Home Cooked Premixes

[SpecterOhPossum]

I'm considering starting to delve into a cooked diet for my girl, because commerical foods have all but drove us nuts. Which premix do you guys use? I loolel around the homecooked forum, and there are a few. I'm still learning, but figured I might as well ask what others think / hear tips as well. thank you! I will probably ask a ton more dumb questions about thos over the week.

 

[lisahe]

I use both EZ Complete and Alnutrin with egg shell. Both contain non-bone calcium. No matter what you use, you will likely need a digital kitchen scale unless you ask a butcher to weigh all the meat for you. (Package weights can be very incorrect, something I found out only because of making cat food, so always weigh!)

So:
EZ Complete is more expensive but all you add is meat and water. It also has some form of pancreas something, which our vet is very happy about. (She loves the EZ ingredients.) Our cats like EZ food.

Alnutrin is cheaper but you have to add liver. (If you like roast chicken, I recommend buying roasting chickens that come with liver. Dinner for everybody! Though if you feed Alnutrin full-time, you'd be eating a lot of roast chicken. But I digress.) Our cats really love Alnutrin. I add a little fish oil (one capsule) to each pound of Alnutrin meat.

I add extra egg yolk to all our homemade food, two hard-boiled egg yolks per pound of meat. This is totally optional.

We feed one meal a day of EZ food and one meal a day of Alnutrin food. I cook the meat in a foil-covered glass dish with some water. I hand-shred some, chop some with a knife, chop some in the food processor, etc., for variety of texture. I also sometimes cook, say, just pork or just chicken; sometimes I cook two kinds of meat together. Pork, chicken, and turkey are the usual proteins around here.

Good luck!

P.S. Alnutrin and EZ offer samples -- I'd recommend trying those first.

 

[SpecterOhPossum]

I use both EZ Complete and Alnutrin with egg shell. Both contain non-bone calcium. No matter what you use, you will likely need a digital kitchen scale unless you ask a butcher to weigh all the meat for you. (Package weights can be very incorrect, something I found out only because of making cat food, so always weigh!)

So:
EZ Complete is more expensive but all you add is meat and water. It also has some form of pancreas something, which our vet is very happy about. (She loves the EZ ingredients.) Our cats like EZ food.

Alnutrin is cheaper but you have to add liver. (If you like roast chicken, I recommend buying roasting chickens that come with liver. Dinner for everybody! Though if you feed Alnutrin full-time, you'd be eating a lot of roast chicken. But I digress.) Our cats really love Alnutrin. I add a little fish oil (one capsule) to each pound of Alnutrin meat.

I add extra egg yolk to all our homemade food, two hard-boiled egg yolks per pound of meat. This is totally optional.

We feed one meal a day of EZ food and one meal a day of Alnutrin food. I cook the meat in a foil-covered glass dish with some water. I hand-shred some, chop some with a knife, chop some in the food processor, etc., for variety of texture. I also sometimes cook, say, just pork or just chicken; sometimes I cook two kinds of meat together. Pork, chicken, and turkey are the usual proteins around here.

Good luck!

P.S. Alnutrin and EZ offer samples -- I'd recommend trying those first.

Thank you so much! I've had a crazy stressful day from staying up all night reading home cooked cat food content, and I'm so dumb that all it did was hurt my head and stress me out. Then, this morning, my cat had to have 2 baths because she managed to get coconut milk on her. Long story. Anyways, I'm grateful for your response is what I'm getting at!

The main reason I ventured into wanting to do home cooked is because I'm really suspecting my girl has some sort of beef with chicken. Pun intended. Beef and chicken seem to make her itch, but I'm not sure if it's the guar gum and "by product" in her sheba instead; so I was wondering if I could make a diet with maybe; turkey? If that would be okay instead of chicken? Sorry if that's dumb. For more context, I'm wanting to take sheba out of rotation; keep a can of Tiki Cat After Dark daily, along with a homeade turkey situation. If the itching would persist, I would maybe take tiki out and see if the turkey stops it. I don't know. Just brainstorming at this point!

May I ask if duck eggs would be an okay substitute for chicken eggs? For no real reason, other than the fact that we farm ducks and have a butt load of duck eggs 24/7, whereas our chickens are kind of old and slow at egg production. (coyotes don't help either! we have like, 40% of the chickens we used to have!) My girl likes eggs, sometimes. She's pretty sometimey..

Again thank you, I'm going to copy what you said into my notepad thingy because it's apparent my brain has a pretty bad system error! One more thing, so, EZ can be used on its own (w meat and such) right? Like, do you have to have the AL alongside it or is that to save money?

 

[lisahe]

Beef and chicken seem to make her itch, but I'm not sure if it's the guar gum and "by product" in her sheba instead; so I was wondering if I could make a diet with maybe;

Now I see why you were concerned about byproducts: it's hard to discern what's in them and you're likely to get beef and chicken in some form.

Yes, definitely try turkey! Some cats who can't eat chicken can eat turkey just fine. EZ does, however, have chicken liver in it. And you'll need to find some form of liver for Alnutrin. (Though I seem to recall some people saying their cats did fine on, say, chicken liver but not chicken meat... you'd need to see how your cat does.)

I don't see why you couldn't use duck eggs, though you'd need to adjust the amount because they must be bigger than chicken eggs. Or are they!?

To be clear: You don't have to use any eggs in the food. Each premix supplement is complete as it comes out of the package -- other than liver for Alnutrin -- so there's no need to add egg. I just add it because it seems to help prevent vomiting. (Because of hairballs, I think? I'm not sure why it works but it seems to keep our barfer from barfing!)

Just let me know if anything here didn't make sense. It's been a long and weird week!

 

[SpecterOhPossum]

Now I see why you were concerned about byproducts: it's hard to discern what's in them and you're likely to get beef and chicken in some form.

Yes, definitely try turkey! Some cats who can't eat chicken can eat turkey just fine. EZ does, however, have chicken liver in it. And you'll need to find some form of liver for Alnutrin. (Though I seem to recall some people saying their cats did fine on, say, chicken liver but not chicken meat... you'd need to see how your cat does.)

I don't see why you couldn't use duck eggs, though you'd need to adjust the amount because they must be bigger than chicken eggs. Or are they!?

To be clear: You don't have to use any eggs in the food. Each premix supplement is complete as it comes out of the package -- other than liver for Alnutrin -- so there's no need to add egg. I just add it because it seems to help prevent vomiting. (Because of hairballs, I think? I'm not sure why it works but it seems to keep our barfer from barfing!)

Just let me know if anything here didn't make sense. It's been a long and weird week!

Yes, and I'm just plain scared of anything moving; so the idea of factories making errors is scary, plus, aside from Tiki cat, I quite literally cannot find a notable (reviewed, tested) brand that doesn't have at least one of the following..: wheat, soy, corn by product, potato, peas, chickpeas, lentils, tomato ((any plant based fillers)), guar gum, xantum gum, carragreen, agar-agar, etc.. She doesn't have an allergy to those things that I know of, but I refuse them! Counting from today, I've officially been hawking every single brand on chewy and at walmart since september 2nd.. My god man! Sorry, ranted, it's just mind boggling..

Okay, thank you! I will, I wanted to do duck ; as in, cook one of the ducks we farm but quickly realized I'm far too much of a sissy for it. Maybe when we're snowed in, as a last resort.. Awh. Well, again, not too sure what's the cause of itching, so maybe we can get a sample and see? I'm too scared to get the other one and do the liver myself, and risk messing up somehow.. I also think maybe the itching is hormones because it usually gets bad around her heats (she's getting spayed later october, don't worry! She also has no means of getting pregnant. )

Sort of ! Duck eggs are weird! The normal ducks give us large to normal eggs, but we have some of another species that are brown and white with funny faces and their eggs seem a little smaller than even chicken eggs. I like duck eggs better because the shell is leathery, so they're harder to break + rarely get eggshell into your scrambled eggs.

OH! Okay, thank you for the clarification! Can I ask another thing? So, since she will be eating a can of Tiki Cat After Dark - Cat Food With Nutrient-Rich Organ Meat - Tiki Pets daily and then probably three small portions of the homeade, should I use less of the premix ? I'm worried too much vitamins would make her sick.. OH, or, should I go and maybe try to portion it to match what her old sheba had? (for reference, three servings of sheba) and I'm glad your barfer is okay! Thank you for your help, again by the way! I'm hesitant to call it a "disorder" but it sure feels like it - I'm so paranoid and compulsive that even if I know a thing, I'm never convinced I do until asking in circles of people and wasting hours researching literally the same topic for hours. It's annoying, so it's helpful to have people like you and this forum that bear with it!

 

[darg]

On a related note, I tried Carnivore Raw which is Young Again's premix supplement. My cat has problems with chicken as well. I'm not 100% sure on chicken liver though so I've avoided it in my homemade turkey. I use Alnutrin and have chosen to use freeze dried turkey liver as I cannot source fresh or frozen turkey liver locally. At any rate the Carnivore Raw contains "poultry liver and heart". I contacted Young Again asking about these ingredients and my cats issues with chicken and their response was that those ingredients are hydrolized and they haven't had any reports of issues from owners of cats with chicken allergies or issues. That it's hydrolized should help greatly in alleviating allergy or sensitivity issues. However, my cat still had sticky poop and occassional morning vomiting when I fed the turkey with the Carnivore Raw mix. It also has several other ingredients that Alnutrin doesn't have including yeast and digestive enzymes so it could be any number of things in a particular mix that causes some issues for any individual cat. My cat seems a bit sensitive to something in that mix and I have no idea what it is.

Getting to EZ Complete ... the chicken liver used may very well be hydrolized in that mix as well. I haven't inquired as I don't use it and haven't tried it. But if it is, it may not cause the issues that fresh chicken liver could. Just something that may be worth inquiring about if someone is concerned about the chicken liver in the mix.

 

[mschauer]

I'm suspicious of the Young Again claim that they use hydrolyzed ingredients. My understanding is that hydrolyzing would be an additional step to freeze drying. It isn't something that would be done as a matter of course. It is what is done to create hypoallergenic foods and would surely add to the cost of producing the food. Does anything on their web site indicate their product is hypoallergenic? It would be a great marketing claim if it were and would expect it to be somewhere on their web site.

But, I'm not really familiar with the hydrolyzing process and just that they know enough to use the term may indicate it is something they do.

 

[lisahe]

I had the exact same thought as mschauer when I read that Young Again claim about hydrolyzing. I did some googling and found that they do say they use hydrolyzed pork in some of their dog food and their kitten food (click to see the ingredients) so that makes me less skeptical!

 

[mschauer]

I agree! Thanks lisahe .

I wonder why they only use hydrolyzed forms of some proteins and not others? It isn't even the proteins that a cats are most likely to be allergic to.

 

[lisahe]

I agree! Thanks lisahe .

I wonder why they only use hydrolyzed forms of some proteins and not others? It isn't even the proteins that a cats are most likely to be allergic to.

Yes, I wondered about that, too! (So many mysteries in the cat food world... )

 

[darg]

The top ingredient in all of the Young Again dry cat foods is Hydrolyzed Pork. I noticed that their flavor enhancer has hydrolyzed chicken as the top ingredient. The "natural poultry flavor" in their Raw mix isn't listed as hydrolyzed but I trust that it probably is. Seeing how they use it in just about everything else, I have no real reason to doubt the email reply that I received when I inquired about it.
But again, it's a moot point in my case. Something in the mix bothers my kitty.