My first cooked chicken cat food!

ldg

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I am going to try the cooked diet.  I have to get the Alnutrin, extra taurine and a grinder.
If using cooked food, and no bone - do you need a grinder? A food processor should work just fine - no? Or even just dicing up the meat. I feed my cats raw, but I don't grind it, and most of them don't eat large chunks. I use scissors to cut up the meat when I feed it to them - one has to be minced, several need bite-sized, and two need their 1.5 oz meals in just a couple strips. But I just sprinkle whatever supplements on top. All you need to do is buy the Alnutrin with eggshell or calcium, and based on the recommended amount for the batch size, just figure out how much is needed for a smaller batch (being the meal size), and sprinkle it on at meal time. :nod:

(We are always here to help for calculations like that. I've found I appreciate having my calculations at least double-checked by other members. :lol3: ).

A picture of one of our meals. You can see it's chunks with stuff sprinkled on top:


 
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ldg

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Wow, mschauer, thanks. That is awesome! :banana1:

ALWAYS nice to have confirmation that something works. :clap:

With that O6:O3 ratio at 20.9:1, I'd think supplementing with some salmon oil, or feeding sardines as a treat would be a good idea. :nod:
 

lcat4

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Wow, I stepped away to do cooking of my own, chicken thighs for the cats and stew beef soup for the family, and I came back to find a full on discussion had occurred.

First - taurine. I've always (unless I forget) add 250mg taurine to my Aluntrin supplemented meat because, until I started cooking, the meat was always pre-ground which has potential taurine loss. I continued the practice when i cook the meat because of the loss there. I didn't know Alnutrin assumed no taurine in the meat. I still have quite a few capsules of taurine, should I just not worry about it anymore? They also get chicken hearts a couple times a week. As an aside, i add 14.1 g Alnutrin to my 2 pounds raw turkey, liver, and water mix. Based on the package, that provides a minimum of 1621 mg taurine for 2 pounds turkey. TC feline package says 2 pound mix provides around 2000 mg (don't have it in front of me). That was another reason I added more, to keep about the same.

Second, I will not deal with the bone because I don't cook the meat that long. If no real benefit, it makes more work to de-bone.

Third, mschauer, I'm curious your impetus to start cooking? I started doing it because Lewis was regurgitating so many raw meats and he keeps the cooked meat down. They now are eating a broader spectrum of meats because I'm comfortable feeding them cooked. But as long as it works, I will continue feeding the raw turkey mix as the base of their meal.

Fourth, Franksmom, I also get my turkey pre-ground from a free range turkey distributer. They clean them by hand, grind the meat, and immediately flash feeeze. Because of the flash freeze, and buying direct, I'm okay feeding it raw. We haven't had a problem at all. You might check to see how your gound turkey is processed.

As for my cooked meats, I've been cooking only a pound or two at a time. I add the liquid, a little water, and Alnutrin right away (after cooled and diced). I then package in snack bags, a couple ounces each. They are then very handy to defrost and add to the raw turkey at meal time.

Thanks for the cooking nutrient info. Something to be aware of, even for my family.
 
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ldg

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mschauer - do you think you'll feed enough cooked meals in one row to know if cooked homemade stools are the same as raw fed stools? I would expect they would be.... :dk: But I'm REALLY curious. One of the complaints I see touted frequently is that cooking destroys the enzymes. Yet we know from the Python (a carnivore) study that the net energy needed to digest cooked is less than raw... but do those enzymes affect bioavailability? And does that impact what comes out? :dk:

I also wonder if cats on a cooked diet need less food than cats on a raw diet: if it takes less energy to digest cooked, then doesn't that mean less calories burned in using it?

Reference on the higher digestibility of cooked, via mschauer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17827047
 
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mschauer

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First - taurine. I've always (unless I forget) add 250mg taurine to my Aluntrin supplemented meat because, until I started cooking, the meat was always pre-ground which has potential taurine loss. I continued the practice when i cook the meat because of the loss there. I didn't know Alnutrin assumed no taurine in the meat. I still have quite a few capsules of taurine, should I just not worry about it anymore? They also get chicken hearts a couple times a week. As an aside, i add 14.1 g Alnutrin to my 2 pounds raw turkey, liver, and water mix. Based on the package, that provides a minimum of 1621 mg taurine for 2 pounds turkey. TC feline package says 2 pound mix provides around 2000 mg (don't have it in front of me). That was another reason I added more, to keep about the same.
The Alnutrin provides plenty of taurine. There's no need to add more. Both Alnutrin and TCFeline exceed the AAFCO minimum recommendation for taurine. The TCFeline just exceeds it by more. You can see in my analysis the Alnutrin provides more than double the minimum recommendation.
Second, I will not deal with the bone because I don't cook the meat that long. If no real benefit, it makes more work to de-bone.
I wanted to use bone in, skin on thighs in the hope they would add some yummy flavor.
Third, mschauer, I'm curious your impetus to start cooking? I started doing it because Lewis was regurgitating so many raw meats and he keeps the cooked meat down. They now are eating a broader spectrum of meats because I'm comfortable feeding them cooked. But as long as it works, I will continue feeding the raw turkey mix as the base of their meal.
I was just curious about how much added work it would be. And I wondered how the kitties would like it because none of mine are wild about raw chicken. I don't intend to stop feeding raw. I'm not even sure I'll be making any more cooked foods. Maybe. I don't know yet.
 

ldg

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I was just curious about how much added work it would be. And I wondered how the kitties would like it because none of mine are wild about raw chicken. I don't intend to stop feeding raw. I'm not even sure I'll be making any more cooked foods. Maybe. I don't know yet.
Great. So if I want to know what happens to stool on cooked, I'd have to conduct the experiment myself. :lol3: Not gonna happen. Well - not yet, anyway. :lol3:
 

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I missed this at first. If you use Alnutrin you don't need to add taurine even if using cooked meat. Since there is so little information available on the taurine content of foods they just assume all the needed taurine has to come from their supplement.

I took at stab at reverse engineering the nutrient profile of Alnutrin w/Calcium from their online calculator and used it to analysis a recipe using it with cooked chicken and liver. All nutrient levels are fine:

Cooked Chicken Dinner w/Alnutrin

What I called 'water' in the recipe is actually the broth after cooking. That broth will have quite a bit of nutritional value so the analysis should in reality be even better than shown.

Edit: I forgot to say that I had to use roasted and simmered entries from the USDA database since they don't have entries for pressure cooking.
The link doesn't work for me. I mean it opens in a new tab but it's blank.
 
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mschauer

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mschauer - do you think you'll feed enough cooked meals in one row to know if cooked homemade stools are the same as raw fed stools? I would expect they would be....
But I'm REALLY curious. One of the complaints I see touted frequently is that cooking destroys the enzymes. Yet we know from the Python (a carnivore) study that the net energy needed to digest cooked is less than raw... but do those enzymes affect bioavailability? And does that impact what comes out?

 
That would be an interesting experiment. Especially with my kitty that has liquid stools when fed a commercial processed food unless a prebiotic/probiotic/digestive enzyme supplement is added to it. I don't plan on feeding them the cooked chicken food exclusively but rather probably just every 4th or 5th meal. But there are others here that seem to be planning to fed a cooked diet exclusively. Maybe one of them can report on that.
I also wonder if cats on a cooked diet need less food than cats on a raw diet: if it takes less  energy to digest cooked, then doesn't that mean less calories burned in using it?

Reference on the higher digestibility of cooked, via mschauer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17827047
Possibly. There could be other factors involved though. That would be a question for a nutritionist.
 
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The link doesn't work for me. I mean it opens in a new tab but it's blank.
Seems to work for others. 


If you like you can pm me an email address and I'll send it to you. 
 
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ldg

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I found a VERY interesting article on cooked vs raw. Though much of it is about vegetables, it does include a discussion of meats - and has further interesting links: http://www.jonbarron.org/article/food-raw-versus-cooked

The relevant discussion:

The Economist recently ran an article on the evolutionary role of cooking. According to Dr. Richard Wrangham, of Harvard University, cooking alters food in three important ways.

- It breaks starch molecules into more digestible fragments.
- It "denatures" protein molecules, so that their amino-acid chains unfold and digestive enzymes can attack them more easily.
- And heat physically softens food. That makes it easier to digest, so even though the stuff is no more calorific, the body requires fewer calories to break it down.

This means that in the stomach and small intestine, where it can be absorbed, cooking increases the share of food digested from 50% to 95%. This is supported by a study in which rats fed on softer pellets (similar to what happens to food after you cook it) weighed 30% more after 26 weeks than rats fed the same weight of standard pellets. The difference was because the rats expended less energy digesting the softer pellets. Think about this for a moment. Making food more digestible (as in cooking) increases the body weight of rats by an astounding 30% in as little as 26 weeks. Can you say whoops?

The bottom line is that Dr Wrangham theorizes that the main cause of the modern epidemic of obesity is not overeating but the rise of processed foods -- which packs on more weight than raw food on a calorie by calorie basis.
 
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lcat4

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My understanding is Vit D from Alnutrin. Egg yolk powder?

I have read similar articles, cooking can increase the bioavailability of proteins and nutrients, while also reducing some nutrients and enzymes. I add enzymes and probiotics, so hopefully it's a good wash.

My cats have been doing the raw/cooked combo for a couple months now and I am reducing their amount fed. Everyone but Clark started gaining weight. Clark's my cancer baby and seems to require more food to maintain. I've dropped them each (not Clark) about 1/2 ounce a day. What I wonder is whether water is playing a part in the process? My ground mix has a fair amount of water in it. I was feeding them over 5 ounces each, and that can include an ounce of water. The cooked diced meats have less added water. So in terms of nutrients added, they should require less "weight" of food.

Their stool seems the same, although they are not eating a fully cooked meal. They poop every couple days, pale, hard, and non-smelly.
 

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Fourth, Franksmom, I also get my turkey pre-ground from a free range turkey distributer. They clean them by hand, grind the meat, and immediately flash feeeze. Because of the flash freeze, and buying direct, I'm okay feeding it raw. We haven't had a problem at all. You might check to see how your gound turkey is processed.
 
Thanks for the information!

Unfortunately, there is no way Frank will try ground raw meat so that is why I would like to try cooked (the price of his nature's variety wet diet is killing me). Ava my other cat actually likes chunked meat more than ground so I am going to make some of that for her wit the TC feline. 
 
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