My Pet Carnivore, Hare Today, Or Brb? Also, When To Supplement Liver With Ground Whole Ca

[Charityjune]

Hi, all -

I'm feeding 4 cats, and starting to transition them to raw with some frozen commercial raw foods. However, I don't plan to do that long, as its much cheaper and easier on my budget to buy ground meats and add my own supplements --

I see lots of discussion of Hare Today, but haven't come across mentions of My Pet Carnivore and BRB, both of which sell pre ground pet meat at cheaper prices.

Anyone use them? My Pet Carnivore seems more transparent about their food sources and to have better food sources than BRB, but still cheaper than Hare Today --

What are people's opinions of the various companies, and if you use them, what supplements do you use and why?

I'd assumed that carcasses with bone and organ included wouldn't need supplements, yet many of you do so, yet leave out the liver supplements. Adding in the supplements would be easy enough, but aren't whole small prey like rabbits or chickens already providing all needed nutrients?

Supplementing seems easy enough, but I'm worried about liver supplementation.

Should I add in extra liver to be safe? How would I know when it is too much? (1 liver per whole ground rabbit, for instance, doesn't seem likely to meet the 80/10/5/5 requirement, but other organs in there may be helping out?)

LOST NEWBIE!

 

[Charityjune]

Oh, and lastly - the youtube videos and recipes i see assume you do the grinding - if you have frozen ground meat, how do you mix in the slurry? Do you let the whole chub thaw out and mix it in by hand? What methods do you use?

 

[Charityjune]

OH and iodine - I guess those are my two areas of concern - when buying pre ground whole carcass meat, what should i do about adding in iodine and liver? just not add either?

 

[dhammagirl]

I mostly use whole carcass ground rabbit from Hare Today in 5lb chubs. I thaw out one whole chub, add the appropriate amount of Alnutrin for meat and bone, and some additional taurine powder and fish oil(anchovy-sardine). Add some water and mix by (gloved) hand. Package and freeze.
The supplements are to make sure it's balanced since freezing can alter the nutrients or deplete them a bit. The Alnutrin has some iodine. (I contacted the manufacturer to inquire about the iodine level, concerned about adding it to meat that contains the thyroid, and was told it's just a minimum amount and should pose no issues.)
I remember looking into My Pet Carnivore, but don't remember why I decided to go with Hare Today. I'm not familiar with BRB. I've been super pleased with HT. If I'm making raw turkey from boneless thighs, I thaw a 5lb chub, I add in turkey hearts and livers that I grind with a small manual grinder, and Alnutrin with eggshell calcium, extra taurine, fish oil, water.
I also feed whole jumbo mice, guinea pig and chicks. Whole mice are nutritionally complete. Rabbit is a bit low on taurine, so I add a bit more. Any excess taurine is just excreted by kitty, while a deficiency could get serious. I don't think it's necessary to add more liver to the whole carcass ground rabbit or whole carcass ground cavies.
Birds have a lot of bone to meat, so constipation is a concern and requires additional meat to balance it out.

It is overwhelming at first! Look at what you can afford, both financially and time wise, try different meats to see what your kitty likes or rejects, and go from there.

 

[Ardina]

I considered other suppliers, but I ended up going with Hare Today because they're closest to me, so the low shipping cost + 1 day shipping made up for being slightly more expensive. Plus, they have a great variety of ground meat, chunks, and whole prey. And what really helps is that the website posts the percentage of meat, bone, and organ for all their ground mixes.

The way I figured out the supplements was to do this: first, make an 80/10/10 mix of meat/bone/organ. Some mixes like ground whole carcass rabbit are already in that ratio, so no need to add liver. Other mixes like ground chicken are bone-heavy and don't have enough muscle meat and organ, so I did some math on an excel spreadsheet to figure out how much boneless meat and liver/kidney to add.

Then I add my standard supplements because the meat has been ground and frozen and thus may have lost some nutrients. I use the feline-nutrition.org recipe and add chelated manganese to the formula, so my supplements are taurine, Vitamin B complex, Vitamin E, manganese, egg yolks, fish oil, and lite salt for iodine (note: I omit the salt for whole carcass grinds that have a thyroid gland included). I dissolve all the supplements in water and mix the slurry into the mostly-thawed meat. I then portion out into smaller containers and refreeze.

I make a month's batch at a time, and for the rest of the month, I just pull a container out of the freezer each day, thaw, and serve.

 

[Charityjune]

My Pet Carnivore states

"We recommend a diet consisting of 80% meat, 10% organs, and 10% bone to approximate a whole prey diet. Our “Ground Whole” products are consistent with this model."

Seems easier to deal with those products rather than hare today, which have a lot more bone than needed. Only thing is I get the sense that in addition to other supplements, I SHOULD add in heart and liver for these products, as well ----

 

[missmimz]

I primarily feed boneless with EZcomplete or alnutrin with eggshell calcium. I recently switched to Rabbits4u, which is another smaller supplier. Although her prices can be higher than HTs depending on what you order. Her duck quality is amazing, though. MPC is pretty high in bone, so watch out for that, which is why their prices are low.

 

[BrattyBratBrat]

We use Hare Today, currently feed a boneless cooked homemade diet with Alnutrin supplement, salmon oil, and Dr Goodpet feline digestive enzymes, but we will eventually be trying raw with Hare Todays whole ground rabbits and birds.

 

[sophie1]

I tried My Pet Carnivore and was really pleased with their products - unfortunately my cats were not! The meat has a "gamey" smell which is simply due to how the animals are raised.

MPC has chicken and turkey mixes that contain all the organs you need and are about 20% bone (calculated from recipe on the website). You therefore need to feed equal amounts of plain meat to dilute the bone to 10%. You can feed separately, and I feed in the form of chunks.

Between this and the deli containers, MPC makes life a lot easier. I just defrost the container in the fridge (be sure to put it in a tray in case it leaks), refreezing anything that won't get eaten in a few days. When I feed the cats, I shake on a homemade supplement mix that approximates Alnutrin and add fish oil. No more premixing, which is something I unfortunately no longer have time to do.

Hare Today sells excellent products, but they don't have these mixes and I find the chubs more complicated to deal with. Still, I'll probably keep ordering from them if I can't convince my cats to like the MPC meats.

What's "BRB"?

 

[valentine319]

I use hare Today whole carcass rabbit. Other vendors didn't always have rabbit. My cat has allergies so I can't just give her chicken or turkey. I make 2 months of food at a time. I order 5 lb whole ground rabbit carcass chubs.

When I receive my order all the 5lb chubs go on a cooking sheet in the fridge to defrost 1-2 days. They are frozen solid. On mixing day I mix 5lbs of slurry (the vitamins, eggs and fish oil and water) in a dish and put that in the fridge. Then i pull the meat chub out. I prefer the meat icy defrosted not full defrost. I use a knife and chop the chub up in a bowl. Pour the slurry over the top. I use food safety gloves and break up frozen pieces then mix it like you would meat loaf. I then portion one day of food in a quart bag and flatten. Then 7 of those in a gallon bag. Toss that in the freezer. I wash the bowl and do it all over again. Since I've got a week in each gallon bag i can easily see how much i have left.

If it isn't 80/10/10 then you must rebalance it with liver, boneless meat and such. I've seen too many constipation horror stories to risk too much bone. Whole carcass rabbit is 80/10/10 with hare today. I don't add lite salt to whole carcass rabbit from hare today since it has it in it.

 

[Ardina]

I tried My Pet Carnivore and was really pleased with their products - unfortunately my cats were not! The meat has a "gamey" smell which is simply due to how the animals are raised.

MPC has chicken and turkey mixes that contain all the organs you need and are about 20% bone (calculated from recipe on the website). You therefore need to feed equal amounts of plain meat to dilute the bone to 10%. You can feed separately, and I feed in the form of chunks.

Between this and the deli containers, MPC makes life a lot easier. I just defrost the container in the fridge (be sure to put it in a tray in case it leaks), refreezing anything that won't get eaten in a few days. When I feed the cats, I shake on a homemade supplement mix that approximates Alnutrin and add fish oil. No more premixing, which is something I unfortunately no longer have time to do.

Hare Today sells excellent products, but they don't have these mixes and I find the chubs more complicated to deal with. Still, I'll probably keep ordering from them if I can't convince my cats to like the MPC meats.

What's "BRB"?

I was thinking of trying MPC because it's cheaper than HT. The website claims that their mixes are 80/10/10. How did you calculate that they're 20% bone? It's a shame that your cats didn't like it!

 

[sophie1]

I know about the claim of 80/10/10 on MPC's website, but I don't believe it's correct. They give the ingredient proportions of the mixes and you can simply look up the bone proportion for each. For the chicken supreme, it's 2/3 whole chicken and 1/3 organ mix (Heart/liver/gizzard). The USDA tables will tell you that whole chicken is 27% bone. So the precise bone content of the mix is 18%. The turkey delight product is a bit more complicated, especially because there are two numbers out there for necks depending on what it includes, but it worked out about the same.

My whole hangup is ordering rabbit. It's hard to get any other way. The simplest option for me, really, is Oma's Pride which will ship in 10 lb increments. Just wish they carried rabbit.