Raw Food Diet Help With Measurements And Advice

[Opi-the-furry-conductor]

Okay I've been researching homemade cat food for my Opi. Thanks to you guys and my research I know the dangers of winging it and getting the wrong measurements and over dosing. Also I have to thank all of you guys for providing me information and giving me recipes and showing me to the forums with that info. I still have him on the wet commercial food cause I know I still don't have enough knowledge to start making him homemade cat food. with your help again (sorry for being a noob >.<) I can finally understand the main things I need to start him on his raw diet. I was leaning a lot on a cooked diet but my research made me go for the raw diet. Alright now I'm having some issues with some things I'm a big dummy when it comes to conversion. Everything is in grams and mg. I'm a dummy I guess cause I only know how to measure with measure cups and tsps etc.. Could someone educate me on this so I know exactly how much to give Opi. Also the recipes talk about percentages so I guess my brain is going a bit panicky saying percentage? How do I figure that out? Also if I think I know what it is and get it wrong then Opi gets sick I'm in big trouble. So if someone could tell me how to measure out these percentages pretty please. Also another biggie ordering the supplement taurine is a big issue where I live. Can't find it anywhere in the stores and online no can do this place charges insane amount of fee's for having things delivered. It's ridiculous I use to be a big online shopper but now can't. Anyways I heard you don't have to have the supplement if you provide enough taurine in a raw diet naturally. I want to know if this is true and if so how much can I give Opi. Hearts I heard give a good amount but I need to now how much should Opi get? Also I learned he needs Vitamin A and Vitamin D I can get supplements for these but I heard it can be provided naturally in liver. How much liver exactly? Also if I choose to do the supplements how much does Opi get? Also B vitamins can that be giving naturally? How much? I should let you know that getting fresh meat is no problem for me. There's a couple butcher shops in my city and they can grind anything even the bones. I think that's it for now. Sorry for being a big noob and if this stuff was right in my face or if I'm just to dumb to figure it out and it's so easy please forgive my ignorance >.<. I've already been all over the internet trying to find this out all by myself but I just can't figure it out or don't trust my conclusion. I know how big of a deal this is and I can't get it wrong because if I do Opi could have some serious health problems so I'm doing my best to know everything before I start him on this diet. I have to be 100% sure I know everything. So thank you in advance for the help. P.S. Those who don't know Opi is about 3 months old now.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

See, all your questions I had too, that's why I feed commercially prepared raw. I did switch over once to preparing raw meat and adding in Wysong's Call of the Wild, a total supplement including liver, but then someone said it had too much Iodine, so I stopped and went back to commercially prepared. I was just too scared I'd mess up. Therefore, I am useless in trying to answer your questions. Sorry.

Hoping someone will come along and answer them. And it seems like you've already seen the threads about feeding raw and/or homemade, right?

 

[Ardina]

It seems scary and difficult at first, but the math isn't too bad once you get the hang of it! So first things first, you'll want to get a measuring scale so you can accurately weigh out ingredients. As you've realized, all the recipes give ingredients by weight, not by volume. So in the US (where we're a bit backwards), we tend to do things in pounds and ounces. Most other places do things by milligrams, grams, and kilograms.

Next, you want to get the right percentages of meat, bone, and organ. You want the mix to be 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, and 10% organ (about half liver, and half non-liver). The way to do the calculations is to first decide how much cat food you want to make. For example, if you want to make 1 kilogram (=1000 grams) of cat food, multiply 1000 grams by 0.80, and that will tell you that you need 800 grams of muscle meat. Do the same for the others, and you'll find that you need 100 grams of bone and 100 grams of organ (liver, kidney, pancreas, etc.).

Now the math gets slightly more complicated because most meats don't come in perfect percentages. A whole chicken, for example, is 68% muscle meat, 27% bone, and 5% organ. So you have to do some additional math and add some boneless meat to dilute out the bone and get to the right ratio. That additional boneless meat can be heart, since that is not considered muscle meat for raw feeding purposes. But we can go into that in more detail later.

Let's assume for now that you've managed to get the right ratios of meat to bone to organ. Now, you follow a supplement recipe. I follow the one at this link (halfway down the page): Easy Raw Diet Feeding for the Busy Person - Feline Nutrition Foundation. So for 5-6 pounds of cat food (about 2.5 kg), you'll make a supplement slurry consisting of 1-2 cups water, 4 raw egg yolks, 4000 mg taurine, 4000 mg fish oil (NOT cod liver oil), 200 IU vitamin E, 200 mg Vitamin B complex, and 1.5 tsp lite iodized salt. You'll thoroughly mix all of these ingredients into the water and then combine the slurry into the meat mix. And that's it! The cat food will be properly balanced and nutritionally complete.

I usually divide up the cat food into smaller tupperware, label, and freeze. Then I pull out a tupperware every day and feed to my cats.