plain old raw chicken?

[bisbee kitty]

Is there an ongoing discussion here somewhere between the Raw Gourmets and the chicken feeders?  I fall into the latter category and have been feeding my cats cut-up chicken thighs from Safeway, $.79 per pound on sale.  Since they won't readily eat the skin or bones this isn't a complete raw diet and I also feed them some wet commercial food and a bit of kibble, which no one prefers but I figure if they're hungry enough they can nibble at night.  Any opinions on this?  Is "plain old chicken" any better than just feeding them Friskies Mixed Grill?  Does raw need to be specialized to be worth it from a health perspective?  ETA:  no one will touch the giblet package, so an expensive specialized raw diet with organ meats would probably be a waste of money.

 

[ldg]

If you're feeding them more than 15% of their total intake as just chicken thighs, then yes, there are nutritional concerns. Cats need a lot more than just meat. If you can't balance that chicken thigh with calcium and organs, it's better just to feed them the commercial canned, and limit their raw chicken thigh to status of "treat," and keep it under 15% of their total food. :nod:

When a cat eats a small rodent, it doesn't just eat the meat, there's a lot more in that little package.

As to the night feeding, if you want them to have something for night eating, but you don't actually want to give them kibble, consider freezing wet food in ice cube trays, and putting frozen cubes out for them to eat when they're dethawed.

 

[Willowy]

It's not about being "gourmet" or "specialized" or about what kind of chicken you use. . .it's about making the diet balanced. Meat has a lot of phosphorus and no calcium. Over time, too much phosphorus and not enough calcium in the diet can cause problems. There are also a lot of vitamins missing in just the meat, so over time that can cause deficiencies. Even cheap commercial food is at least balanced and has vitamins and minerals added in the right amounts (don't go handing out kitty multivitamins! The particular amounts are important).

I'm not sure who came up with the 15% rule or the reasoning behind it (why 15%? Why not 10% or 20%? :dk, but basically, you want the majority of your cat's diet to be balanced in the amounts of vitamins and minerals it contains . There are supplements to make just muscle meat balanced, if you want to feed a lot of raw chicken and you think your cats wouldn't mind the taste of the supplement.