How Much To Feed Home Cooked?

trisha422

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My kitty is fully transitioned to cooked lamb and in the beginning stages of adding EZ complete.

She is 7lb 6oz.
I have been feeding her 2oz container cubes (picture attached) 2x a day.
On the measuring scale each container came out to a little over 1oz weight of meat not including liquid.

Someone told me I need to feed her 4% of her body weight a day which is 4.72oz!!
That's alot of food and looks like way too much my petite girl can handle.
Surely that person gave me a measurement for raw food??

Can someone please help me? I'm so overwhelmed with all this!!!
I already have a headache from trying to figure out how much EZcomplete to add..
 

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Furballsmom

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Hi! Have you looked at Dr Lisa Pierson's website catinfo . org ?

also a quote from the 'raw food for cats interview with pet nutritionist dr Martha Cline'; I asked Dr. Cline whether owners can consult with a nutritionist when feeding a homemade diet. “If owners are interested in working with a veterinary nutritionist, they definitely should reach out to one,” she replied. For cat owners living in the US, she recommended the American College of Veterinary Nutrition website (http://www.acvn.org/).
 

Tobermory

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The amount you feed depends on your cat. I have three cats, and I make their food using Dr. Pierson’s recipe at catinfo.org. One tends to be overweight and will overeat if not monitored, so she gets about 180-200 calories a day. Depending on the protein I’m giving her, it could be 3.5 to 4 ounces a day. I want to keep her at between 10.5 and 11 pounds. The second is just right at 9 pounds. She gets about 200 calories or about 4 ounces a day. The third is very lean and a dainty...and picky...eater. I work to get her to eat four ounces a day just to keep her weight up above 8.5 pounds, and I also give her a bit extra midday that the other two don’t get.

Almost 5 ounces for a cat the size of yours sounds like a lot! If she’s not overweight or underweight, let her eat what she wants. If that’s 4 ounces and she’s maintaining at a good weight for her, I think that’s fine!
 

dhammagirl

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Tobermory's spot on. It really varies from kitty to kitty.
My overweight, but almost 4lbs lighter, cat gets 3.4oz of rabbit daily, and is currently at just over 16lbs. My 12.5lb cat eats more even though he weighs less.
Feed her however much she wants and don't worry about it unless she starts getting overweight.
 

orange&white

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General guidelines for raw food: 2-3% of body weight for cats and 2-4% for dogs. Very young and very active pets will eat more. Older, sedentary and spayed/neutered pets will eat less. As others have mentioned, your cat's metabolism is unique, so you need to feed her to get a good body condition.

Those feeding guidelines are for raw meat. After cooking, the meat weighs less since much of the water leeches out. You mentioned that your 2oz containers have 1 ounce of cooked lamb. So 2 ounces of cooked meat per day doesn't sound like a lot of food, but I'm unsure how much weight lamb loses during cooking (and that will vary by the cooking method).

It would be easiest going forward to figure out how much raw lamb your cat needs per week, which will most likely be between 3.5 - 5 ounces to maintain her healthy weight. Then the variability in cooked weight matters less. You divide your cooked meat with the accumulated cooking liquids by the correct number of days.

EZ Complete is measured per pound of raw meat, also before cooking. So you would want to cook your meat, then let it cool down and add the supplement premix before packaging and refrigerating/freezing. I've read very good things about the customer service at Food Fur Life, so I'm sure they would be happy to answer any questions you have about their products.
 

shadowsrescue

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I feed 6 cats homecooked meals adding my own supplements. I started with EZ Complete, but it was too expensive to continue with 6 cats. They all are in the 9-11 lb. range and not super active. I give them about 2.5% of their body weight per day. I rotate between chicken, pork, turkey and beef. I also add an extra tablespoon of water to each meal.
 

sophie1

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It is very individual, and will depend also on the quality & type of meat you use. You just have to watch your cat to see if they're gaining or losing weight. My two monsters (12 and 15 lbs, respectively) eat a total of 9 oz (finished food) between them per day. I don't add much water though, as I put in a bit extra at serving time. They're at ideal weights. What you're feeding now sounds about right for your cat's weight, assuming an adult indoor cat with average activity level.
 

EmmiTemmi

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I've always fed by calories, not by body weight percent, and so for my two cats (9.5lbs and 10.75lbs, both just over a year old) to feed 220cal it's about 4% of their body weight (5.7oz), with the formulas I use. I can see how using a higher fat/calorie formula would require a smaller body percent of food though. As has been mentioned before, just make sure you weigh your cat regularly and adjust their food proportions as necessary. My heavier boy actually gets the same amount as the lighter boy, since he's less active, and more prone to weight gain. Your girl is pretty small, so if whatever amount you're feeding is working for her, then that's what it's got to be! If she's gaining/losing weight, cut back or increase a little and see how she does on that.

Keep us updated with how it's all going!
 

mojomom

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Just my two cents but my boy Benson, who is nearly 8 pounds at 7.5 months eats 8.5 oz of homecooked and a can of Tiki After Dark per day. He cries for food at mealtimes so it seems that he's hungry, even after nearly 9 ounces of chicken thigh... I got worried after reading through the thread and seeing such lower amounts recommended, but he's not getting chunky on it so, I guess it works for him.
 

lalagimp

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Here's my situation-
The boys get a raw formula. Tommy is supposed to be 13 lbs. Stewart is supposed to be 12 lbs. I'm feeding Tommy 6-7 ounces per day trying to get him to hold or gain weight. Right now he's 12 1/4 lbs.
Stew is only getting 4 oz of this food, and he's not losing weight. He's currently a hair under 13 lbs.
It's going to be completely dependent on your cat and how calorically dense your product is, just to start. You could start out by giving her however much she wants to eat per sitting over the course of feeding a few times a day, weigh after 2 weeks, and then either keep it the same amount or lower it. Or, in turn, feed her the way you are right now, and in two weeks weigh her and see if you need to start feeding more.
There is no set in stone rule and feeding guidelines are actually feeding suggestions.
 

sabrinah

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Trying to figure out how much to feed can be a pain. I've recently switched to feeding half raw, half dry. Dry is 1/8-1/4 cup per day. When I made raw with very low fat she was eating 2.5 oz per day and gained almost half a pound in a month! Yikes! Yet the entire time she acted like she was starving. This current batch of raw has more fat to fill her up and she's been cut back to 2 oz. Again, she's still starving with 2oz of fattier raw and 1/4 cup dry. I guess everything is just trial and error.
 

Furballsmom

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sabrinah sabrinah , I don't mean to be hijacking the thread or telling you how to handle your cat, but for your kitty to still be hungry all the time makes it seem like maybe she needs to be looked at by a veterinarian if you haven't been in, just to be sure there's not something else going on. :redheartpump:
Also, in case you aren't familiar with this product, this is a supplement that TCS members have utilized, Animal Essentials plant enzymes and probiotics to help her get every bit of nutrition out of the food.
 

sabrinah

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sabrinah sabrinah , I don't mean to be hijacking the thread or telling you how to handle your cat, but for your kitty to still be hungry all the time makes it seem like maybe she needs to be looked at by a veterinarian if you haven't been in, just to be sure there's not something else going on. :redheartpump:
Also, in case you aren't familiar with this product, this is a supplement that TCS members have utilized, Animal Essentials plant enzymes and probiotics to help her get every bit of nutrition out of the food.
I appreciate the concern. She's been to the vet recently, had bloodwork, urinalysis, and fecal done, and got dewormed. Her health is good, minus some teeth that have to go. I put FortiFlora on each meal. This only happens when I feed raw, not canned. It's not because she loves it either- she'll finish the raw and dry and then start going after anything even remotely edible, even dog treats. I even tried giving a couple meals of just dry and it didn't happen then. I don't know why raw doesn't fill her up. I'll look into Animal Essentials when I have money. Between her upcoming dental extraction ($800, and this is after spending $90 to get her salivary ducts drained, $220ish for the senior panel, $250 for flea meds, FortiFlora, and Cosequin) and tuition (too many thousands. Just way too many thousands.) I have nothing left.
 

sophie1

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Sabrinah - I wonder if she's just wanting her dry food, and it will take time for her to get used to the new diet?

I just switched my cats' routine slightly. They started refusing to eat food out of the chilled bowl I was using, so I switched to putting down a fixed amount of food twice a day in regular dishes. They started to eat again, but one of the cats acts like he's starving even though he's eating the same amount as he was before the whole drama started. At mealtimes, they go nuts "reminding" me to put food out. When I do, they go to the bowl, sniff it, then they leave to go play for a while then come back and eat it maybe an hour later. Hilarious.
 

sabrinah

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Sabrinah - I wonder if she's just wanting her dry food, and it will take time for her to get used to the new diet?
She still gets the same amount of dry left out as when she ate canned. It's a mystery :dunno:
 
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