Home made cat food - salt question

[terestrife]

I have a cat with early kidney issues. I was lucky to have caught it very early. I was advised to keep her diet the same by my vet. I was just wondering if I should try to lessen the salt of the recipe?

Know Better For Cats - Chicken Recipe - For Making Homemade Cat Food

I reached out to the owner and they said the salt I am using is similar to the meat they used while creating the recipe.

Note: By salt i mean the salt found in the chicken i buy.

This is the chicken thigh meat that i use. I do half of each product. One has the skin on and one doesn't. The only way to decrease the salt is to switch to a chicken with less fat. I'm not sure if anyone has any advice?

 

[Tobermory]

The sodium content of your meat should be less than 100 mg. If you’re using half of each of the meats above, the total should be 97.5 mg. That’s the upper end of what’s recommended so it wouldn’t hurt to find something that’s less than the 105 mg shown in the one meat to be in the safe side.

 

[terestrife]

Thanks for helping me!

I've been looking around and all I could find was chicken breast with 75 mg. it would decrease the overall fat content of the recipe. Would that be a bad thing? I was thinking of using these two products. Chicken thigh with skin and chicken breast.

The boneless chicken thighs has less sodium, but it has less fat. I don't know if I want to randomly remove a huge amount of fat from their diet. Their website says this about fat content: "Meat should be no greater than 15-20% fat content. "
I'm not that good at math so I'm not too sure.

 

[Tobermory]

I’d be more concerned with sodium content than fat. You can always adjust the amount you feed and keep track of their weight, but the sodium definitely needs to be below 100 mg. You should be okay using the meats you show in your first post as long as you’re mixing 50/50 to bring down the one with 105 mg of sodium.

I rotated chicken thighs (more fat) with turkey breast (less fat) and it seemed to work well for the girls. I also used pork. I never really focused on fat because I kept an eye on their weight.

 

[terestrife]

I’d be more concerned with sodium content than fat. You can always adjust the amount you feed and keep track of their weight, but the sodium definitely needs to be below 100 mg. You should be okay using the meats you show in your first post as long as you’re mixing 50/50 to bring down the one with 105 mg of sodium.

I rotated chicken thighs (more fat) with turkey breast (less fat) and it seemed to work well for the girls. I also used pork. I never really focused on fat because I kept an eye on their weight.

I spoke to the owner of the pet food powder and she said the same thing as you. That she prefers lower fat. So I am going to use chicken breast. I want to try lowering the overall sodium as a precaution since Kitty is already having issues with her kidneys. I want to take some burden off of them if I can.

 

[Box of Rain]

The one (the lower fat version) that "appears" to have less sodium, actually has more.

How so? Because one needs to take into account the calories in each option. You need to feed significantly more of the low-fat option to meet the same energy requirements.

Do the math and you will see the low fat version has more sodium per calorie.

Besides, fat (up to a point) is good for cats.

Bill

 

[Box of Rain]

Thanks for helping me!

I've been looking around and all I could find was chicken breast with 75 mg. it would decrease the overall fat content of the recipe. Would that be a bad thing? I was thinking of using these two products. Chicken thigh with skin and chicken breast.

The boneless chicken thighs has less sodium, but it has less fat. I don't know if I want to randomly remove a huge amount of fat from their diet. Their website says this about fat content: "Meat should be no greater than 15-20% fat content. "
I'm not that good at math so I'm not too sure.

Dark meat chicken (like thighs) is a fairly good source of taurine. Chicken breast is not.

Bill

 

[Box of Rain]

Also, if you really need to reduce the sodium content, you can soak the chicken pieces in a bowl of iced water, and do a couple (or several) changes of water.

That would pull out some sodium.

Bill

 

[terestrife]

The one (the lower fat version) that "appears" to have less sodium, actually has more.

How so? Because one needs to take into account the calories in each option. You need to feed significantly more of the low-fat option to meet the same energy requirements.

Do the math and you will see the low fat version has more sodium per calorie.

Besides, fat (up to a point) is good for cats.

Bill

Its only 50 calories less. Which means I wont have to decrease my cats portion like I used to do. She is overweight so less calories might be a good thing. I will try to do the math this weekend to figure out what the best option is. Regardless I already have 20 lbs of grinded chicken breast so I cant really turn back at this point.