Home Cooked With Alnutrin - Calcium Or Calcium W/ Egg Shells?

[elmomax]

Friends,

My cat zoey continues to battle IBD. She is on budesonide 1 mg and has been on Royal Canin Venison prescription diet for almost 2 years. I have tried 30+ different foods/brands and she has done the best on RC but she has never really done well with cow pies and now frequent liquid diarrhea flare ups. Vet is suggesting increasing dosage of budesonide or moving her to prednisolone. But before doing that I want to try a few last diet changes. I am currently transitioning her to Royal Canin rabbit and it does not look hopeful but need another 2 weeks to know for sure. I am also considering Freeze dried raw - stella and chewy duck.

I am not open to raw but am considering home cooked diet and someone in my IBD Feline group suggested Alnutrin. There are two formulas without bone - with calcium and with calcium egg shells. Does anyone have thought or info on benefits of each?

Any home cooked diet suggestions would be very welcome.

Thank you !
Erica>

 

[orange&white]

You won't want to cook bones if you're doing a cooked diet, so use the one that has the calcium supplement in it.

Alternately, you can cook the bones for such a long time that they turn into complete mush and use that (plus the cooking water) for the calcium. That is essentially making home made bone meal. amysuen has been doing that with a pressure cooker. Then you would use the formula which does not supplement calcium.

 

[missmimz]

You can use alnutrin for cooked, but it's not actually meant to be used with cooked. If you want a product that is meant to be used with cooked food look at EZcomplete. They have a lot of IBD cats that do well on it, and they offer a sample to try. If you go with Alnutrin, I would use eggshell calcium, make sure you add liver or use freeze dried liver, too.

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[amysuen]

You won't want to cook bones if you're doing a cooked diet, so use the one that has the calcium supplement in it.

Alternately, you can cook the bones for such a long time that they turn into complete mush and use that (plus the cooking water) for the calcium. That is essentially making home made bone meal. amysuen has been doing that with a pressure cooker. Then you would use the formula which does not supplement calcium.

It's super easy - just put the bones in with some water and cook on High for 90 min, then puree in a blender. Someday I plan to get a grinder, but since the cats refuse raw food this works great for now.

 

[nevroth]

So this is a tad old but I wanted to give my 2 cents as I've finally joined the foray into homemade meals. Foray isn't really the appropriate word, but it did feel like I had to mentally prepare and ease into it (first freezed dried raw, then frozen raw, and finally homemade semi-raw, eventually raw raw (lol), then prey model? who knows!) Also the LOOKS people gave me. Well whatever!

For commercial brands my kitties like Primal pork best. Since I had transitioned them to frozen raw they took to homemade meals pretty well. (They did ok on S&C duck, but the one who really needed to eat it was like, meeehhhh)

I requested a sample of Alnutrin and they kindly gave me both eggshell and mineral calcium to try. The eggshell didn't dissolve completely in water so I fear they are not getting sufficient calcium per meal.

Right now I've only made two small batches, but I'm going to order the Alnutrin with mineral calcium since it dissolved in water easier. I used 1lb boneless pork chop sirloin (haha was my boyfriend disappointed it wasn't for him!) and 0.8oz pork liver.

Based off the experience on Dr. Pierson (catinfo.org) I'm going with the semi-raw method for now. This is because I buy the pork at a supermarket and the liver at an Asian supermarket. Particularly with the latter, since there's all sorts of meats, fish & organs in the meat area, I'm afraid of bad bacteria taking hold (also Dr. Pierson's bad experience with raw liver set me off it too). Once I invest in a mini-freezer and can buy in bulk at Hare Today, I'll probably go full raw.
The first batch came out more cooked than raw at 20min in a 350F oven. Oops. Leftover liver was frozen to use in future batches, but for the second batch I only seared one chop 2min each side. I had already cut up the other chop & put it in my Ninja blender (a good oops I think) so the 2nd batch came out more raw. The kitties like this one more.

Since both kitties completely snubbed 3 types of Rad Cat, and were OK on Stella but LOVED Primal, I've chosen to add a little bit of green. In the first batch it was 0.8oz broccoli (a medium size head) and in the second it was 0.8oz collard greens. Both of these were organic & frozen so all I had to do was weigh, thaw, then weigh again (just in case).

0.8oz is just under 5% of the total meat weight, which is how much Primal advertises is the amount of vegetables in their food.

I still have some Primal and use it as a topper sometimes. In the beginning I had to mix the homemade and Primal together, then less and less. Now they don't NEED it at all. But since I have it I might as well use it!! Definitely gotta say, the hype is real, poops are NOT SMELLY. It's amazing.

Good luck dear!!

 

[missmimz]

The eggshell didn't dissolve completely in water so I fear they are not getting sufficient calcium per meal.

Good luck dear!!

It does, just mix it into the water really well with a fork. Eggshell calcium is the "better" calcium.

 

[sandyshores]

It does, just mix it into the water really well with a fork. Eggshell calcium is the "better" calcium.

Right, think the reason is that eggshells are 40% calcium carbonate PLUS small amounts of protein and other minerals, including strontium, fluoride, magnesium and selenium. I read a number of "studies" for humans that resulted in eggshell calcium producing better bone health than calcium carbonate so probably the same with cats. I just wonder tho why the ones that don't use eggshells always use calcium carbonate rather than calcium citrate..... carbonate can cause constipation whereas citrate doesn't. Probably because carbonate is much cheaper. Does anyone know of a supplement for raw (meat without bones) that uses citrate rather than carbonate? My LoveBug is 15 1/2 now and gets constipated sometimes so would rather use citrate.