RAW food with lowest *bone* 🦴 content ?!

[Mrcclms]

Hi guys,

what's the raw food (similar to Darwin's) with the lowest amount of bone content ?

I was giving my cat Darwin's Turkey, it was great for his stool and stomach overall but it started vomiting after a week or so and I think it's the bone content


thanks a lot

 

[lisahe]

Stella & Chewy's Selects have no bone. They're little frozen raw patties of turkey or chicken. Our cats like them a lot. The downside: they're expensive. They make a nice snack, though: one per cat each day.

 

[Mrcclms]

Thanks !

 

[LTS3]

Stella and Chewy's is awfully low in calories, around 27 calories per one of those US dollar-sized patties. For a snack they're ok but for a meal, you'd need to give at least 3 or 4 patties. Each bag doesn't have a lot of patties either so you'd be buying expensive bags very frequently.

Have you looked at Vital Essentials? I'm not sure of the bone content off the top of my head.

You can "dilute" out high bone content by adding boneless meat but you have to be careful about not inadvertently causing an unbalanced diet. I"m not familiar with how to figure out "diluting" bone correctly but there are people here on TCS who do.

 

[Azazel]

Stella and Chewy's is awfully low in calories, around 27 calories per one of those US dollar-sized patties. For a snack they're ok but for a meal, you'd need to give at least 3 or 4 patties. Each bag doesn't have a lot of patties either so you'd be buying expensive bags very frequently.

Have you looked at Vital Essentials? I'm not sure of the bone content off the top of my head.

You can "dilute" out high bone content by adding boneless meat but you have to be careful about not inadvertently causing an unbalanced diet. I"m not familiar with how to figure out "diluting" bone correctly but there are people here on TCS who do.

It’s really hard to do with a commercial complete diet because we usually don’t know the full nutritional analysis of the diet unfortunately.

 

[Mrcclms]

I guess I'll try the Darwin's Lamb ?

they told me has low bone content

Anybody has experience with it ?

 

[daftcat75]

Darwin Lamb is a boneless option. I don't have experience with Darwin because my IBD girl can't have bone (rules out the turkey option) and has no interest in red meat (rules out the lamb option.) Not all cats are fond of red meat. Ask Darwin if they can send you a sample of the lamb.

 

[She's a witch]

My cats love Darwin’s lamb. I don’t however feed that every day as, well, it doesn’t strike me as a natural cat food, and plus my girl had some vomiting issues when I was giving it to her everyday (but other cat was perfectly fine), which may or may not have been caused by the fact it’s red meat.

You could also send lots of emails to Darwin’s asking them to introduce boneless Chicken and Turkey. I do that. They’ve recently had a survey asking customers what changes would they see.

I don’t know where you live, but if there are some small independent boutique like pet shops in your area, I’d ask them if they know about some small raw pet food manufacturers In your area. I now buy 2 or 3 brands that are excellent and local only, they offer mostly boneless options. My cats love them, in fact, when I gave them Stella Select and Primal the other day none of them wanted to eat it- comparing to the food they are used to, these medallions looked so watered down, with not a real “meaty” texture that they are used to from these local brands. So I’d encourage you to look for something local.

 

[daftcat75]

Stella and Chewy's is awfully low in calories, around 27 calories per one of those US dollar-sized patties. For a snack they're ok but for a meal, you'd need to give at least 3 or 4 patties. Each bag doesn't have a lot of patties either so you'd be buying expensive bags very frequently.

Have you looked at Vital Essentials? I'm not sure of the bone content off the top of my head.

You can "dilute" out high bone content by adding boneless meat but you have to be careful about not inadvertently causing an unbalanced diet. I"m not familiar with how to figure out "diluting" bone correctly but there are people here on TCS who do.

I disagree with the caloric density of Stella Selects. At 1.88 calories per gram, it is the highest (most calorically dense) I've seen in a non-dry/freeze-dried food. It's nearly twice the calories of the Rawz Rabbit and 50% more calories than the turkey. The six ounces of Rawz turkey I want her to eat would only need to be 4 ounces of Selects. This is very helpful for an old skinny cat who doesn't eat like she used to. I can't yet feed this to Krista exclusively because she won't eat enough in one go. But it is definitely the most helpful ally I have in adding extra calories to her diet and going a long way to make up the difference of what she leaves on the plates of canned.

 

[lisahe]

I disagree with the caloric density of Stella Selects. At 1.88 calories per gram, it is the highest (most calorically dense) I've seen in a non-dry/freeze-dried food. It's nearly twice the calories of the Rawz Rabbit and 50% more calories than the turkey. The six ounces of Rawz turkey I want her to eat would only need to be 4 ounces of Selects. This is very helpful for an old skinny cat who doesn't eat like she used to. I can't yet feed this to Krista exclusively because she won't eat enough in one go. But it is definitely the most helpful ally I have in adding extra calories to her diet and going a long way to make up the difference of what she leaves on the plates of canned.

This may help explain why one medallion per snack keeps our cats sated and happy for several hours. The medallions aren't big but (like Rad Cat once were, too) a little goes a long way. I'm not sure how many it would take to feed them for a day but the ingredients are pretty decent, they're preportioned into medallions, and the cats love them as long as I'm careful about zipping the bags so they don't get freezer burn! They're also so easy to feed that they're like a treat for us, considering that these cats are fed five meals a day.

I wish we had some boneless local options -- as She's a witch mentioned -- where I live but pretty much everything I see contains bone, sometimes very large quantities.

 

[She's a witch]

This may help explain why one medallion per snack keeps our cats sated and happy for several hours. The medallions aren't big but (like Rad Cat once were, too) a little goes a long way. I'm not sure how many it would take to feed them for a day but the ingredients are pretty decent, they're preportioned into medallions, and the cats love them as long as I'm careful about zipping the bags so they don't get freezer burn! They're also so easy to feed that they're like a treat for us, considering that these cats are fed five meals a day.

I wish we had some boneless local options -- as She's a witch mentioned -- where I live but pretty much everything I see contains bone, sometimes very large quantities.

I bought Stella Select and Primal just because they seem so much easier to manage and I need something for the days when I have to serve raw quicker. One of the companies I refer to (Natural Pet Pantry) sells 2lbs of some of their food in long plastic film packaging and I need to portion that, and I don’t always have time to do this in the morning. I was hoping The smaller medallions are low maintenance and they are, it’s just they don’t seem to be edible for none of my cats I think they simply prefer food that was frozen in big pieces, as even the color of such food differs.

 

[LTS3]

Leroy is one strange cat then. One 27 calorie Stella and Chewy's medallion as a snack does not keep his tummy happy.

Is the OP able to make raw using a pre-mix? Would that be less bone?

 

[daftcat75]

Krista seems to love these medallions. Except she's toothless now and easily frustrated when she can't "chew" the chewier bits. I learned this morning that if I thaw the medallion under warm water and then mince the portion with poultry shearers, she'll eat a fair amount in one go. Now that fair amount is only a quarter ounce currently. But that's worth a half ounce of calories. I'm hoping to get her up to 1 medallion four times a day.

Speaking of the medallions, these look and smell about the same as Rad Cat to me. (I broke down my very last tub last month.) But these are so much easier to portion. At her peak eating, Krista would finish a tub of Rad Cat in that iffy window of every 3 to 4 days. So after having her regurgitate the "too old" food one too many times, I learned to portion the tub into ice cube trays or snack baggies every few days. These medallions are excellent. I can thaw to serve in minutes without having to spend an hour breaking down a tub into portions every few days.

It's too early to say whether this will become a primary food or even a regular snack food. But for now, they are definitely helping to make up for short-falls in her canned food eating.

 

[daftcat75]

Leroy is one strange cat then. One 27 calorie Stella and Chewy's medallion as a snack does not keep his tummy happy.

Is the OP able to make raw using a pre-mix? Would that be less bone?

Leroy is probably not a toothless skinny old senior cat with IBD.

I struggle to get Krista to eat a half ounce of any food in one go. If she only eats a quarter ounce of this, that's worth a half ounce of calories. That's a half ounce less canned I have to plate and worry about her leaving behind. I'm hoping she'll be able to eat at least one medallion at each meal. I've been weighing them out to approximately 18 grams. If the ME is to be believed, that makes a medallion closer to 33 calories. I'm trying to get Krista to eat 42 grams (ounce and a half) four times a day. Second portions she usually gets there because she has all day or all night to finish. First portions though, if she could eat one medallion, I could cut that canned portion by half. She would have almost four hours to come back and eat a half portion. That's the hope anyway....

 

[She's a witch]

I’m starting to suspect that something was off with the Stella, and Primal I bought. Both were really watery, and I’m wondering if - because the pieces are so small - there is more ice attached to it, because it wasn’t stored properly... hence it seemed watery to me.
Or it’s also possible I was thawing them for too long. They eat raw in the morning because one of them doesn’t even like the raw food that was stored in the fridge for too long for her. And if you say Stella’s medallions thaw so quickly, and I transfwred them from the freezer to the fridge in the previous evening, it’s possible that night spent in the fridge was too much for her liking.. I’ll try to thaw it in the fridge for much shorter.

 

[daftcat75]

I can thaw to serve straight from the freezer. But because I can also grab a single day's worth from the freezer without having to break down an entire tub, I prefer to thaw the next day's portions in the fridge from the night before. I bag these individually, one medallion to a snack bag (until she's eating more than one medallion at a meal.) When I remove from the fridge, it is a cold, mushy, but still formed medallion. It only takes a minute or two running it under warm water to take the chill out. I actually find that they are quite chewy when I serve them for Krista. I still need to take kitchen scissors to them to mince them into manageable pieces for a toothless old cat. We're only on the second day of feeding these. She could decide any day now that she no longer likes these. But for now, it's pretty satisfying to see her excitedly eating a healthy portion in a single go and knowing that it counts for 1.5 times her canned food.

 

[lisamarie12]

Purpose Pet Food (freeze dried raw, must be rehydrated), claims to only use 5% bone. That's what I've been using for my Molly. They only have one protein though, chicken, although the owner indicated to me last year they may have two additional proteins by the end of this year or 2020.

 

[lisamarie12]

Have you looked at Vital Essentials? I'm not sure of the bone content off the top of my head

VE is too high in bone.

 

[Mrcclms]

My cats love Darwin’s lamb. I don’t however feed that every day as, well, it doesn’t strike me as a natural cat food, and plus my girl had some vomiting issues when I was giving it to her everyday (but other cat was perfectly fine), which may or may not have been caused by the fact it’s red meat.

You could also send lots of emails to Darwin’s asking them to introduce boneless Chicken and Turkey. I do that. They’ve recently had a survey asking customers what changes would they see.

I don’t know where you live, but if there are some small independent boutique like pet shops in your area, I’d ask them if they know about some small raw pet food manufacturers In your area. I now buy 2 or 3 brands that are excellent and local only, they offer mostly boneless options. My cats love them, in fact, when I gave them Stella Select and Primal the other day none of them wanted to eat it- comparing to the food they are used to, these medallions looked so watered down, with not a real “meaty” texture that they are used to from these local brands. So I’d encourage you to look for something local.

thabks for the info

that vomiting experience make me worry cause I stopped Darwin's Turkey when my cat started vomiting and I thought it was the bone content

but if you cat vomited with the boneless lamb, mhhh

I loved Darwin's cause for the first time my cat had perfect stool

Right now I'm trying Rawz canned turkey but he still has loose stool even if it's darker and odorless

I don't like that this rawz turkey is so watery ! It's like 70% meat in a lot of water !!

Gonna try Rawz Rabbit which is way firmer

And if doesn't work I'll go back to real meat like Darwin's Lamb or I'll start cooking at home again (turkey + liver + a bit of pumpkin + alnutrin powder)

 

[She's a witch]

thabks for the info

that vomiting experience make me worry cause I stopped Darwin's Turkey when my cat started vomiting and I thought it was the bone content

but if you cat vomited with the boneless lamb, mhhh

I loved Darwin's cause for the first time my cat had perfect stool

Right now I'm trying Rawz canned turkey but he still has loose stool even if it's darker and odorless

I don't like that this rawz turkey is so watery ! It's like 70% meat in a lot of water !!

Gonna try Rawz Rabbit which is way firmer

And if doesn't work I'll go back to real meat like Darwin's Lamb or I'll start cooking at home again (turkey + liver + a bit of pumpkin + alnutrin powder)

Whatever made my cat vomit on Lamb Darwin’s, it doesn’t mean that it will cause your cat to vomit. My observations are that too much red meat makes her vomit, but I also started regularly giving her egg yolk lecithin for potential hairball issues before her vomiting stopped, so maybe hairball had caused it. Something has worked.
Have you used any hairball remedies? Is your cat longhaired?
My cat doesn’t vomit after Darwin’s turkey, but she’s lightly constipated after it. It’s possible that the bone helps to firm your cats stool in fact.

Rawz texture vary between batches. You can get a firmer Rabbit batch only to get a watery one next time. I think it’s because they don’t use gelling agents. Last winter severe weather conditions caused the texture to change in transport. The food is fine, but just looks different. My cats prefers the watery version for some reason It’s pain to see the texture change but I prefer that to cans full of gums.

Have you tried mixing both type of food? Continue with raw like Darwin’s or homemade but also give Rawz/other good quality canned? This is what I do with my cats and it’s been working great so far. I’d rather feed her raw only but I hesitate after her vomiting episode.