How Much Do You Make, And How Long Does It Take You?

[lalagimp]

This week I did about 18 lbs of meat, and then with fluids added, it was about 21 lbs of mix.
It usually takes me 3 hours. I do the supplement slurry/ no premix. Half the meat is pre-ground. 1/4 of the meat goes through the grinder with the skins, the other 1/4 of the meat is cut into chunks with kitchen shears. Everything mixed together gets portioned into ice cube trays.

 

[orange&white]

I prefer to make small batches since I cut everything by hand, including the bones. It makes it easier to rotate meats, plus the larger batches start to feel like "work" rather than like a labor of love.

Tangent's low-fat "diet" batches are either 32 ounces or 64 ounces before adding gelatin. So that's 8 days or 16 days. Farrell and Misfit eat higher calorie/fat mixes. They also eat more food, 9 ounces a day total, so I try to make their batches in multiples of 9, with a minimum 7-day batch at 63 ounces. 126 ounces makes 2 weeks for them and is about my imaginary line between cat food being easy and cat food being a pain. I usually alternate weekends with Tangent's food one weekend and the girls' food the next weekend.

On weekends when I'm caught up and everyone has at least 7 days of food already prepared, I'll pull out a pork or beef roast or a package of chicken thighs to cube and refreeze in quart bags. Having the meat pre-cubed makes "cat food days" easier.

I'm not sure how much time I spend making cat food. I'm mixing Farrell and Misfit a brisket mix tomorrow morning, but everything is already pre-cubed and measured except for crushing up some chicken frames for bone and adding supplements. By tomorrow morning, all the ingredients should be partially-thawed enough to mix and repackage...which will take around an hour for 81 ounces. I probably spent an hour trimming fat and cubing the brisket a few weekends ago.

One other reason I prefer small batches is that Farrell can be very picky. I'm always worried that one ingredient in a batch may be "off" to her senses and she'll refuse to eat. I made an all-chicken batch a few weeks ago which she didn't like and she didn't eat very much for a few days. Misfit was happy to scarf it down like any other mix, so I think everything was fresh enough...but Farrell apparently didn't think so. If I do ever happen to get some ingredient that really is off, I'd be really frustrated to make a large batch of food that none of the cats could eat.

 

[Ardina]

I make about 25 lbs (a month to a month and half's worth of food) at a time. Thankfully, now that Mishka is almost 8 months, the food consumption rate is dropping, so that amount is lasting longer. I do all the prep work and chunking as well as mixing in supplements and portioning at one time, so it takes me about 5 hours total. The part I hate doing the most is the washing up afterwards, so this minimizes the amount of cleaning I have to do. I usually make a bunch of different mixes - chicken, turkey, rabbit, and occasionally duck depending on prices - label all the portions, and toss into the freezer. During the rest of the month, I can pull out a day's portion at a time - one day chicken, the next day turkey, etc., so they don't get bored.

This method definitely runs the risk of the cats turning up their noses at a large batch. They got tired of rabbit when I forgot to order more meat and could only feed them that for a couple of weeks. So when I made rabbit as part of the rotation for the next batch, Mishka refused to eat it entirely, and Saipha ate it only reluctantly. So rabbit is out of the rotation for a little bit.

 

[lavishsqualor]

I make cat food every week. This gives me enough food for my two cats, Atticus and Thirteen for, you guessed it, a week.

I keep telling myself that I'm going to make larger batches but I never do.

 

[maureen brad]

Once a month a grind up 2 or 3 cornish game hens and add appropriate amounts of boneless to dilute the bone.Usually is a 15 lbs batch. Usually the day after that I mix up a 2 lbs chub from HT and divide a pack of quail for once a week bone chewing meal.Grinding, chunking meat and freezing usually takes 2 hours.Prepping HT chubs 10 minutes. I don't like to do all meal prep on one day.I try to have 30 lbs frozen in spare freezer a month.

 

[sophie1]

I used to make small batches of 2-5 lbs, mixing up ground meat/bone/organ mixes, boneless meat cut into chunks with scissors, extra liver if needed, and homemade supplement slurry. Definitely prefer small in order to ensure a variety and maximize freezer space, since the unmade chubs take less space than the jars I pack food into (I prefer those to plastic baggies).

I found that the most time-consuming part of the operation is packing and labeling jars, so lately I've been avoiding that by feeding grinds and chunked meat separately, alternating between the two. The path is now chub -> fridge -> bowl, with supplements added at feeding time to the grinds only. I think this might be a problem for cats who get constipated easily, but mine handle it just fine. I don't feed the bone-heavy poultry grinds alone for more than 1 day though.

The trick with small batches is how to manage supplements. I mix up my own in a jar, enough for a 5 lb batch at one time, and have a set time for how long it should last. There are irregularities day to day but it balances out each week. Alnutrin would be easier, but this way I can adjust the recipe to account for whole animal grinds where you want to skip the lite salt.

 

[lalagimp]

Just that part took an hour, trying to get an accurate ounce in each cube via eyeballing it. She doesn't even care. The girls come hang out with me in the kitchen when I'm doing final prep, but this isn't their diet. Their food is cooked.

 

[orange&white]

The ice cube trays seem like a lot of extra work to me lalagimp, but I know your system works for you. Each of us has set up a system for ourselves, proving that there's more than one way to feed a cat an appropriate diet.

I made the girls' brisket mix this morning in about an hour and a half. Tubbing the food in containers to me is one of the easiest parts. They usually eat 9 ounces a day (sometimes Farrell gets fussy and eats a little less). Their food went into containers at 18 ounces each, so 1 tub covers 2 days of food. I weigh their individual meals when served: 1.5 ounces per meal for 3 meals a day. For me it's easier to get the specific weights on the "back end" of the process.

This is a great thread idea. I'm enjoying reading what everyone else is doing.

 

[Sallysoo]

I will buy raw boneless meat (human grade) at our local wet market on every Sunday. Different parts of the pork or chicken for 10 days of my kitty food in advaced. I cut them into chucks and addin the Ez Complete premix, portion into ziplock bag and freeze it for at least 3 days. As I can't get other types of raw meat locally and I do not want to buy raw commercial food, I get feline natural canned food instead, lamb, beef n turkey, to give 1-2 weekly. Ziwi Venison air-dried as treats daily. These also serve as emergency food in case somthing goes wrong with the main raw diet. My kitty is doing great.