Looking For Easy Home-made Cat Food With Few Resources

[Kitty Lover in Africa]

I live in a village in Africa where there are no commercial cat foods available for hundreds of miles around. I've got to use what is available. I want to give my cat, Fudge, what is good for her, but since I work a lot, I can't be spending hours making stuff all the time. It needs to be easy to fix.

I've been giving her canned meat, which is certainly easy and she likes it just fine, but I've been wondering if it has the nutrition she needs, as it isn't specifically cat food, or even pet food. Since commercial pet food isn't an option, I have to choose local meat. Is ground beef sufficient? Chicken isn't a good option. I'd have to buy live chickens, and that is far too much trouble to do on a regular basis.

The few recipes I've looked at so far seem to require a lot of extra vitamin supplements, and I can't get all those here, however strongly the sites may recommend them. What can I use in their place? Fudge hunts a fair bit since I live in a village with a lot of tasty critters for her to catch. Will the wild food she catches be enough to supplement the diet I give her?

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi! Welcome!!
Is that your Fudge in your avatar photo? What a sweetie!

I believe that the wild food she is catching should help a lot regarding supplementing the food you're giving her

 

[daftcat75]

Meat alone is not enough. She will become calcium deficient. For the time being, let her hunt as much as she can because she has a better handle on this than you do.

Can you get eggs? Or more specifically egg shells? You can powder up the egg shells to make a calcium supplement. A google search will have the recipe and amounts of this egg shell calcium to add to the ground meat.

Next you'll want organ meats: liver and heart primarily. Google will tell you the ratios. You can mix all the cuts or feed them separately as long as the ratio all works out in the end.

This gets you a pretty good coverage but there will still be some vitamins and minerals missing. I *think* but I'm not a vet or an expert on raw feeding here, but I think her hunting could make up most of the other nutrients.

If you're going to make your own cat food with your limited access to resources, I would say your number one goal should be to balance the phosphorous in the meat with a calcium source. Homemade eggshell calcium is probably the easiest for you.

 

[daftcat75]

Even if it's inconvenient to get eggs on a regular basis, you may not need very many to make up a good amount of egg shell calcium.

 

[Kitty Lover in Africa]

Thank you all! Yes that is Fudge in my avatar photo. She's a real sweetheart!

I can usually get eggs - though it can be a bit hard this time of year, as this is the hottest time of year, and the chickens aren't in the mood for laying. And even the eggs they do lay go bad quickly in this heat. But I usually manage to have a small supply on hand.

Organ meat sounds like a great idea. "Innards" are available here - people regularly eat them with sauces. I've never been a fan of them myself, but maybe Fudge would be! And in any case it would probably be better for her than the processed canned non-pet food that I've been giving her. Probably cheaper too. :-)

 

[Furballsmom]

Let us know how things go

By the way, regarding the eggs, you can feed some raw egg yolk but the egg white should be cooked. Some people cook the white and then add the yolk to make a slurry. She doesn't need the eggs every day, I don't believe.

and anything you do provide for you would need to be unseasoned/unsalted.

I think you're marvelous for looking out for your kitty

 

[daftcat75]

It all has to be a balance. Switching from meat to organs doesn't solve the lack of calcium in that diet. This should be your first priority.

How to make your own eggshell powder

But then a diet that's too heavy in organs can be too much fat, not enough protein. As well, all that rich organ meat will loosen her stools. Her diet should be about 80% meat, 10% organ meat, 10% bone. But since bone is difficult to source if you're not going to grind your own (or feed her small prey like mice and small birds), I encourange you to make an eggshell calcium powder that you can add to her meat and organs to strike the right balance.

If you're not going to aim for the right nutritional balance, I'd say let her feed herself and keep whatever you give her within her treat budget (no more than 10% of her daily calories.)

 

[lisahe]

If you're not going to aim for the right nutritional balance, I'd say let her feed herself and keep whatever you give her within her treat budget (no more than 10% of her daily calories.)

Prey model feeding can get complicated because of the bones and organs. Here's an introduction with basics and more details behind the percentages that daftcat75 mentioned...

I agree with daftcat75's thought that it's best to let Fudge feed herself as much as possible if it's not in the cards to balance a prey model diet according to the percentages. Although some plain, fresh meat is fine, the canned stuff may have added salt or other ingredients that aren't particularly good for cats. (Which isn't to say that they might not be very helpful emergency food if you face shortages!)

 

[Kitty Lover in Africa]

I'm still researching the DIY vitamin supplement thing... I'm trying to figure out how much to give her. From looking at other sites, it sounds like too much can be just as bad as not enough. It's impossible for me to know exactly how much prey she catches, though I know she catches a lot more in rainy season than in dry season. How can I be sure that if I add things like eggs to her diet, that I'm not giving her too much?

 

[Kitty Lover in Africa]

Incidentally, I've decided that cooked food would be better than raw in my case. I know all too well the condition of the meat market here, and I feel sure that raw meat from there would have a lot of nasty bacteria. Cooking should eliminate that - at least, I haven't gotten sick on well-cooked meat, so it should be safe for the cat.

 

[daftcat75]

Can you order a pre-mix like EZ Complete? This will make your life easier as you only need to add one thing to the meat. It's already balanced for you. As long as the food you make is nutritionally balanced, you don't have to worry about oversupplementation.

Food Fur Life - EZ Homemade raw food for pets!

 

[Kitty Lover in Africa]

Can you order a pre-mix like EZ Complete? This will make your life easier as you only need to add one thing to the meat. It's already balanced for you. As long as the food you make is nutritionally balanced, you don't have to worry about oversupplementation.

Food Fur Life - EZ Homemade raw food for pets!

Thanks. Ordering pet food or supplements isn't a good option. I would probably have to order it from the US, which is super-expensive in shipping costs, and besides, the timing of any package getting here is very unpredictable - can take two weeks or two months or two years.

 

[daftcat75]

Okay. Then your first priority for feeding homemade should be supplementing with calcium. Since ordering anything is out, get eggshells and make eggshell calcium from one of the earlier posts I made. If you’re not going to do this much, you may as well let her feed herself as feeding her only meat can lead to a calcium deficiency (bad bones, bad teeth) and kidney disease from too much phosphorous and not enough calcium.

A cat should be eating 3-6% of his bodyweight per day. For a 10 lb cat, that’s 5 to 10 oz of food per day. Until you can balance her recipe, I would recommend feeding her no more than 1 oz (10% of her total food) of unbalanced meat, whether raw or cooked. You are her treats. Not her food. She can do better on her own until you get your cat food or supplement situation in order.

 

[Furballsmom]

I don't know of a way, other than monitoring her pee and most especially her poop, to know if she's getting too much of something (exceptions perhaps by blood tests). This of course is inaccurate for mostly everything, except if she's becoming constipated from too much bone, or even eggshell.

Since she's an outdoor kitty that will be challenging as well.

I'm wondering if you might possibly talk to a nutritionist? And/Or research the nutrient composition of a mouse for example (frozen mice are sold so I'm thinking that information should be available), and then err on the (very) low side for everything that you do, especially with vitamins, minerals et al where the excess isn't excreted.

Would that work for you? I'm admittedly not really understanding why you feel that you need to go to such great lengths when she is eating for herself, but if she is losing weight in the summer then of course it makes sense.

 

[Kitty Lover in Africa]

Thanks for the advice, all. My desire is not to go over the top and cook banquets for my cat, but just to make sure the food I give her is reasonably healthy. She's been a bit sick a couple of times in the past year, and I've wondered if a poorly balanced diet may have played a role - that's why I've been putting more effort into finding out about cat nutrition. Anyway, I've found several adjustments I can make which won't take too many resources or time, and I'm working on adjusting her diet gradually (because I've also read that it is bad to change diet too suddenly). Thanks for your help.

 

[Furballsmom]

She's been a bit sick a couple of times in the past year

Are you able to obtain L-Lysine? This might be of help in addition to your supplementing her diet if she has another situation of getting sick.

I know you said it's expensive, but if it isn't prohibitively so and you can manage it, a one-time purchase might possibly work?

Anyway, let us know how things go

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi! I wanted to mention this, from a TCS Article Feeding Raw to Cats - Safety Concerns since you commented you'll be cooking the food;

While the primary focus of this article is public health risks, and how to properly feed RAW bones to your cat will be addressed in a separate article "Prey Model Raw: the Basics,” feeding bones improperly IS a risk when making homemade cat food. If feeding ground, properly grinding bones presents little risk. But when feeding bone-in meals, two basic principles minimize the potential choking, obstruction, or perforation hazard:

• 
  NEVER feed cooked bones, even if ground;
• 
  Think “mouse-sized” and feed appropriately sized-bones to your cat (that would naturally eat very small prey animals).

And if you don't mind, let me post a couple more articles
Raw Feeding For Cats: The Ingredients

Raw Feeding Cats: Calcium And Bones

 

[Kitty Lover in Africa]

Thank you, I've been able to make my own calcium supplement out of crushed eggshells, and after working out the correct proportions, I'm mixing it with cooked meat (ordinary meat, not the canned meat). Fudge seems to like it much better than the canned stuff I was giving her. I think she seems healthier and livelier too, but that could be my imagination. :-) Anyway, it seems to be working well.

I hope I can acquire some proper store-bought cat food sometime, and maybe some of the other supplements that have been suggested, either by ordering them or by getting it from the capital (there is a lot more stuff available in the capital than in my village, but the capital is like 500 miles away, and some of the roads are really terrible). I'm waiting a bit on the order though, as the post office is having problems and I haven't received any mail for over a month, so I'd better wait on ordering anything until that gets sorted out.

Anyway, it's going much better already, and I'll keep on working on it as best I can with what I've got. Thank you!

 

[daftcat75]

Great job on the homemade eggshell calcium.

Now that you have the calcium covered, I think the next important thing to add would be organ meats. Liver mostly but heart and other organs are good too. Egg yolk would be good too. You can make dried egg yolk powder and use that so you don’t have to worry about an unstable egg supply.

 

[Furballsmom]

think she seems healthier and livelier too, but that could be my imagination. :-) Anyway, it seems to be working well.

Good for you!! And I'm thinking it's not your imagination