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- Apr 10, 2017
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Hi all, it's been a while. For about a year, I fed my cats homemade raw - hare today chubs balanced to 80/10/10 with supplements. Around March or so, time constraints and circumstances made it difficult, so I switched to radcat.
Now that radcat shut down, Saipha and Mishka are reluctantly eating frozen primal turkey. I don't want to give them the other varieties that have fish, they refuse to eat venison, and I'm not happy with the vegetables in primal in any case.
So now I'm considering prey model raw. Saipha and Mishka both happily eat chicken wings (bone included), chicken heads and necks, heart, and muscle meat of various types. They're excellent chewers and easily handle large chunks. I recently managed to convince them to eat lamb kidney, and liver is next on the menu. But I have a few questions before I switch them over completely:
1) Over what time period should I balance their diet? Is a week reasonable?
2) Are supplements necessary? And if so, which ones? I'm mostly going to try to source fresh meats, but they may have to be frozen, particularly the organs. I do plan to feed them heart for taurine, but what percentage of their diet should heart make up?
3) I used to do 80/10/5/5. Would you all recommend 83/7/5/5 instead? Saipha and Mishka never strain in the litterbox, but their poop is fairly small, dry, and crumbly (as it has been since I switched them to raw).
4) Should sardines/anchovies or egg yolks be a part of their diet? How much?
5) Anyone have a good method for meal prep? Do you prep once a week and pack each meal in Tupperware? Or pack each cat's food for one day and split into as many meals as seems reasonable?
6) With multiple cats (especially one active cat who needs to eat more and a cat who is prone to gaining weight and gets less food), how do you make sure each cat only eats their own food? And any solution for dealing with cats who like to run away with their chunks?
7) Anyone have a reliable source for bone percentages of chicken wings, heads, and necks?
Thank you all in advance!
Now that radcat shut down, Saipha and Mishka are reluctantly eating frozen primal turkey. I don't want to give them the other varieties that have fish, they refuse to eat venison, and I'm not happy with the vegetables in primal in any case.
So now I'm considering prey model raw. Saipha and Mishka both happily eat chicken wings (bone included), chicken heads and necks, heart, and muscle meat of various types. They're excellent chewers and easily handle large chunks. I recently managed to convince them to eat lamb kidney, and liver is next on the menu. But I have a few questions before I switch them over completely:
1) Over what time period should I balance their diet? Is a week reasonable?
2) Are supplements necessary? And if so, which ones? I'm mostly going to try to source fresh meats, but they may have to be frozen, particularly the organs. I do plan to feed them heart for taurine, but what percentage of their diet should heart make up?
3) I used to do 80/10/5/5. Would you all recommend 83/7/5/5 instead? Saipha and Mishka never strain in the litterbox, but their poop is fairly small, dry, and crumbly (as it has been since I switched them to raw).
4) Should sardines/anchovies or egg yolks be a part of their diet? How much?
5) Anyone have a good method for meal prep? Do you prep once a week and pack each meal in Tupperware? Or pack each cat's food for one day and split into as many meals as seems reasonable?
6) With multiple cats (especially one active cat who needs to eat more and a cat who is prone to gaining weight and gets less food), how do you make sure each cat only eats their own food? And any solution for dealing with cats who like to run away with their chunks?
7) Anyone have a reliable source for bone percentages of chicken wings, heads, and necks?
Thank you all in advance!