Help! Need Advice On Food Nutrition

[Khrad]

I am planning to go back to school and as a single mom as well as a mom of two for babies, I need a diet for my fur babies that will be easy for me to maintain as well as nutritionally-balanced. I am unable to provide them with home-cooked food 100% of the time due to my new schedule. So for my two 8-9 lbs cats this is what I'm thinking of doing:
- 50% home cooked with alnutrin w/ eggshell. Meats: Chicken, Turkey, Beef
- 20% freeze dried raw. Meats: Duck and Rabbit.
- 18% high protein can food. Meats: Quail, Venison preferably but any other protein is good as well.
- 10% Air dried protein (Ziwiki chicken)
- 1% High protein snacks dehydrated/jerky. Meats: bison, goat, salmon, rabbit, chicken, turkey.
1% Fish: Can of Wild Caught Sardines in water. Weekly only.
As you can see I have no pork, as cats can't eat it and no lamb, as cats don't like it. The above makeup is also keeping in mind of balanced nutrition as I do not want too much bone, fillers, gums, by products and other questionable ingredients as well as the item is being readily available. The problem that I am running into is with the freeze dried and canned foods. I need advice on which brand you think is better for these categories.
For freeze dry I was thinking of going with either Primal or Vital Essentials. Which one do you think is better in terms of nutrition?
For the canned foods I was planning on going with Evangers that has only the protein meat and adding alnutrin w/eggshell to it. Do you think that would be okay? If not, I was just planning to get either the regular Evanger, Rawz or Organix canned food. Which one do you think is better? Please let me know what you think. Any advice is greatly appreciated. TIA!

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi! In my opinion, Rawz, and Primal are good choices

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

Personally, I like Primal, but unfortunately, neither of my cats will eat it . They USED to, and they seemed to really enjoy it, but the last several bags I bought went uneaten, no matter how many toppers (different ones) I tried. And I tried different bags of Primal, thinking maybe I just got a bad bag. Nope, they absolutely won't have anythingn to do with it anymore. I haven't tried the Vital Essentials so cannot offer an opinion on that.

I don't know anything about adding Alnutrin to the Evangers. What do the folks at Alnutrin say about doing that? If they can offer suggestion on how much to add (it may be different adding to actual canned food vs raw meat), then I would say go for it. I know Wysong also offers a meat only canned food, and they probably offer the additive for it...not sure.

Good luck with your education. I think that's super

 

[lisahe]

For the canned foods I was planning on going with Evangers that has only the protein meat and adding alnutrin w/eggshell to it. Do you think that would be okay?

I agree with mrsgreenjeens 's suggestion on this: check with Alnutrin. Premixes for making cat food usually say to weigh raw meat to determine how much supplement to add. You'd probably need to do a fair bit of calculation to figure out how much supplement to use. You'd also have to see if the Evangers ingredients are compatible with the Alnutrin: you don't want to mess with organ meat ratios!

 

[Khrad]

Thank you ladies for all the great suggestions and input. I will definitely get in touch with Alnutrin as well as Evangers.
The other option I thought about was just feedng them the can without any other vitamins considering they are getting a load of nutrients from the other stuff that I have during the week. Do you think that would be okay? Just wondering if everything would just even out? TIA

 

[lisahe]

The other option I thought about was just feedng them the can without any other vitamins considering they are getting a load of nutrients from the other stuff that I have during the week. Do you think that would be okay? Just wondering if everything would just even out? TIA

Personally, I wouldn't do that although even Dr. Pierson says on catinfo.org that it's okay to feed a fair chunk of calories as plain meat:

When fed as a supplement to most commercial canned foods, it is safe to feed ~15 – 20% of the daily calories in the form of plain meat. For example, if a cat is eating 6 ounces of canned food per day, you could feed him 5 ounces of canned food plus 1 ounce of chunked muscle meat per day.

If you haven't already read about cat nutrition on Dr. Pierson's site, I'd highly recommend checking it out here.

In any case, there'd be a fair bit of math involved in feeding that way -- Dr. Pierson says "of the daily calories" -- so you'd need to crunch the numbers carefully. Plus you'd want to be absolutely certain that neither cat was eating more of his/her allotted unsupplemented food. On a more abstract level, I'd be concerned that (given the way cats are about preferences) they didn't start to like the unsupplemented food too much. As someone else (I wish I could remember who it was!) recently said about cats and their preferences, "give them an inch and they'll take a mile." That's the big reason I never give our two anything more than a small shred or two of meat when I'm making their homecooked food! I just don't want them to decide they like it too much and then go on strike with their complete food!

 

[m3rma1d]

As someone else (I wish I could remember who it was!) recently said about cats and their preferences, "give them an inch and they'll take a mile."

haha pretty sure it was me.

 

[lisahe]

haha pretty sure it was me.

It does sound like something you'd say! It's oh-so-true!