems inconsistent with the 180kCal you get from just 5-6kCal/gram of prey.

 

[Jabzilla]

Resurrecting this thread in the hope of getting some help. Am I misunderstanding the nutritional chart on Rodent Pro? It says a whole quail is 6.79 calories per gram. Which would supposedly make a tiny 15 gram baby quail 101.85 calories. I dont understand how that's possible when 100 grams of this ground whole prey quail is supposedly 112 calories. Back 2 Basics Whole Prey Quail (Ground) (truecarnivores.com) Then to add more confusion, 100g of raw dressed quail (meat and skin) is 192 calories. FoodData Central (usda.gov) I must be missing something, as this math isn't mathing, rofl.

For simplicity, here's the Rodent Pro chat. Nutrient Composition of Whole Vertebrate Prey (rodentpro.com) I'm hoping to add some mice (starting w/ pinkies) and some small whole prey quail to my cats diets. But I'm not understanding the calorie information. One of my cats weighs 6.77kg and eats 237 calories a day. Depending on which combo is meats I'm using, that ends up being about 150-185g of food per day. I dont understand how a 15g baby quail could possibly be almost half of his daily caloric needs. Is there a key piece of math that I'm missing?

 

[sophie1]

Super interesting information. I think those numbers tell us just how uncertain these nutrient composition numbers really are. I'm also sure that they are highly variable depending on genetic variations that occur with different strains and subpopulations. Consider the variety of body shapes & compositions in humans, for example!

The best way to figure out the right meal size for your cat is to keep an eye on their weight. And as always, feeding a variety of meats is key. We know from Dr. Lisa Pierson's decades of experience that you can get away with 3 proteins, where two are limited to one particular cut of meat (thighs) and one is whole ground animal (rabbit). I try to do better than that, but not for any reason I can point to.

 

[Jabzilla]

My cats already get varying combinations of turkey, kangaroo, quail, rabbit, elk, pheasant, venison, and pork so they're covered variety of proteins wise. I just wanted to try adding some whole prey into the mix, provided that they'll actually eat it. If they do, then I wanted to know the nutritional info for various prey, in this case quail, so I can adjust their batch of food for the week accordingly. As how much food I make for a week and how much they get each day is based on the number of calories for their weight, 230 and 210 a day. If a tiny quail is indeed 101 calories, then I would have to adjust their batches of food accordingly, otherwise they'd suddenly be getting almost half a days worth of extra calories. Since whole prey are expensive, I'd only give it to them for one meal a week. Of course, all of that is in the hope that they'll even eat it.

I spoke to someone at Rodent Pro and he made a point that made some sense. He said the dressed quail would be far more than the listed 192 calories on the USDA site if they were the whole bird. As the innards, head, feet, etc had been removed which would lower the bird's calorie content. So that part makes sense now. But man, they must be feeding baby quails the equivalent of bird candy for them to be so calorie dense at such a tiny size.

 

[Jabzilla]

I found this last night on my phone before going to bed. It looks pretty helpful in that more vitamins and minerals are listed as mg/kg rather than percentages. NUTRIENT CONTENT OF FIVE SPECIES OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS COMMONLY FED TO CAPTIVE RAPTORS (unm.edu) Rofl, I found it after ending up reading reptile forums where people were talking about the nutrition of mice vs rats for their snakes.