Need Help With Novel Protein Homemade Recipe

purplesnurple

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My 9 year old cat has IBD and has been on a homemade chicken and sweet potato food trial for 2 months now. She has improved in so many ways such as coat, skin, energy, playfulness and just seems happier. However, she has had another bad bout of diarrhea and the only way to test if it is a chicken allergy is to change the protein source. She has had fish, chicken, and turkey in the past so I need to find a suitable novel protein source for her recipe to try again and see what happens. The vet recommended duck, rabbit, or quail as examples but where on earth do you source quality meats such as these? without breaking the bank?

I should note I do not feed raw, only homemade cooked. She also doesn't eat bones and I don't really have the ability to grind or break up whole sources. The nutritionist would likely ask for boneless/skinless source such as duck breast.

I really don't want to try putting her on the crappy IBD prescription diets and she doesn't seem to do very well on commercial cat food anyways.

Any advice?
 

LTS3

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Try butcher shops and organic type markets like Whole Foods for novel proteins. Farmer's markets sometimes have locally grown novel meats for sale. Ethnic markets often have duck and rabbit and other meats not commonly found in your typical chain supermarket.

Meat doesn't have to be ground up. Small chunks is fine and gives a cat's jaw a workout.

Hare-Today.com sells a variety of meats for pet food use. Most people use the meat raw but t you can likely cook it as well.
 

valentine319

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I am transitioning to whole fine ground carcass rabbit from hare-today.com . Product | Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow My cat is allergic to fish and maybe chicken. So I got the 5 lb chub, mixed vitamin slurry and mixed it together like meat loaf. I froze them in ice cube trays and you can put in baggies after they freeze. I plan to do a bit of a picture and instructions just so people can see. I'm behind.

If you went whole fine grind carcass rabbit you wouldn't grind. You would Defrost, mix in vitamins and freeze. Alnutrin has too much iodine in it since the whole grind includes thyroid but the supplements are easy. There's a post with information on supplements to add. The fine grind is really fine and any iffy bone pieces kitty will leave on the plate.

I needed a novel protein for allergies. I've been paying $100+ per month for canned and she's not doing better. It sounds as if you are familiar with supplementation since you're doing home made.

So far the change is going really well. I figure this would get me started. It's in the right ratio 80/10/10. After transitioned I'll work to rotate between Turkey and Duck too.
 

orange&white

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I would question the sweet potato more than the chicken. amysuen amysuen has been using a cooked chicken recipe with no vegetable. You could use her method, but with a novel protein if you don't want to test chicken without any vegetable before moving to a more expensive base protein.
 

amysuen

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How was she with the turkey? Personally I'd test chicken without veggie first, before trying a more expensive protein. I priced duck once and almost fell over! :shocked:

If you don't use bones, what do you use for calcium? I pressure cook the bones in a little water for 90 minutes on high, then puree them in the blender (Ninja). It works better to do the bones without cooking liquid first, then add the liquid after they're pureed. Someday I hope to get a grinder...
 
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