Homecooked Pork Cat Food

[4horses]

I'm starting to experiment with home cooked meals. Just made 6 lbs of chicken and 6lbs of pork in the pressure cooker for the cats. Plan to add either sweet potato or pumpkin, as my cats love both.

Right now, they get two meals of commercial cat food, and my home cooked meals for lunch.

But my one cat is allergic to everything other than pork. I would like to switch him completely to homecooked meals. I'm concerned about balancing the diet properly.

do i need to grind bones or could i use bone meal?? What about vitamins and minerals? I read that you could take a multivitamin and crush/mix with his food, or give 1/4th a tablet per day.

i have taurine capsules already. He gets 1/6th a capsule with lunch. Each capsule is 1000mg.

suggestions and comments are appreciated.

Please don't ask me to try a different commercial food. We have tried every food/prescription food out there for allergies. It's this or start raising feeder mice. My poor cat has very bad food allergies.

 

[kittyluv387]

Bone meal isn't a good substitute for bone. People do use eggshell powder though. You should do some reading about homemade food here: Making Cat Food

She doesn't use pork but it'll give you an idea of what is required for homemade food.

 

[Gizmobius]

I'm by no means an expert on the subject but you could use a premix, such as EZ Complete that can be used with either raw or cooked meats. I feed raw and use EZ Complete to balance it and make it nutritionally complete and it really is very simple and less stressful than measuring out all my own supplements, at least in my opinion. There is dried chicken liver in it though, so not sure if that would affect your cat with the allergies!

 

[lisahe]

kittyluv387 's suggestion of catinfo.org is a good start on nutrients. The home page for this subforum also has several pinned posts with links to other resources.

Our cats love pork and I balance it with EZ Complete.

 

[mschauer]

do i need to grind bones or could i use bone meal??

Bones and bone meal are sources of calcium. You can use them or another calcium source such as calcium carbonate or eggshell.

What about vitamins and minerals? I read that you could take a multivitamin and crush/mix with his food, or give 1/4th a tablet per day.

Please be careful with advice like this. "A multivitamin" is very non-specific. Not all multivitamins provide the same nutrients. One will provide a much different mix of nutrients than another. And none of them is formulated for use with a home-made diet. You might find one that provides the nutrients needed but it would be a guessing game to find one that does.

There are plenty of what we call pre-mixes that are formulated specifically for use when making a home-made cat food. Most are formulated for use with raw meat/organs. The EZComplete mentioned is formulated for use with either raw or cooked. BalanceIT is specifically for cooked meat.

Some of the pre-mixes can be expensive. If you are willing to buy the nutrient supplements yourself you can take a look at some cooked recipes I've developed:
Cooked Recipes - Google Drive

 

[lisamarie12]

For info regarding properly balancing a home cooked diet for your cat, as LisaHE mentioned, I would check the two links re: homecooked diets on this forum.

Dr. Pierson's site, as kittyluv387 suggested, is an excellent source of info regarding feline nutrition, however, the supplements for her recipes are for raw only (even though she lightly browns the outside of the meat), hence under no circumstances would you be using any ground, cooked bones, that would be dangerous.

There is a premix for homecooked, Balance It, which includes only synthetic vitamins and minerals specifically for home cooked meals. While EZ is an excellent premix for homecooked or raw, it does contain chicken liver.

If you do decide to try Balance It, I would suggest *not* using the site's recipe plan as BI will suggest adding heaping fulls of carby and unnecessary non-meat fillers for your little obligate carnivore friend.

Good luck.