- Joined
- Apr 16, 2014
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- 59
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Thanks again to this forum, and all of the advice I've gotten - both on this thread and others - about how to safely transition Apollo and Artemis onto raw food.
The twins came to me on Monday, and have been eating the wet food their foster mom gave them to help ease settling into my apartment. I've been preparing for them for quite a while, and have the long-term plan of using Hare-Today, and cutting the bone percentage of the grinds with ground chicken or turkey, and some organ to keep the organ percentage up. I originally planned on starting them with meat I ground at home, and then transitioning to small chunks and larger chunks, but I also plan on buying Hare-Today in bulk, and scissoring up 32 lbs of chicken/turkey is starting to sound like a terrible idea.
So that part is still being figured out (perhaps I'll grind part and scissor up part.)
However, it all depended on the kittens liking raw in the first place! And I'd rather not spend $150 on purchasing the minimum amount of Hare-Today and a grinder only to have them hate it. So today, I decided to scissor up a small amount of raw chicken to add to their wet food - less than 15% of their weekly intake, for sure - and mix it in with their wet food. Dun dun dun....
Success! Artemis gobbled her portion up, and Apollo's portion, and looked at me for more, so I mixed up a little more. (Apollo, unfortunately, got poop stuck to his butt so I think he wasn't in the mood for eating for a little bit, even after I cleaned it up.) She then ate most of the chicken bits in Apollo's bowl, and headed out to groom. I was curious about Apollo since he hadn't eaten yet, but when I came back he was licking his lips - and I knew there was some chicken in there too. Hooray! These were pretty small pieces, but they still weren't pate consistency like their wet food, so I was super glad to see that Artemis (and, presumably, Apollo) got a little chewing action in.
Next step: start transitioning them to Instinct Raw for a week to see how they take to eating raw as a staple, and then - Hare-Today! I'll continue updating this thread as I trouble-shoot the transition. Hopefully, it'll help other newbies and the forum at large (so I don't end up spamming with a lot of small questions!)
The twins came to me on Monday, and have been eating the wet food their foster mom gave them to help ease settling into my apartment. I've been preparing for them for quite a while, and have the long-term plan of using Hare-Today, and cutting the bone percentage of the grinds with ground chicken or turkey, and some organ to keep the organ percentage up. I originally planned on starting them with meat I ground at home, and then transitioning to small chunks and larger chunks, but I also plan on buying Hare-Today in bulk, and scissoring up 32 lbs of chicken/turkey is starting to sound like a terrible idea.
However, it all depended on the kittens liking raw in the first place! And I'd rather not spend $150 on purchasing the minimum amount of Hare-Today and a grinder only to have them hate it. So today, I decided to scissor up a small amount of raw chicken to add to their wet food - less than 15% of their weekly intake, for sure - and mix it in with their wet food. Dun dun dun....
Success! Artemis gobbled her portion up, and Apollo's portion, and looked at me for more, so I mixed up a little more. (Apollo, unfortunately, got poop stuck to his butt so I think he wasn't in the mood for eating for a little bit, even after I cleaned it up.) She then ate most of the chicken bits in Apollo's bowl, and headed out to groom. I was curious about Apollo since he hadn't eaten yet, but when I came back he was licking his lips - and I knew there was some chicken in there too. Hooray! These were pretty small pieces, but they still weren't pate consistency like their wet food, so I was super glad to see that Artemis (and, presumably, Apollo) got a little chewing action in.
Next step: start transitioning them to Instinct Raw for a week to see how they take to eating raw as a staple, and then - Hare-Today! I'll continue updating this thread as I trouble-shoot the transition. Hopefully, it'll help other newbies and the forum at large (so I don't end up spamming with a lot of small questions!)