Modifying our recipe: less heart, or more bone? (soft poop)

[carmina piranha]

Hi, everyone! 

Today or tomorrow we need to make another batch of raw.  We've been making our food since January, pretty much following Catinfo's recipe, except no cooking.  And we add breast, hearts and gizzards to thin out the bone, rather than debone chicken legs.  We started out with a bone % that was quite high, and have been decreasing it with every batch. Tracy from catcentric.org recommended that we let the bone % get low enough that we see the stools get too soft, then increase from there.  That way we'll know that the poop is on the comfortable end of the spectrum.

Well, I think we have reached that point.  Bone % of the last batch was 12%  I've spied on our adult cat having softer poops, where there's a little stinky (!!) liquid coming out at the same time as the stool.  A couple of times she has dripped a drop onto the floor after hopping out of the catbox.

   When scooping the poop it seems normal, although I haven't tested its hardness. (Edited to add that I just did a test--her poop IS soft, a couple hours later)

Does this seem like typical not-enough-bone poop?  Or could it be too-much-heart?  (heart is now 8% of the meat & bone total, although it was that % for the last batch too) Or could it be something else?

Thanks!

 

[ldg]

If the heart % has stayed the same, I'd bump the calcium.

Personally, I prefer to err on the side of more calcium than less. It's one of those potential problems that wouldn't turn up in blood work until there's an actual problem, because the cats' systems will rob their own bones for calcium if they're not getting enough from the diet. I target a calciumhosphorus ratio of about 1.3:1 (and I supplement with eggshell or MCHA). A mouse is 1.1:1, but feral cat diets reveal a Ca ratio of 1.5:1. The thinking here is that there may be an issue of bioavailability of calcium from bone, though they don't know why the Ca ratio in hunting feral cats is so high.