In search of a recipe

[She's a witch]

I'm gathering strength to start my own homemade raw and to maximize chances that my cats like it, I'd like that to be similar to their current commercial raw that they love. So I'm posting their recipes below, if anyone can direct me to the recipe of something similar that can be prepared at home, I'd greatly appreciate it:

WIld Coast Raw, Free Range Chicken, boneless:
Chicken (breast&thighs), Chicken Gizzards, Chicken Heart, Chicken Liver, Calcium Carbonate, Whole Dried Egg, Cod Liver Oil, Psyllium Seed Husk,Gelatin,Kelp, Taurine, Vitamin E Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Manganese Proteinate

Natural Pet Pantry, Chicken:
Boneless USDA Chicken Thigh, Chicken Heart, Chicken Liver, Egg Yolk, Montmorillonite Clay, Eggshell Powder, Psyllium Husks, Green Lipped Mussel Powder, Nutritional Yeast, Kelp

They have similar recipes for other meats too, so recipe with Turkey would also be an option.

 

[Azazel]

I feed a boneless turkey/chicken recipe and am happy to help you get started.

I posted the recipe previously here: Post Your Recipes! (with Pics!)

I have tweaked it a bit since I posted that (I now use 5000-6000mg fish oil, 50mg B-50 (the whole vitamin), and a teaspoon or two of gelatin).

You can replace turkey with chicken in the recipe. I do both and alternate between feedings.

I also have the complete nutrient profile of the recipe that mschauer did for me. If you want me to email it to you send me a PM.

You can also just use feline-nutriton's recipe and replace the bone with egghsell. They explain how to do it further down the page: Feline Nutrition Recipe

 

[She's a witch]

Thank you, Azazel! Your recipe sounds much less complicated than these commercial foods it seems I could crack it. I still have lots of reading to do, some equipment to get and some butchers to test, but I think I could start later this month. I wish I could say I'm excited about all that
Do you use store bought eggshell powder or do you prepare it yourself?

 

[Azazel]

Thank you, Azazel! Your recipe sounds much less complicated than these commercial foods it seems I could crack it. I still have lots of reading to do, some equipment to get and some butchers to test, but I think I could start later this month. I wish I could say I'm excited about all that
Do you use store bought eggshell powder or do you prepare it yourself?

I use store bought because I’m super lazy but I hear it’s easy to make. I’m not sure how easy it is to find eggshell powder but there’s a local lady here who makes it and sells it through a couple raw pet food stores.

 

[Tobermory]

Do you use store bought eggshell powder or do you prepare it yourself?

I make my own following the instructions at feline-nutrition.org:

Remove any egg white from the shells but leave the membrane as it contains valuable nutrients. Dry them by baking at 300°F for 10 minutes. Grind them in a clean coffee grinder or food processor. Wait for 10 minutes before opening the grinder to let the powder settle and avoid a cloud of powder coming out. One large egg will make about one teaspoon of powder. Store the powder in an air-tight glass jar.​

They also emphasize that it’s much, much better to weigh the powder than to use measuring spoons. Depending on how finely you grind the shells, you’re going to get very different amounts if you use a volume measure. They recommend three grams per pound. That includes the weight of the organs as well as the muscle meat.

I initially used my mini food processor, but I couldn’t get a fine enough grind and wow! It’s incredibly loud to grind eggshells! The shells also badly scored the inside of the bowl. I bought an inexpensive manual coffee grinder.

 

[She's a witch]

I make my own following the instructions at feline-nutrition.org:

Remove any egg white from the shells but leave the membrane as it contains valuable nutrients. Dry them by baking at 300°F for 10 minutes. Grind them in a clean coffee grinder or food processor. Wait for 10 minutes before opening the grinder to let the powder settle and avoid a cloud of powder coming out. One large egg will make about one teaspoon of powder. Store the powder in an air-tight glass jar.​

They also emphasize that it’s much, much better to weigh the powder than to use measuring spoons. Depending on how finely you grind the shells, you’re going to get very different amounts if you use a volume measure. They recommend three grams per pound. That includes the weight of the organs as well as the muscle meat.

I initially used my mini food processor, but I couldn’t get a fine enough grind and wow! It’s incredibly loud to grind eggshells! The shells also badly scored the inside of the bowl. I bought an inexpensive manual coffee grinder.

Thank you for these tips! I'm European, we use weigh for everything, I find volume based weighing/measuring utterly confusing I have very good food scale so that's covered. I planned to use very good immersion blender that I already have so I'll give it a try first, and then move to the coffee grinder which I'd have to buy in case the blender will prove too difficult.

 

[daftcat75]

Thank you for these tips! I'm European, we use weigh for everything, I find volume based weighing/measuring utterly confusing I have very good food scale so that's covered. I planned to use very good immersion blender that I already have so I'll give it a try first, and then move to the coffee grinder which I'd have to buy in case the blender will prove too difficult.

Use a coffee grinder. An immersion blender has that lip around the blade making it difficult to get a uniform grind as the rotating blade will send everything else to the edges where the blade won't reach. With a coffee grinder, you can shake it all around to make sure nothing hides from the blade.

Besides, a coffee grinder will be useful for making liver or heart powder out of freeze-dried liver and heart. There's a calculation to convert freeze-dried to fresh. Make sure you add the moisture back lost to freeze-drying by adding extra water.

Using Freeze Dried Liver in Place of Fresh

When first introducing organs during the transition, many of us find that our cats do not like or cannot keep down fresh, raw liver. Clearly if there are issues, the rate of introduction should be...

www.rawfeedingforibdcats.org

This is helpful for weathering supply issues. I can't feed Krista chicken and turkey hearts are sometimes hard to come by from the butcher. When I don't have enough hearts to make a batch, it's helpful that I can use freeze-dried instead.

Speaking of grinders, a manual grinder is not a bad way to start until you're certain your cat will eat the food you make.

The other tip I have for you is, if you can, make 1 pound (2 kg) batches until you're certain your cat likes your food and you've got your cat-food making operation down. You will likely make mistakes when you're starting or you might need to make adjustments to the recipe. It's wasteful to make full batches until you're confident in your recipe and the logistics. And the other suggestion I would make is to portion your food into 1 or 2 oz (28 or 56 g) sandwich baggies pressed as flat as you can to both minimize contact with air and the development of freezer burn but also to speed up thaw time. You can grab a baggie from the freezer and thaw it under lukewarm water (slightly cooler than you like your bath water) in a few minutes. Or you can grab the next day's baggie(s) from the freezer the night before and thaw them overnight in the fridge.

One more tip, document and date your recipe and then label each portioned baggie with the date. Not only do you know how old your food is, but if you're tweaking the recipe with each batch, you can match the baggie to the batch by the date.

 

[daftcat75]

And one more tip. Stage the new food slowly. As long as you have a commercial raw recipe they like and are doing well on it, don't remove that until you're confident in your homemade recipe and how it treats your cats. I like to do extra snack meals or transition only one meal until I'm confident enough about the food to transition the other meals. If it doesn't work, you simply stop offering the snack meal or you transition that one meal back.

 

[She's a witch]

thanks daftcat75 for the tips! Some of the parts of feeding raw I've already mastered; I've been buying commercial frozen raw in big packages so I already have a good process in place to portion the meat and thaw: I've been using glass containers and it works great for us, although it takes space in our rather small freezer.. but there's no way I'm using plastic ziplocks because of environmental reasons, I have some reusable silicon like ones that I can use for that if needed but I'd rather keep them for my veggies I'm hoping that when I start homemade, I won't order Darwin's anymore and that will significantly free the freezer's space. But yeah, I was going to start with very small "batches" anyway, even if I had huge freezer.
The equipment is my biggest issue, as most likely we won't stay where we live for more than 2 years and there's no way we'll move our stuff over the Ocean so I'm trying to be as smart as possible and not buy anything that we will end up throwing away.. and I was hoping to utilize what I already have but yes, I hear you about coffee grinder and I know I'd have to compromise on that one and get something for sure. After all, no point to start all of this if my cats won't eat the food, right. Still hoping to keep it to the minimum.

I was hoping to use freeze dried liver not to deal with the real, slick liver but not sure if I will have an excuse; it seems there are a lot of options for getting good quality meat of all kind where I live, either from butchers or specially for raw fed pets. It seems to me that Seattle is rightly obsessed with pets and quality feeding; my husband's work colleague has just bought a whole cow to feed her dog with... So yeah, getting the good source of meat is the least of my worries, thankfully.