Miscalculated for years

[F+V]

I've been feeding my two cats since they were kittens for almost 6 years and haven't changed the recipe much.
Recently, I've been taking my cats a lot to the vet and revisited the online sources for recipes and realized that my recipe uses too much of everything (water, egg yolks, raw glandular supp, fish oil, vitamin B complex, vitamin E, lite iodized salt) except for taurine which was half the required amount

For 5.7kg (12.6lbs) of chicken thighs with bones, I was using:
correct amount in green
- water 8 cups 6 cups
- 16 egg yolks 11 yolks
- 16 raw glandular supplement 11 capsules
- 4 tsp taurine powder 7-8 tsp
- 16 fish oil 11-12 capsules
- 16 vitamin B complex 11-12 capsules
- 8 vitamin E 6 capsules
- 6 tsp lite iodized salt 4.5 tsp
- 380g (0.84 lbs) livers 570g (1.25 lbs)
- 1140g (2.5 lbs) hearts
- 532g (1.2 lbs) bones
- 5168g (11.4 lbs) meat w/o skin

I don't know how I ended up with these amounts. I referenced the usual sources like feline nutrition, cat nutrition, cat centric, Dr. Pierson's, etc.
I admit I'm terrible at math but still am perplexed by this recipe to be honest.

Both cats have slightly abnormal hearts, although it's still too early to diagnose it as DCM, HCM and no medication is required at this stage. Also, their small intestines have thick muscle layers than normal but the vet says it's ok as long as blood test values are normal and they are doing fine.

They have high cholesterol levels too. Did I adversely contribute to the conditions of my cats? Can someone please check my revised recipe in green? I understand that I can safely add more fish oil and taurine and my cats probably can benefit from more of them.

 

[Furballsmom]

Do you, or does your vet have a nutritionist you could talk with, regarding what effects, good or bad, if any there might be? I'm wondering if the cholesterol might come down now that they're getting the appropriate amount of yolks?

What I'm also wondering is since you were giving extra water, that it may have helped them flush out the salt. Too little taurine could be scary but here again, it was offset somewhat because they also get it from the chicken to a degree, and you're making adjustments in time to avoid complications anyway.

 

[Jabzilla]

Hey there,
I HIGHLY recommend using a formulation sheet like this one Raw Fed and Nerdy Formulation Sheet - Raw Fed and Nerdy to check the nutritional information for your recipe. The sheet uses your cat's weight, calorie intake, and metabolic energy to calculate how much of every protein, fatty acid, vitamin, and mineral your cat needs based on NRC, FEDIAF, or AAFCO (you can switch between them on the sheet) requirements. If you plug in all of the ingredients and supplements you're using onto the sheet, it will show you what's too much/not enough/possibly missing. If you use a sheet, there isn't any guess work and you will know exactly how much of every nutrient your cat is getting from their food.

 

[Jabzilla]

I also highly recommend taking their nutrition course as well. It's free and packed with valuable information to help you understand the role of every vitamin, mineral, the balance between them, fatty acid, and protein for our pets. It takes the mystery out of making pet food and enables you to understand the why behind the ingredients that you're using. Gaining that level of understanding also enables you to make changes to the recipes without fear, in case your cats cant tolerate or stop wanting to eat chicken, for example. You wouldn't have to go scrambling to find someone's recipe that doesn't use chicken. You could use your knowledge of nutrition and formulation sheet to make a recipe using whatever other meats you want. Using a formulation sheet would also show you exactly how much fat is in the current diet you're feeding your cats and will enable you to reduce it to whatever amount is best to help with their cholesterol.

Free Raw and Cooked Canine Diet Nutrition Course - Raw Fed & Nerdy (rawfedandnerdy.com)

 

[Jabzilla]

Having taken the class myself and based on my own weekly use of the formulation sheet for my own cats, I can tell you right off the bat the recipe you've listed is very high in arachidonic acid, which is an omega 6 fatty acid. Hearts, chicken egg yolks, and chicken meat are all high in that type of omega 6 which could be contributing to your cats having abnormal heart results and higher cholesterol. There is a safe upper limit for arachidonic acid based on the NRC requirements for cats and it's very possible that the recipe you've shared surpasses that. The recipe would need to be checked with the sheet to see by how much. Omega 6's are also pro inflammatory and the high amount of them in the diet could be why your cats have thickened intestines as well.

You're correct that taurine can safely be increased, as excess amount of it are excreted in the cats urine rather than being stored in the body. For fish oil, it's important to know how much EPA and DHA is in it, as that's the actual amount of omega 3 content. There are a lot of fish oils out there that claim to have a high amount of oil in their capsules but have low amounts of combined EPA and DHA when you read the label. If you use a formulation sheet and add the fish oil that you're using in there, it will tell you how much omega 3's your cats will be getting from it. The sheet also includes the ratio for omega 6 to omega 3's that your recipe has and those value update as you adjust the ingredients.

 

[F+V]

Do you, or does your vet have a nutritionist you could talk with, regarding what effects, good or bad, if any there might be? I'm wondering if the cholesterol might come down now that they're getting the appropriate amount of yolks?

What I'm also wondering is since you were giving extra water, that it may have helped them flush out the salt. Too little taurine could be scary but here again, it was offset somewhat because they also get it from the chicken to a degree, and you're making adjustments in time to avoid complications anyway.

That was exactly my thinking, and that's probably why they aren't sick/dead yet! A behaviorist I have talked to knows a nutritionist in CA but I don't think they are pro raw meat diet.
For now I just ordered Hawthorn berry, l'carnitine, CoQ10, D-Ribose supplements for their hearts.

 

[F+V]

Hey there,
I HIGHLY recommend using a formulation sheet like this one Raw Fed and Nerdy Formulation Sheet - Raw Fed and Nerdy to check the nutritional information for your recipe. The sheet uses your cat's weight, calorie intake, and metabolic energy to calculate how much of every protein, fatty acid, vitamin, and mineral your cat needs based on NRC, FEDIAF, or AAFCO (you can switch between them on the sheet) requirements. If you plug in all of the ingredients and supplements you're using onto the sheet, it will show you what's too much/not enough/possibly missing. If you use a sheet, there isn't any guess work and you will know exactly how much of every nutrient your cat is getting from their food.

Thank you. I wish I came across this 5 years ago.

 

[Jabzilla]

Thank you. I wish I came across this 5 years ago.

You're welcome. I try to bring up the sheet and course as much as I can and wish it would be added to the pinned post about raw feeding. I too used to follow the Pierson recipe, but as I learned more about nutrition, I realized there were better resources out there. To be fair, these sheets didn't exist back when Pierson's site was made. I just try to let folks know that the resources are out there now, as yeah, years ago there wasn't much more to go by than Dr. Pierson's page.

 

[F+V]

The spreadsheet is interesting at first glance, but I feel the results are skewed because available variables are lacking unless I haven't figured out a way to use this properly. For instance, I can't add chicken thigh bones to calculate minerals, can't add vitamin b complex, egg yolks, water, or lite iodized salt. I also had to convert the omega 3 of Carlson fish oil because the list only has Nordic Naturals. If I enter the remaining ingredients, the results show that the recipe is lacking in minerals, vitamin K, etc. and high in phosphorus, sodium and selenium. It would also be nice that the spreadsheet differentiated organic and conventionally raised chickens.

EDIT: new items can be added in the food base, but it'll be challenging to analyze the composition. I can easily add Iodized salt because nutrition facts are on the label but not so simple when it comes to bones or egg yolks.

 

[Jabzilla]

The spreadsheet is interesting at first glance, but I feel the results are skewed because available variables are lacking unless I haven't figured out a way to use this properly. For instance, I can't add chicken thigh bones to calculate minerals, can't add vitamin b complex, egg yolks, water, or lite iodized salt. I also had to convert the omega 3 of Carlson fish oil because the list only has Nordic Naturals. If I enter the remaining ingredients, the results show that the recipe is lacking in thiamin (vitamin b), vitamin K, etc. and too much phosphorus, sodium and selenium. It would also be nice that the spreadsheet differentiated organic and conventionally raised chickens.

Chicken egg yolks are in there, I have them on my sheet. You can also add whatever vit B complex you're using, and the iodized salt that you're using. You can do that by created a new column in the Food Database tab. For the vitamin B, you'd just enter the values of each vitamin B that your complex contains. Chicken thigh RMB's should be in there as well. You can add the info for the brand of fish oil that you use into the Food Database as well. If you have nutrition facts for organic chicken vs conventional chicken, that can also be added to a new column in the food database as well. There's no need to feel limited by what the database starts with. I've added info to mine as well for things like pheasant, llama, the particular vitamin E oil that I have, etc. It's very flexible. Water can be added in the food database as well, though I would formulate the recipe first so you can see how much water it will inherently have from the meat you're using.

 

[Jabzilla]

Once you’ve got your vitamin B complex in there, the thiamine shouldn’t be too low, assuming the vit B complex contains thiamine. If not, pork tenderloins are an excellent source of it. Vitamin K is synthesized in the body using vitamin D, as finding a meat source of it is difficult. Meat and bones both contain phosphorous. If the ca: P ratio is off, you can use ground eggshells to increase the calcium without skyrocking the phosphorus with it. Getting the sodium down is much more of a balancing act and can be done by using a variety of different meats in the recipie. I don’t think it will be possible to lower it using only chicken thighs. Using a kelp supplement for your iodine source instead of lite salt will help lower the sodium too.

 

[Jabzilla]

I just looked through the chicken section of the sheet and yeah, it looks like thigh RMB’s aren’t on there. I think using the entry for chicken leg quarter RMB’s would be okay as a stand in. You would just use the total weight for the thigh with the bone in for that, as the RMB entries include the meat on the bone as well in the nutritional information.

Organ meats tend to be rich in selenium. If its too high in your recipe, you can reduce some of the organ meats or increase the calcium. If you put eggshells in there as a test and increase the amount of them, you'll see the selenium value go from being marked as high to marked as normal, as all of the minerals are connected and relative to one another. Reading about minerals in their free nutrition course helps quite a bit. Feel free to ask if you have anymore questions, as the sheet was a lot when I first started using it too.

 

[Jabzilla]

Oh, lastly, if you scroll down on the Recipe Builder page you'll see the nutrient contribution section. If you use the drop down menu there to select sodium, for example, it will show you all of the ingredients that are contributing sodium to the recipe and it will be in order from highest to lowest contribution. It's very handy when a nutrient is too high and you want to figure out how to lower it.

Lastly, lastly, if you decide to use a kelp supplement for iodine, I would avoid using enough to make the iodine section 100%. That's because the inherent iodine in food isn't something that's calculated by the USDA database so we dont know how much is already inherently in the meat. Since too much iodine causes hyperthyroidism, I err on the side of caution and only use enough kelp to bring the iodine section to about 50%, which for Rocket is 251ug of iodine for a week's worth of food.

Sorry for adding so much on here. I don't get to talk about the spreadsheet and formulating cat food very often so I'm excited.

 

[F+V]

Oh thanks for the tip! I could add the new items in the food base but still can only find "chicken egg" on my sheet which is version 4.
After adding vitamin B and others, it now looks much better. Phosphorus is still high at 271%, and so is Sodium at 601%. Will have to look into kelp supplement and turkey/rabbit meat now.

 

[Jabzilla]

Oh thanks for the tip! I could add the new items in the food base but still can only find "chicken egg" on my sheet which is version 4.
After adding vitamin B and others, it now looks much better. Phosphorus is still high at 271%, and so is Sodium at 601%. Will have to look into kelp supplement and turkey/rabbit meat now.

You're welcome. Since chicken egg yolks are missing on your sheet, you can use their USDA function on the food database page to add it. There's a link on there to the USDA food database and if you look up egg, you'll find a page with the info for raw egg yolks. You can then copy the FDC ID number and on the sheet, go to extensions -> formulation sheet add ons -> USDA FDC -> get report and paste that number into the box. That will bring over all the info for egg yolks from the USDA site to the food database page on your sheet. It automatically adds new entries to the end of the sheet. You'll just have to write in the name and say that it's an animal source.

Or just grab the number from here since I had to look it up to see that searching for eggs gives you the result. FoodData Central (usda.gov) As for kelp, if interested, I've been using the Now Foods brand one and haven't had any issues with it. Oh, speaking of which, for supplements I high recommend getting veggie capsules instead of tablets. Since its far easier to measure 1/2 and 1/4 of the contents of a capsule than trying to divide up a tablet. Plus tablets have extra ingredients in them to create the physical tablet form, while I just use the contents of the veggie caps and toss the empty capsule in the trash.

 

[F+V]

Lastly, lastly, if you decide to use a kelp supplement for iodine, I would avoid using enough to make the iodine section 100%. That's because the inherent iodine in food isn't something that's calculated by the USDA database so we dont know how much is already inherently in the meat. Since too much iodine causes hyperthyroidism, I err on the side of caution and only use enough kelp to bring the iodine section to about 50%, which for Rocket is 251ug of iodine for a week's worth of food.

That's what I was wondering because I would have to use 44 capsules of kelp supplement to meet the requirement! That's a very good point.

 

[F+V]

you can use their USDA function on the food database page to add it. There's a link on there to the USDA food database and if you look up egg, you'll find a page with the info for raw egg yolks. You can then copy the FDC ID number and on the sheet, go to extensions -> formulation sheet add ons -> USDA FDC -> get report and paste that number into the box. That will bring over all the info for egg yolks from the USDA site to the food database page on your sheet. It automatically adds new entries to the end of the sheet. You'll just have to write in the name and say that it's an animal source.

That's very clever to be able to pull data like that! I could add egg yolks now, although selenium value went up. I will have to toggle egg shells and organ meats to bring this back to the normal range. And yes, I prefer veggie capsules.
I'm playing with this for hours now

 

[Jabzilla]

That's very clever to be able to pull data like that! I could add egg yolks now, although selenium value went up. I will have to toggle egg shells and organ meats to bring this back to the normal range. And yes, I prefer veggie capsules.
I'm playing with this for hours now

Yeah, that makes bringing in new ingredients much easier! I'm glad you're having fun with the sheet too! It can feel like putting together a puzzle and is satisfying to create multiple recipes with various food combinations. <3 I'm glad I mentioned the thing about the iodine too, as 44 capsules of kelp is way too many!

 

[F+V]

At the moment calcium, phosphorus, sodium are high at 208%, 263%, and 244% respectively.
However, Ca to Phos ratio is fine at 0.9, and if there was just a column for thigh bones, these values would normalize. Calcium will go down if I use a fewer thigh bones too. Also, their blood phosphate levels are within the normal range, so I don't think I should worry too much about those elevated calcium and phos numbers.

As for sodium, the comment says "Sodium will increase with the addition of raw meaty bones. This is not of concern for healthy dogs."
Sodium goes up to 416% if I use Morton Lite Iodized Salt instead of Kelp supplement, but in order to meet the potassium requirement, I'll have to add 40 capsules of potassium citrate supplement which seems a lot. I think this is still better than elevating sodium level by using the lite salt, but what got me thinking is that on Dr. Pierson's page, she says that the iodized salt is not an optional ingredient because chicken parts don't include a thyroid gland. She goes on to say that without blood of the poultry we are missing sodium and potassium. But without salt, the sodium level is already pretty high from thighs and organs when I look at the spreadsheet. She also says to use potassium citrate 14 capsules x 99mg for 3lbs of poultry if you can't source iodized salt, so that's roughly in line with 40 capsules of potassium citrate required for my recipe of 13lbs chickens. What's interesting is that if you use the iodized salt per her recipe, you only get 17% of required iodine.

Incidentally, I add raw glandular supplement in my recipe.

 

[Jabzilla]

That all sounds good to me. Pork is also a good source of potassium if you need to increase that and don't want to use a supplement. I dont know how much food you're making, but 40 capsules of anything sounds like a lot. I make a new batch of food every week, so all of the supplements I use only need .25 to .75 of a capsule. Iodine is what they would get the most from the thyroid gland. Does your glandular supplement include the thyroid and if so, does the nutrition info for it include the iodine content?