Question About Including Meat

[Pucks104]

George and Louie are 6.5 months old. At the vet last week, George weighed 8.4 lbs and Louie weighed 8 lbs. The vet said they look just the right size neither too thin nor too heavy. I feed them 4 meals per day about 3-3.5 oz at each meal for 12-14 oz per kitten per day. I have been feeding them mostly Stella and Chewy’s frozen raw morsels. Needless to say this is expensive. I have given them a bit of raw stew beef. They loved it. I want to make sure that they get a balanced diets to meet their growth needs. Would substituting boneless beef or chicken for one or two of their meals each day and feeding S&C the other 2 meals be a good compromise for reducing cost but still providing for their nutritional needs? Thoughts?

 

[Azazel]

Boneless beef and chicken would be considered a treat because it’s not a balanced meal. A balanced meal has all of the right nutrients in the right amounts (e.g., vitamins, taurine). You could feed beef and chicken but treats shouldn’t make up more than 10% of the daily diet.

 

[sabrinah]

Unfortunately, the meat alone doesn't have all the nutrients needed. You could easily make the raw meat a balanced meal by adding a supplement like Alnutrin with calcium or EZ Complete. Alnutrin is cheaper and requires you to add liver. EZ Complete is more expensive but you don't need anything except meat and water.

 

[orange&white]

I agree with both responses above. Take a look at the recipe at feline-nutrition.org. Making your own mix and your own supplement mix is the most budget-friendly way to feed a raw diet. Buying all the individual supplements is somewhat a sizable up-front "investment", but then they run out at different times, so you're only replacing one here and one there.

Recipe: Feline Nutrition's Easy Raw Cat Food - Feline Nutrition Foundation

 

[Pucks104]

Ok thanks. I will look at the info on feline nutrition for guidance.

 

[Pucks104]

I read through the feline-nutrition info. It’s rather intimidating. Perhaps in time I will gather all the supplies and give it a go.

 

[Pucks104]

Why do you add taurine when it is naturally found in muscle meat and organs?

 

[orange&white]

Why do you add taurine when it is naturally found in muscle meat and organs?

Freezing, thawing, grinding meats will cause some loss of nutrients. The extra taurine (and other supplements) are probably largely precautionary insurance against any losses in processing and handling. All the supplements are water-soluble except the Vitamin E, and there is no known unsafe upper limit on vitamin E. Any excesses of water-soluble vitamins will be excreted in the urine.

 

[orange&white]

I read through the feline-nutrition info. It’s rather intimidating. Perhaps in time I will gather all the supplies and give it a go.

You might feel more comfortable after watching some YouTube videos on raw diet mixes. Once you do it two or three times, it's just as easy as cooking for yourself. Easier really, since you aren't cooking.

 

[lisahe]

I read through the feline-nutrition info. It’s rather intimidating. Perhaps in time I will gather all the supplies and give it a go.

There are also pre-mixed supplements that you can buy. They're not cheap but some of them are very good quality and they're a very good way to see how much effort you're willing and able to put into making cat food. (For me, I just don't have the time and/or the focus because of my work... it's enough of a challenge to remember to take food out of the freezer!)

I use EZ Complete, from Food Fur Life, which can be used with any muscle meat, cooked or raw. I did make a batch of home-made food using supplements that I bought -- the cats loved it -- but EZ is much easier to make small batches of food, which is my preference because of limited freezer space and our cats' love for variety.

(We feed a lot of commercial raw; I made cooked food with EZ.)

 

[orange&white]

This lady is making the feline-nutrition recipe, having the supermarket freshly grind all the whole meats for her, and using her Vitamix blender (instead of a meat grinder) to grind the bones.

 

[Pucks104]

Ok the video helps some more. Thanks for posting it. Maybe I can do this.

 

[Tobermory]

In addition to the feline-nutrition.org site, several of us here use Dr. Pierson’s recipe at catinfo.org. She’s a vet specializing in feline nutrition. So much great information on her site. Here’s the link that takes you to her recipe: Making Cat Food. It’s pretty straightforward. She does a partial bake of her meat to be super safe, and I was doing that for awhile but now I just grind and/or chunk up the meat and add the supplements. My kitties like it better completely raw. She strongly encourages you to grind bone-in but she also tells how to make it using bone meal.

I’ve also used Alnutrin with Eggshell Calcium and EZ Complete. My cats like both, and it’s very easy.

Two good sites for buying the do-it-yourself supplements: iHerb.com and vitacost.com.

 

[lisahe]

To follow up on what Tobermory said, the one time I made raw food and did the supplements myself, I used Dr. Pierson's recipe. I don't have a grinder so used bone meal. That batch was intentionally a one-off, for a cat in her last days (it was the last thing she ate, she loved it!), but I fed the leftovers to the cats we adopted a couple days later -- they loved it, too. I do think about making it again because it's obviously very good food and easy to cook with the flexibility on how much it's baked. Or not! I was able to buy all the supplement materials at local grocery stores. But EZ Complete is still a lot easier!

 

[orange&white]

There is definitely a trade-off between cost and convenience. The more someone else does the work, the more it costs.

Some of our members moved from completely prepared raw foods (e.g. Stella&Chewy, RadCat) to partially prepared foods (e.g. Hare Today) and premixed supplements (e.g. EZ Complete, TCFeline, Alnutrin), to DIY grocery cuts of whole meat with their own supplement mixes. That's a good way to get comfortable feeding raw, while lowering your cat food budget.

 

[lisahe]

There is definitely a trade-off between cost and convenience. The more someone else does the work, the more it costs.

Some of our members moved from completely prepared raw foods (e.g. Stella&Chewy, RadCat) to partially prepared foods (e.g. Hare Today) and premixed supplements (e.g. EZ Complete, TCFeline, Alnutrin), to DIY grocery cuts of whole meat with their own supplement mixes. That's a good way to get comfortable feeding raw, while lowering your cat food budget.

This is a great summary! You should post this in every thread about how to start feeding raw, orange&white !