Raw Food And Stool Production

Gizmobius

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Long story short, Gizmo has always had digestive issues since he was adopted at 10 weeks old. As of December '17, I've been able to keep it under control with a primarily raw fed diet, lower fat proteins, and meals spaced out AT LEAST 5 hours apart. He can have a little bit of canned food which he gets as a snack and as his nightly meal before bed. So all in all, he gets two raw meals a day, one canned meal and a canned snack. He's at a healthy 13lbs and he gets a digestive enzyme/probiotic every day.

I've seen the pictures of what a raw fed cat's stool should look like. Very small and almost crumbly. Gizmo's has never looked anything like that, but rather he has very large stool. Honestly, I'd say it looks like it comes from a small dog rather than a cat! I'm not too worried as it's formed logs (usually about three of them) and that's always been my goal since he's always had extremely loose stool so I'll take large stool over that any day. But what could cause such a voluminous amount of stool? What do your raw fed cat's stool look like? I know I'm safe among cat people so let's talk poop!
 

EmmiTemmi

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I'm glad it's not just my cats who have larger poos than I was expecting on a raw diet! I've seen other raw feeders show off their cat's poo and it's so nice and small. My boy's poo has gotten a little smaller, but not near what it seems like others have. I'm just glad the smell is nearly non-existent now though!
 

Tobermory

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I have three cats and they produce three different sizes of poop. For mine, the heaviest, largest-boned cat (Lily, who's pictured in my avatar) produces the largest poops; the 8.5 pounder's is the smallest. It's actually good because I almost always know whose poop I'm scooping and it helps me keep track of regularity. (The heaviest cat also has bigger pees.) :)

I never tell non-cat people what cat people talk about...
 
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Gizmobius

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I'm glad to know I'm not alone in wondering why this boy has decided to be a small dog when it comes to his poop. :lol: My 9lb female cat who eats strictly canned food has smaller poos than he does. But his definitely has a lot more minimal smell than hers so I guess if I had to choose between small stool or non-smelly stool, I'd pick the latter every time!
 

1 bruce 1

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Our raw fed cats usually produce logs that are hard, but not rock hard, and are as close to devoid of smell as possible.
I avoid aiming for crumbly stools by decreasing bone content and upping organ content a bit. A lot of our cats are getting older (10-12+) and constipation in older cats is kind of a "thing", so we aim for non-smelly, hard-ish poop that isn't difficult to pass but doesn't just go SPLAT out of their butt, if that makes sense.
If the stools become darker or more liquid than I'd like, I up the bone content and lessen organ meats. This can be difficult with multiple cats using the same box because it takes time to realize whom is pooping what!
With my cats's ages, I have found certain things out---cat A can't handle a lot of bone whereas cat B requires more than normal, cat C needs more organs where cat D will plug up like a cheap drain filled with cat hair if they don't get fish oil, etc.
The beauty of raw feeding is the health and dental benefits. The bad side of raw feeding is you have to be vigilant and know what's "normal" for one guy but not normal for the next, etc. It can be done, it just takes patience =)

Turning our dogs over to raw was easy but when we realized the poop thing wasn't a smelly or nasty clean up job, we started toying with our cats and raw to cut down on litter odor. Lots of litters out there are superb in odor control, but if you happen to harbor lazy, lovable hogs like ours that don't always cover what they "just did", it can be a problem.

The only cat that has "noticeably" smelly poop is our boy with IBD that isn't on raw ATM. If he deals with his problems (diarrhea, which smells for obvious reasons) or constipation (when it's been "in there" for a few days, it smells like road kill left in the sun for 6 days then shoved in hydraulic acid that rotted in bovine juices then shoved under your nose) the smell is a problem. Finding a food he does well on, and being strict with it, has helped. We feed this guy more often, smaller meals.

It's possible the canned snacks are keeping that "raw fed" poop thing at bay. I'm not trying to tell you to get rid of this, because most cats (even a lot of raw fed cats) LOVE their canned food and if a little bit each day makes them happy, I wouldn't get rid of it, just yet, or at all unless the problem is bothering you. If the poop thing is an issue, I wonder if mixing his canned meal and canned snack with some bone-in-grinds wouldn't be a bad thing.
Some butchers will grind certain bones (soft bones, like poultry non-weight bearing bones) for you, but will tell you it needs to be done at the end of the day so you can't always order and pick up the same day. It might be worth playing around with? Just throwing that out there =)

And not so I sound like a raw feeding snob or a hypocrite at that....a few months ago, our entire group of cats passed a respiratory infection around. Everyone was snotting everywhere, sneezing, a few would throw up, and NO ONE wanted raw food (I can't blame them...I don't want my favorite raw veggies when I'm sick, I want comfort food!) We stopped offering raw and offered cooked which was met with mixed results. We eventually offered a quality dry food that we left out 24/7, and some canned food that was well received...but the smell of the box made me put all my monetary stock in Vick's and clothespins as cleaning the box usually resulted in scooping, swearing, more scooping, more swearing, then giving up and dumping all litter outside and filling it with fresh 2-3 times a day! (This isn't saying that their diet was terrible or that anyone who feeds kibble/canned needs to be hung in the streets or any nonsense like that, but their bodies were used to a raw diet, and with a rapid diet switch to encourage eating *as well as* an illness, I think there was a lot of nasty stuff in those boxes!! We joked that even the dogs would have passed out from the smell, LOL!)
 
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Gizmobius

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1 bruce 1 1 bruce 1 Thanks for all the info! Very interesting point about the bone content and that does make sense about how that would affect stool! I use Alnutrin with calcium so I don't have to mess around with bone at all since I wanted to start with something easy . Even when Giz was only getting half a 3oz can as a snack and three raw meals a day, his stool was still pretty large so I figured replacing one of the raw meals with a full meal of canned wouldn't make too much of a difference. :lol: The smell is still very minimal and if the large poops aren't bothering him then I won't let them bother me!
 
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