New To Raw - I'm So Confused

[Ardina]

Welp, turns out that my previously self-regulating, picky cat likes raw so much that she will happily eat however much I put down. So feeding her 6-7 oz/day (I think? Haven't really been measuring) for the past month has resulted in a weight gain of 4 oz. I'm going to have to be a bit more careful about how much I feed her. I'm going to try to limit her to 5.5 oz of food per day and see how she does.

On the plus side, I now have at least 3 proteins that she will eat (chicken, rabbit, and turkey) that I can rotate between. I'll see if I can convince her to try anything else. It would be nice to add a fourth for variety's sake.

 

[maureen brad]

As far as using Alnutrin with ground rabbit, I would not do that . Alnutrin contains Sodium Chloride and HT's ground rabbit includes the thyroid. If you feed a lot of rabbit this can result in to much sodium in the diet which puts a cat at risk of hyperthyroidism. I always mix up my own supplements for the ground rabbit.

 

[Ardina]

As far as using Alnutrin with ground rabbit, I would not do that . Alnutrin contains Sodium Chloride and HT's ground rabbit includes the thyroid. If you feed a lot of rabbit this can result in to much sodium in the diet which puts a cat at risk of hyperthyroidism. I always mix up my own supplements for the ground rabbit.

Thank you for the advice! I was reading some of the other threads on the issue and decided to make my own supplement mix for this reason. I was planning to follow this recipe from feline-nutrition (Easy Raw Diet Feeding for the Busy Person - Feline Nutrition - about halfway down the page where it gives a recipe for 5 lbs of pre-ground meat/bone/organ). Would you recommend halving the Lite iodized salt with the whole carcass rabbit? Or eliminating it altogether?

 

[maureen brad]

Thank you for the advice! I was reading some of the other threads on the issue and decided to make my own supplement mix for this reason. I was planning to follow this recipe from feline-nutrition (Easy Raw Diet Feeding for the Busy Person - Feline Nutrition - about halfway down the page where it gives a recipe for 5 lbs of pre-ground meat/bone/organ). Would you recommend halving the Lite iodized salt with the whole carcass rabbit? Or eliminating it altogether?

I leave it out altogether. I use the same supplement recipe you found on feline -nutrition.Because the rabbit has thyroid the lite salt is not needed. On www.catinfo.org Dr. Pierson adds chicken to her rabbit so she does add the lite salt,if she didn't add the chicken she would not use the salt. For 2 years I used Alnutrin with the rabbit until someone wrote about the possible problem with it here.If you are using the whole carcass rabbit some people feel it does not need to be supplemented at all because it is 80/10/10 , I like to play it safe so I do supplement.I was so happy to have found the recipe for whole grinds at Feline-nutrition, makes it very easy.

 

[valentine319]

Welp, turns out that my previously self-regulating, picky cat likes raw so much that she will happily eat however much I put down. So feeding her 6-7 oz/day (I think? Haven't really been measuring) for the past month has resulted in a weight gain of 4 oz. I'm going to have to be a bit more careful about how much I feed her. I'm going to try to limit her to 5.5 oz of food per day and see how she does.

On the plus side, I now have at least 3 proteins that she will eat (chicken, rabbit, and turkey) that I can rotate between. I'll see if I can convince her to try anything else. It would be nice to add a fourth for variety's sake.

I think I'm going to have to watch that here. So far on raw my cat thinks she should be fed ever 4 hours and maybe a snack in between? It's great she loves it but trying to wake me at 3:30 am for food wasn't.

 

[Ardina]

My foster kitten has decided that she would rather steal my cat's raw food than eat her own Friskies. Smart kitty

 

[orange&white]

My foster kitten has decided that she would rather steal my cat's raw food than eat her own Friskies. Smart kitty

The barely-weaned feral kitten I trapped 6 days ago is already refusing the kitten formula and canned food mix I made for him, and is demanding, "Raw Meat! Raw Meat! Raw Meat!" My raw food mix costs a lot less than the goat's milk and Greek yogurt I bought for him to put in the kitten formula. Should have just started with raw.

 

[Ardina]

I did more research, and I think you're right that liver really shouldn't exceed 5%. But I also don't feel comfortable feeding less than 10% organ long term, so I might just get some kidney and add some to get to 10% total.

Sigh, neither of my cats are willing to eat the kidney chunks... It smells pretty terrible, so I don't blame them. But the dilemma remains - how to get to 10% organ and keep liver at 5%? I'm suspecting that no matter what organs I add, they're going to turn up their noses unless it's ground in. So I'll probably have to grind up or at least cut the kidney into smaller pieces so they don't notice it as much.

 

[orange&white]

I would mince the kidney into tiny pieces, or give it a whirl in a food processor or blender. Both my cats love organs...I mince it for a different reason...so that neither cat ends up eating all the organs.