Diluting Bone Content of Commercial Raw

[nycats]

Hi guys! I've just been to the vet, and the vet felt like my Billi's poo felt a bit pebble like. So she would like me to reduce the bone content in his diet.

I currently feed Darwin's Naturals + Hare Today Bone-In ground meats (+ Alnutrin for Bone-in ground and Fish Oil). They both claim to have 80/10/10 ratio. Some members graciously advised me on diluting the bone content in my previous thread, so I read their advice and also tried using the calculator on Hare Today site.

But I'm still a bit confused. I'm thinking I should add boneless meat and organ to make it 83/7/10. Is that what I should do? They still need the organ ratio as is, correct? If so, should I be mixing the additional boneless meat and organ with Alnutrin for Boneless ground? Or do I mix it with the Alnutrin for Bone-In ground??? Please help me. My head will explode!

Thanks in advance,
Fumiko, Aloo, Billi, and Purrsy.

 

[dhammagirl]

Hi
I think you want to keep the organs @10%, and mix the boneless meat with the supplement for meat with bones, not the one for boneless meat, since that one has added calcium, which you don’t want to increase.

Also watch out for some treats or supplements, like for hairball control, that might have calcium carbonate. I was giving a digestive aid/hairball control treat/supplement and it wasn’t until after Zeke got constipated that I saw the calcium carbonate on the ingredient list.

 

[nycats]

dhammagirl Thank you for your response! I had no idea some treats and supplements had calcium carbonate. I will definitely look out or that and read the back of all my treat packs. I give them Wellness Kittles and sometimes Greenies. Hopefully those don't contain any calcium.

I heard back from Darwin's about their bone/organ ratio, and apparently organ is 20%. Ha! I will have a hair-pulling calculation to do, trying to balance this out. Ugh. I am Asian and supposed to be good at math, but I'm already dreading it very much. Sigh. I should like come up with a formula on Excel. Wish me luck!

On a side note, everyone thought Billi had gained weight because he looks noticeably bigger. He still weighs the same!!! Vet said some cats fur become more robust and lush on raw, making them look bigger. Whoa!

 

[mschauer]

Take a look at rawcalc.org.

 

[nycats]

mschauer I did, thank you! It's a little confusing because I'm trying to calculate how much meat and organ to adjust per meal, and the calculator is in lb. (I am from a metric world, so I'm bad at figuring out lb vs oz)

For now, till it's time for me to order another batch from Hare Today, I'm buying store bought chicken breast meat and ground turkey. For organs, I read that the 10 should consist of 5 liver and 5 other organs. Should I try and do that, maybe get chciken liver and heart or gizzards from store to add?

 

[kittyluv387]

Why don't you just go all homemade raw?? The calculations are easier to work with that way. You can follow a recipe and their are good premixes out there. Guaranteed these will contain less bone. Also you can try out Stella and Chewy's boneless medallions. That formula doesn't use bone and only calcium carbonate so it won't be overloaded with calcium. This is why I don't recommend commercial raw that contain bone. Bone is cheap and meat is not so companies will try to maximize profit with more bone in these types of formulas.

 

[mschauer]

mschauer I did, thank you! It's a little confusing because I'm trying to calculate how much meat and organ to adjust per meal, and the calculator is in lb. (I am from a metric world, so I'm bad at figuring out lb vs oz)

For now, till it's time for me to order another batch from Hare Today, I'm buying store bought chicken breast meat and ground turkey. For organs, I read that the 10 should consist of 5 liver and 5 other organs. Should I try and do that, maybe get chciken liver and heart or gizzards from store to add?

With the rawcalc.org calculator the units actually don't matter since you are entering percentages. The units could be pounds, grams, or tons. If I added a drop down menu to select units, the results would be the same regardless of what was selected.

 

[nycats]

Why don't you just go all homemade raw?? The calculations are easier to work with that way. You can follow a recipe and their are good premixes out there. Guaranteed these will contain less bone. Also you can try out Stella and Chewy's boneless medallions. That formula doesn't use bone and only calcium carbonate so it won't be overloaded with calcium. This is why I don't recommend commercial raw that contain bone. Bone is cheap and meat is not so companies will try to maximize profit with more bone in these types of formulas.

I think I will do that and mix the parts from Hare Today, once they are okay with the food. It's very frustrating, but they refuse to eat other brands. They just want Darwin's. So I have to somehow get them to eat other brands. They used to eat Primal but only one protein, Turkey. I haven't tried the Stella & Chewy frozen, but they refuse all of the freeze dry raw. Why are they so picky, why??? Ugh.

 

[nycats]

With the rawcalc.org calculator the units actually don't matter since you are entering percentages. The units could be pounds, grams, or tons. If I added a drop down menu to select units, the results would be the same regardless of what was selected.

Ah okay. I will try to figure out! It's all so very overwhelming! Thank you for your help.

 

[nycats]

UPDATE:
So, I've been trying hard to dilute the bone content, mixing ground boneless meat into premixed food. And I mentioned this to someone that really advocates raw feeding. She says the vet just doesn't know what the poop should be like on raw died, and my cats are just fine!!! Ugh!!! I did all this work for no reason!

BUT...I think I did learn more about raw feeding from this experience. Now I know more about how their poops should look like, and I learned I can mix things with the premixed food to maybe add more variety to their diet. So all was not wasted. Just my worry! As long as my babies are not constipated, it's all good. Whew!

And omg the fur on them. SO LUSH. My boys look like they gained like a full pound! And my girl is so slender now, albeit her saggy skin. She needs a tummy tuck!

Just wanted to update, in case someone is confused about the same thing. Dry, chalky looking hard poo is normal!!!

 

[higgst175]

UPDATE:
So, I've been trying hard to dilute the bone content, mixing ground boneless meat into premixed food. And I mentioned this to someone that really advocates raw feeding. She says the vet just doesn't know what the poop should be like on raw died, and my cats are just fine!!! Ugh!!! I did all this work for no reason!

BUT...I think I did learn more about raw feeding from this experience. Now I know more about how their poops should look like, and I learned I can mix things with the premixed food to maybe add more variety to their diet. So all was not wasted. Just my worry! As long as my babies are not constipated, it's all good. Whew!

And omg the fur on them. SO LUSH. My boys look like they gained like a full pound! And my girl is so slender now, albeit her saggy skin. She needs a tummy tuck!

Just wanted to update, in case someone is confused about the same thing. Dry, chalky looking hard poo is normal!!!

Hey! I've been searching around for something like this too. My cats have become constipated and have been on darwin now for a few months. I've been told to dilute and have no idea how to! How were you able to figure it out?

 

[nycats]

Hey! I've been searching around for something like this too. My cats have become constipated and have been on darwin now for a few months. I've been told to dilute and have no idea how to! How were you able to figure it out?

Hi there! So what I've done was to purchase ground chicken and turkey (without bone) from Hare Today and mixed with Alnutrin(be sure to get the one made for meat WITH bone) to create this boneless mix to dilute with. I combine this mix 1/3 and 2/3 Darwin's. Seems to have worked well, and my cats are not constipated! You can adjust the ratio between them to work for your cat.

 

[LTS3]

From another member's recent post:

I still have a couple bags of NV medallions so I've been buying boneless chicken thighs, hearts and livers from the grocery, baking them for ~10 minutes for a surface cook, and chopping them up by hand. Then I add Alnutrin supplement + water. Mix this with equal weight of medallions and voila, balanced cat food with a perfect 7-10% range of bone content, and my kitties love it. I've been hesitating to buy a grinder and go all out with the food making, but maybe I should.

One could also just add boneless meat to the commercial raw, up to 10% unsupplemented. I wouldn't add a pre-mix or anything if the calcium content of the commerical raw is already too high in bone (calcium) content.

 

[sophie1]

This is complicated, but doable....

Not wanting to waste my supply of NV medallions (15-19% bone content), I've been diluting it with boneless food at a 50/50 ratio. That yields a bone content of 7.5-9.5%, which is perfect.

Here's what I do: I buy boneless chicken thighs, hearts and chicken livers OR the thighs plus Hare Today's chicken organ mix (which is equal parts liver, heart, and gizzard). Anything I get from the grocery is partial-baked at 350 for ~10 minutes, to kill any pathogens that might be on the outside of the meats. Then I chop or scissor everything up, mix up a ratio of 90% meat, 10% liver, and add Alnutrin/water. I freeze this in 10 oz quantities, then when it comes time to feed it I mix in equal parts with medallions. Voila. If you want to dilute to a lesser extent, modify the mix accordingly.