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- Jul 26, 2013
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I know I'm a little late... but as a new 'raw feeder' I just finished going through most of these questions myself so I'll add my 2 cents based on my recent experience. Our three cats (mom and two babies,1.5 years and 10 months) have a chicken allergy; in the process of researching our options we landed on raw homemade as the most appropriate option for our wallets.
We started them about 2 (or 3?) months ago by just offering them some of our ground venison one night when we made burgers. They loved it so we ordered some alnutrin and borrowed a friend's grinder ( Gander Mountain professional #12). We started by just adding a small spoonful to their regular food- we didn't mix it in. They all ate it! The next meal two of them ate it first and then ate the canned stuff! Then we started increasing the amounts of raw and decreasing the amounts of canned. I think it took less than two weeks to get to all raw! Your cats will tell you how fast to go! One post I read here recommended keeping a diary to track how much they eat and how enthusiastic they are about the different flavors. That was really useful. Another thing I might suggest- we trained them to eat out of their own dishes and not to go to each other's... they each eat in their own corner and we spent a few months sitting and supervising meal time and pushing them away from other dishes and back to theirs when they wandered, but it has made all of this so much easier now!
We buy our meat locally and grind it- our grinder from gander mountain is only $149 online right now. Currently we get boneless meats and add eggshell powder or use alnutrin w/ calcium. so I can't say anything about your math on the bone percentages. We do have a little trouble with the calcium being a little high with the alnutrin mix and causing some hard poops
When we use the alnutrin we don't add anything extra... We are starting to make the food without it though, using the 80/10/5/5 ratio; I asked in another thread about supplements- the result was that I should at least add 1 to 2 egg yolks per cat per week ( so I'll add 3 to 6 each week) and fish oil (5,000mg per 3 lbs meat). I plan on using a significant amount of heart meat so I am not going to worry about adding taurine. The reason you need to add the supplements it that when the meat is ground/frozen it allows for increased oxidation/breakdown of the nutrients... the degree of breakdown is not certain but in most opinions adding extra nutrients is better than not having enough.
Pasturizing is way over my head! I figure if they eat dead stuff in the wild the stuff from my fridge is safe enough for them
I originally didn't want to freeze in containers. I didn't want to worry about defrosting containers and finding space in my freezer for them... but, we ended up with 16 oz Ziploc Tupperware- square shaped. Our cats eat just about a pound a day combined so we pull one container out of the freezer each night. It works well; we end up with one dirty tupperware each day, and three in the fridge at any given time (the one we are feeding from, the one that is almost completely defrosted for tomorrow and the one that we pulled out last night which is still very frozen). My only concern with the glass would be the possibility of breaking it when you freeze the food (but I have no actual experience with that).
When it comes to how much they will eat long term the 2-4 percent of their body weight a day is about right for us! Our mom cat, Bub, is a bit over weight at 11.5 (but loosing steadily 1 to 2 oz a week!) and she gets 3% or 5.5 oz a day. Our big boy, Bear, is quickly approaching a lean 14lbs at 10 months old! He is currently in a growth spurt and getting 4%-5% ( 8 oz or 9 oz) a day for the last week... we knew to increase the amount he was eating because he all of a sudden started looking significantly thinner than he had been. Hopefully we will bring him back down to the normal 4% or 7 oz soon. The last baby, Penny, weighs about 9 lbs and eats about 4% also. I would take a look at the mother cat's weight to try to estimate the long term food amounts.
I want to add also that this forum is awesome and these folks here are so very helpful with any questions you come up with!
We started them about 2 (or 3?) months ago by just offering them some of our ground venison one night when we made burgers. They loved it so we ordered some alnutrin and borrowed a friend's grinder ( Gander Mountain professional #12). We started by just adding a small spoonful to their regular food- we didn't mix it in. They all ate it! The next meal two of them ate it first and then ate the canned stuff! Then we started increasing the amounts of raw and decreasing the amounts of canned. I think it took less than two weeks to get to all raw! Your cats will tell you how fast to go! One post I read here recommended keeping a diary to track how much they eat and how enthusiastic they are about the different flavors. That was really useful. Another thing I might suggest- we trained them to eat out of their own dishes and not to go to each other's... they each eat in their own corner and we spent a few months sitting and supervising meal time and pushing them away from other dishes and back to theirs when they wandered, but it has made all of this so much easier now!
We buy our meat locally and grind it- our grinder from gander mountain is only $149 online right now. Currently we get boneless meats and add eggshell powder or use alnutrin w/ calcium. so I can't say anything about your math on the bone percentages. We do have a little trouble with the calcium being a little high with the alnutrin mix and causing some hard poops
When we use the alnutrin we don't add anything extra... We are starting to make the food without it though, using the 80/10/5/5 ratio; I asked in another thread about supplements- the result was that I should at least add 1 to 2 egg yolks per cat per week ( so I'll add 3 to 6 each week) and fish oil (5,000mg per 3 lbs meat). I plan on using a significant amount of heart meat so I am not going to worry about adding taurine. The reason you need to add the supplements it that when the meat is ground/frozen it allows for increased oxidation/breakdown of the nutrients... the degree of breakdown is not certain but in most opinions adding extra nutrients is better than not having enough.
Pasturizing is way over my head! I figure if they eat dead stuff in the wild the stuff from my fridge is safe enough for them
I originally didn't want to freeze in containers. I didn't want to worry about defrosting containers and finding space in my freezer for them... but, we ended up with 16 oz Ziploc Tupperware- square shaped. Our cats eat just about a pound a day combined so we pull one container out of the freezer each night. It works well; we end up with one dirty tupperware each day, and three in the fridge at any given time (the one we are feeding from, the one that is almost completely defrosted for tomorrow and the one that we pulled out last night which is still very frozen). My only concern with the glass would be the possibility of breaking it when you freeze the food (but I have no actual experience with that).
When it comes to how much they will eat long term the 2-4 percent of their body weight a day is about right for us! Our mom cat, Bub, is a bit over weight at 11.5 (but loosing steadily 1 to 2 oz a week!) and she gets 3% or 5.5 oz a day. Our big boy, Bear, is quickly approaching a lean 14lbs at 10 months old! He is currently in a growth spurt and getting 4%-5% ( 8 oz or 9 oz) a day for the last week... we knew to increase the amount he was eating because he all of a sudden started looking significantly thinner than he had been. Hopefully we will bring him back down to the normal 4% or 7 oz soon. The last baby, Penny, weighs about 9 lbs and eats about 4% also. I would take a look at the mother cat's weight to try to estimate the long term food amounts.
I want to add also that this forum is awesome and these folks here are so very helpful with any questions you come up with!
