- Joined
- Dec 4, 2013
- Messages
- 32
- Purraise
- 16
Hi everyone, I would really appreciate the insight from some of the homemade food experts here!
I've been on and off feeding my cat Toby canned commercial and homemade raw, following the Lisa Pierson recipe. The first time I used bone meal instead of bone, second time I borrowed my friend's grinder and used real bone. He seemed to do well on it, but maybe was a little constipated at first. He had cystitis about a year ago, so I am paranoid about phosphorus amounts and bladder crystals. However he just had senior blood work done and everything looked good. He's 12 years old now and is a healthy weight.
Then pandemic happened so I just switched to canned again for a while... but today tried to get back on the horse since the meat shortages seems to have calmed down and I haven't been able to find a canned food both he and I really agree on.
Lately Toby hasn't been finishing his food that quickly, and I'm a vegetarian, so the raw meat factor was causing me a lot of anxiety in general, so I decided to try a cooked version. But every time I have done this (this was only the third batch of homemade, but I made A LOT), I end up anxiously googling and wondering if I messed up somehow! I was happy to see a lot of people here doing homemade cooked diets. It seems like a lot of people compare raw to kibble... when there a homemade cooked is going to be better than many (most?) canned foods.
Does this look OK? I just discovered the amazing recipe lists here, and notice they seem pretty similar to what I did, with maybe a few differences (esp. manganese).
This was the recipe I used (again based off Lisa Pierson, but I cooked all the meat first and then added the supplements and bone meal after grinding).
I feel like all these recipes seem so simple until I actually do them, and then somehow I always end up second guessing myself!
Does this look OK?? (This was a quadruple batch):
- 12 lbs meat: 10 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast, plus 2 lbs mixed hearts and gizzards. Weighed meat before baking. Included cooking liquid.
- 16 oz chicken liver
- 4.5 cups of water to compensate for losses in cooking
- 8 eggs (boiled) plus a few of the shells. I tried to soft boil them but ended up hard boiling. Oops!
- 9 tablespoons bone meal (the direct conversion from the Pierson recipe would have been 9.3 T but I reduced a bit since I added the egg shells, plus the last time Toby got bone meal he was a bit constipated).
- 40,000 mg fish oil
- 1072 mg vit E
- 4 Vit B 50 complex capsules (NOW foods)
- 8000-9000 mg Taurine (my scale only goes to g, so it was 8+ g)
- 4 tsp Morton Lite Salt w Iodine
- a couple gelatin packets (this wasn't on the recipe but have seen it added in some that call for bone meal)
I cooked the meat, chunked up some of the gizzards, then food processed the rest. I ground up the egg shells with the supplement slurry using a stick blender. I always end up adding additional water when I feed to warm it up, so I know it's a bit "dry" at the moment.
My main anxiety is over using bone meal (I am always worried I got it wrong), as well as chicken breast without the skin. I didn't want to be deboning thighs all day. But if the breast is really not ideal I will prob get thighs next time. I think once they are cooked they will be pretty easy to debone?? I was just thinking that since all the pre-mixes call for "any meat", then it shouldn't matter all that much? Going to monitor his weight as well.
I see a lot of folks here using egg shell as the calcium source. Going to look into that more... but would like to use up the bone meal I already purchased.
I've been on and off feeding my cat Toby canned commercial and homemade raw, following the Lisa Pierson recipe. The first time I used bone meal instead of bone, second time I borrowed my friend's grinder and used real bone. He seemed to do well on it, but maybe was a little constipated at first. He had cystitis about a year ago, so I am paranoid about phosphorus amounts and bladder crystals. However he just had senior blood work done and everything looked good. He's 12 years old now and is a healthy weight.
Then pandemic happened so I just switched to canned again for a while... but today tried to get back on the horse since the meat shortages seems to have calmed down and I haven't been able to find a canned food both he and I really agree on.
Lately Toby hasn't been finishing his food that quickly, and I'm a vegetarian, so the raw meat factor was causing me a lot of anxiety in general, so I decided to try a cooked version. But every time I have done this (this was only the third batch of homemade, but I made A LOT), I end up anxiously googling and wondering if I messed up somehow! I was happy to see a lot of people here doing homemade cooked diets. It seems like a lot of people compare raw to kibble... when there a homemade cooked is going to be better than many (most?) canned foods.
Does this look OK? I just discovered the amazing recipe lists here, and notice they seem pretty similar to what I did, with maybe a few differences (esp. manganese).
This was the recipe I used (again based off Lisa Pierson, but I cooked all the meat first and then added the supplements and bone meal after grinding).
I feel like all these recipes seem so simple until I actually do them, and then somehow I always end up second guessing myself!
Does this look OK?? (This was a quadruple batch):
- 12 lbs meat: 10 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast, plus 2 lbs mixed hearts and gizzards. Weighed meat before baking. Included cooking liquid.
- 16 oz chicken liver
- 4.5 cups of water to compensate for losses in cooking
- 8 eggs (boiled) plus a few of the shells. I tried to soft boil them but ended up hard boiling. Oops!
- 9 tablespoons bone meal (the direct conversion from the Pierson recipe would have been 9.3 T but I reduced a bit since I added the egg shells, plus the last time Toby got bone meal he was a bit constipated).
- 40,000 mg fish oil
- 1072 mg vit E
- 4 Vit B 50 complex capsules (NOW foods)
- 8000-9000 mg Taurine (my scale only goes to g, so it was 8+ g)
- 4 tsp Morton Lite Salt w Iodine
- a couple gelatin packets (this wasn't on the recipe but have seen it added in some that call for bone meal)
I cooked the meat, chunked up some of the gizzards, then food processed the rest. I ground up the egg shells with the supplement slurry using a stick blender. I always end up adding additional water when I feed to warm it up, so I know it's a bit "dry" at the moment.
My main anxiety is over using bone meal (I am always worried I got it wrong), as well as chicken breast without the skin. I didn't want to be deboning thighs all day. But if the breast is really not ideal I will prob get thighs next time. I think once they are cooked they will be pretty easy to debone?? I was just thinking that since all the pre-mixes call for "any meat", then it shouldn't matter all that much? Going to monitor his weight as well.
I see a lot of folks here using egg shell as the calcium source. Going to look into that more... but would like to use up the bone meal I already purchased.