New kitten arriving and want to start feeding her raw right away

[fhicat]

 

[harrylime]

Wow, what a mess!

I defrosted all 20lbs, but in the end I only got through 12lbs. I stuck the remaining 8lbs back in the freezer. You think it's OK to re-freeze it even though it was fully thawed? How long will it last in the freezer?

Also I basically sprayed down my entire kitchen with 409 since raw chicken was basically flying everywhere.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

 
Wow, what a mess!

I defrosted all 20lbs, but in the end I only got through 12lbs. I stuck the remaining 8lbs back in the freezer. You think it's OK to re-freeze it even though it was fully thawed? How long will it last in the freezer?

Also I basically sprayed down my entire kitchen with 409 since raw chicken was basically flying everywhere.

Yes, I think it's ok to re-freeze it and thaw it again later.  After all, that's what has to happen to get it mixed up and ready to freeze with the Alnutrin.  Then you refreeze it and thaw it.  I take a 10 lb block and partially thaw in order to cut it in half, then refreeze half and work with part of it, then once that much has been eaten, defrost the other half and work start all over again. 

I'm not quite sure why raw chicken was flying everywhere.  Guess it's a learning process.  I just keep a trash bag in one of my double sinks, and the big bowl/pot to mix in right next to the sink.  Then as I cut open the meats, I dump them into the mixing container, and drop the bag holding the raw stuff into the trash bag.  I just keep doing that until all the meat is in the mixing bowl.  The other side of the sink is still free for hand washing and getting water to mix in the Alnutrin, etc.  I DO usually already have the Alnutrin mixed up though.  After all the meats are in the mixing pot, I slowly pour in the Alnutrin w/water (so as not to splash it outside of the bowl), and start mixing, using my hands , double gloved because that meat is still VERY COLD

.  I just squeeze it all together and it soaks up the liquid really fast.  (and I'm usually adding in more plain meat, so I really have to mix well to get that incorported into the ground mix.  Then I portion it out.  Oh!  maybe that's where you had difficulties?  Well, that's a learning process too.  I fold back the tops of the ziplocs and that way they stay open and then I line them up all along the counter.   But, as I said, it's a learning process. 

So...here's the new baby acclimating?

 

[harrylime]

Success!

ccLm4Cdl.jpg

• harrylime
• Nov 30, 2013

 

[nbrazil]

Love that picture!!!! 

May I ask what breed she is? Oh wait, "may I" doesn't make sense... I already did!

 

[harrylime]

She's a Scottish Fold. 12 weeks old. I should probably make a thread for her since I have so many cute photos of her from the last week since I got her. There's a lot of photos on my Instagram if you use that: @mikenouveau

 

[pinkman]

Tamago! Such a great name (it means egg, right?) I can go for some dashimaki tamago right now. 

Just a heads up, now that you got Tamago on raw, you might wanna invest in some ceramic or steel dishes/bowl. Unless the one you are already using one, that is. Plastic harbors bacteria and can cause feline acne. I use both ceramic and steel... I prefer the ceramic personally but the cats don't seem to mind.

 

[fhicat]

Also, expect the water fountain to never get used anymore. 

 

[harrylime]

 
Tamago! Such a great name (it means egg, right?) I can go for some dashimaki tamago right now. 

Just a heads up, now that you got Tamago on raw, you might wanna invest in some ceramic or steel dishes/bowl. Unless the one you are already using one, that is. Plastic harbors bacteria and can cause feline acne. I use both ceramic and steel... I prefer the ceramic personally but the cats don't seem to mind.

Yup, she's our little eggy. 

Thanks for the advice, I'll order one off of amazon. I'm still trying to perfect my routine here, because once I empty out the food into the dish, I throw the little ziplock bag into the trash and then the trash STINKS until I take it outside... I have a big garbage can in a small apartment so we don't fill it up very quickly. Also disposing of the uneaten bits of raw chicken that have dried up and hardened is a pain as well!

 

[fhicat]

I throw the little ziplock bag into the trash and then the trash STINKS until I take it outside... I have a big garbage can in a small apartment so we don't fill it up very quickly. Also disposing of the uneaten bits of raw chicken that have dried up and hardened is a pain as well!

This is expected. Meat left out for long smells terrible. 

As for the food debris, get one of those bristled brushes made for dishes. Put a little soap on the brush and scrub to get rid of the hardened stuff. Works great everytime.

 

[pinkman]

Perhaps double bag if you have any plastic bags lying around? I sure do. I'm sure you got one already but a garbage bin with a LID helps so much. I live in a fairly small apartment in Brooklyn so I feel your pain.

Regarding the dishes - I know a few posters here use paper plates or paper "french fry dishes". I don't have too many cat dishes, so whenever I fed my kitten after he was done I immediately just placed the dish in the sink with water. Of course, with Tamago being so young she probably needs like 4, 5, 6 meals a day so unless you work from home it might be difficult to swiftly put empty dishes in the sink asap. When I first got my kitten at 9 weeks old (rescue) I worked from home, so that was a system that worked for me. If you use ceramic dishes I will fill it water, place them into the microwave for a bit which will warm things up and make it easy to remove the crusted bits. 

Regarding using/not using the fountain after raw - I find that Bagel (now six months old) still uses his fountain and water bowls to drink out of. The older cat Lox will touch the fountain once in a blue moon...

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

I actually rinse out the ziploc snack bags before I toss them into the trash to help cut down on the smell.  I do that as I'm washing up their dishes anyway.  And any leftover food I do toss down the garbage disposal before wash up their dishes.  I really hate to do that, but every once in awhile I thoroughly clean out the garbage disposal with vinegar and baking soda, plus every night I scrub it thoroughly on top. 

One thing I have done too, if there is a lot of leftover food, is toss it back in the freezer for trash day, just to keep it frozen until then.  You could do that with all the used snack sized "trash" bags.  Just have a large ziploc bag in the freezer for the smaller used bags and toss them in there.  Toss anything into that bag that's "raw" trash and save it for the times you take the inside trash outside.

 

[harrylime]

Throwing the empty bags back in the freezer isn't a bad idea actually. You don't think it will stink up the freezer before it gets a chance to freeze?

When I was talking about the dried-up food on her dish, I didn't mean that it was difficult to scrape the meat off, on the contrary it's actually quite easy. It's what to do with those bits that's annoying. I don't have a garbage disposal, so I can try to push most of it down my normal sink drain... or I can throw it in the trash and just deal with the smell. 

Do you guys find that the meat smell escapes even a sealed ziplock bag? My girlfriend just came back from out of town and told me that she though the entire fridge smelled like the meat even though it's all sealed.

 

[harrylime]

 
Of course, with Tamago being so young she probably needs like 4, 5, 6 meals a day so unless you work from home it might be difficult to swiftly put empty dishes in the sink asap. 

Actually she doesn't eat THAT much. Probably 7oz per day, which is two of my ziplock bags full of food. Also every time I empty a bag into her dish I think "damn that's a lot of food." Does it seem too little? 

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

 

Actually she doesn't eat THAT much. Probably 7oz per day, which is two of my ziplock bags full of food. Also every time I empty a bag into her dish I think "damn that's a lot of food." Does it seem too little? 

If she's not quite finishing up her food, then I would say it's not too little at this point.  You will, naturally, need to increase the amount as she grows, then decrease when she if fully grown.  You are feeding this 7 oz in several meals through the day though, aren't you? 

As for putting the empty bags in the freezer, and even putting her "leftovers" there, no, I don't think it would stink up the freezer.  As a mater of fact, knowing you don't have a garbage disposal, I would probably empty out her bowl back into the ziplock, save it for the next meal, then at the end of the day put whatever would normally go down the drain into the ziploc and put it into a larger ziploc in the freezer.  It will freeze in nothing flat and shouldn't smell at all.  Then on trash take out day, pull it from the freezer and take it out.

Also, I'm going to make another suggestion for the next time you make up food, which might work out better for your situation.  Take it or leave it

.  With my GROUND foods, I actually store it in little glad storage tubs.  With my strips of meat, I store those in ziploc snack bags.  I have some storage tubs that are about 5" x 5" and maybe 2 " deep, and also some that are about 2" x 4 " and 2 " deep.  So, if I am making a 4 lb batch of ground, I put probably 3 lbs in the larger containers, and then fill about 4 of the smaller containers with the last pound.  On the day I take out the last smaller container to use (which will last me 2 days), I also take out one of the larger containers to semi-thaw for about 12 hours in the fridge.  Once it has thawed enough to cut it, I dump it out of the container onto a plastic cutting board and cut it into four pieces and put those pieces into more of the smaller Glad storage containers and they then go right back into the freezer (except one. which will be needed the next day, so I let it continue to thaw).  When the containers get empty, I just wash them right along with the food dishes and reuse them.  I DO only use them for their raw food though, not for anything else, because (in my mind anyway), I feel like they always have the smell of raw in them since they are plastic, even though they say "no BPH".  So...I still deal with ziploc bags everyday for my guy who eats frankenprey, but the tubs work better for ME for the ground.  But they do take up quite a bit of space in the freezer.  But you bought another freezer, didn't you?  Oh, and I forgot, if I have more than one type of ground that I am serving, then I have to label all of the tubs.  I just use a piece of paper and a little bit of packing tape to hold it on.  Then I even reuse that label.  It peels right off the lid of the tub and I stick them inside a cabinet door for later use

 

[meranaldar]

You can also simply wash, dry and reuse the bags. I do that all the time, it doesn't take much time unless you were to let them build up, and it cuts down on a lot of waste and plastic going to the landfill.

Anything that needs to be thrown out just goes in a bag in the freezer and then in the garbage the night before garbage day. It'll sometimes stay in the freezer for a couple of weeks depending on how much is in there. I've never had any problems with it smelling.

 

[harrylime]

That's what I've started doing, putting a small garbage bag for all chicken related items in my freezer, and it's made a world of difference! 

The only other issue is I'm slightly paranoid about raw chicken to begin with, and if even a drop gets on my countertop (I live in a small Manhattan apartment) I basically spray the whole thing down with disinfectant. Also I bought a case of like 400 plastic forks off of Amazon, so now if I need to mix the kitty's food up after it's been sitting for 2 hours or so (since she often doesn't finish a whole portion in one sitting), then I just use a plastic fork and toss it out, instead of worrying about cross contamination in my sink.

 

[harrylime]

For no particular reason, I'm thinking that there might be too much bone in the Hare Today (well I guess it doesn't matter who the supplier is... chicken is chicken) ground chicken mixes. I read in another thread that it might a good general idea to add more liver to the mixes. Do you guys think it's OK if I buy the ground heart/liver/gizzard mix from Hare Today ( https://www.hare-today.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_32&products_id=67 ) and maybe mix in 1 lb for every 5 lbs or so of ground chicken mix (and then add the Alnutrin for 6lbs total)? Would this be too much organ meat?

 

[pinkman]

Organ meats can be pretty rich also - it really depends on the individual cat if it's TOO rich or not.

Have you tried a little small amount of egg yolk (raw), or just give her plain muscle meat such as chicken thigh, breast, or gizzard? Heart is another good choice too - if you want to lower to amount of calcium overall. Hare-Today grinds in general are pretty bone heavy - so now I give my cats egg yolks, thighs, gizzards, hearts as part of their "snack".

15% of their diet can be unbalanced technically, so you can experiment. 

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

 
For no particular reason, I'm thinking that there might be too much bone in the Hare Today (well I guess it doesn't matter who the supplier is... chicken is chicken) ground chicken mixes. I read in another thread that it might a good general idea to add more liver to the mixes. Do you guys think it's OK if I buy the ground heart/liver/gizzard mix from Hare Today ( https://www.hare-today.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_32&products_id=67 ) and maybe mix in 1 lb for every 5 lbs or so of ground chicken mix (and then add the Alnutrin for 6lbs total)? Would this be too much organ meat?

This is almost exactly what I do with the H/T, because their organ mix is 1/3 liver, 1/3 heart and 1/3 gizzard .  The only difference I do is I mix 1 lb into TEN lbs of their ground mix, just because I don't want to add in TOO much liver.  And, yes, I increase the Alnutrin to include the organ mix poundage as well.  Then, on top of that, if I feel someone in the house is still a little constipated (ie I either witness excess straining in the litter box or I see footprints in the box but nothing else), I will add some plain ground turkey thigh to the mix.  I always keep that on hand (from Hare Today, NOT from the grocery store) and freeze it in 1 oz portions so I can easily just add a little to a single meal if necessary.