Starting homemade raw diet

[Baya08]

Hello again everyone! My 5 years old cats mainly ate canned food mixed with cooked ground chicken until i started learning more about cat nutrition and realized how unhealthy commercial food is and how unbalanced their meals are.
so after many days spent researching i decided to switch to raw food BUT the importance of preparing a balanced meal scared the heck out of me,i do not wish to harm my cats while trying to do the opposite
(Commercial raw food isn’t an option where i live so i have to make it myself tho)
I found many recipes all including muscle liver,hearts,bone,supplements and sometimes eggs.
my concern is mostly with the supplements and eggs...i know raw egg yolks are good for them but are they 100% safe? are they a substitut for supplements or are both necessary in the diet?
Also : raw meat,organs and bones seem to have all the vitamins and minerals cats need (especially when its not ground meat like i intend to use) except for vitamin E that is found in EGGS so why add supplements?
I can add taurine and vitamin B because cats can’t overdose on them but im a bit anxious when it comes to the other stuff...
Lastly,what else do i need to add to the mixture? And should i lightly roast the chicken chunks to eliminate any bacteria on the surfaces? And ANY tips on how to balance ratio’s and measurements are welcome and much needed! Should i use online calculators?

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi!
Until one of the experts sees your post, if you haven't seen this yet it might have information for you;

Homemade & Raw Food For Cats - A Collection of Guides - TheCatSite

Editorial note - TheCatSite.com does not advocate feeding raw food to cats. Over the past years, leading veterinary organizations have published statements on the topic. They all advocate against feeding raw food to cats, commercial or homemade. If you're considering switching to a raw diet...

thecatsite.com

Also alnutrin and ezcomplete are ways to add what is necessary. Another source is this

Making Cat Food

A veterinarian discusses making a homemade diet for your cat with a balance between cooked and raw homemade cat/kitten food, safety, and detailed directions.

catinfo.org

 

[Baya08]

Hi!
Until one of the experts sees your post, if you haven't seen this yet it might have information for you;

http://[URL]https://thecatsite.com/c/homemade-raw-food-for-cats/

[/URL]

Also alnutrin and ezcomplete are ways to add what is necessary. Another source is this

http://[URL]https://catinfo.org/making-cat-food/

[/URL]

I have already read the second one and it mentioned almost the same supplements i found everywhere but the first article was alot more natural and stated that synthetic supplements aren’t needed as long as ratio’s are respected! I’m even more confused haha

 

[daftcat75]

I would say that an unbalanced, improvised, or as I like to say, going off-road with the recipe is just as bad as not feeding raw at all. I would also recommend that you keep some canned in their diet until you're certain your recipe is nutritionally complete. Even then, I would keep some canned in as a minority portion of their diet as a little extra insurance and flexibility--especially if you ever run out before you can make a new batch or you encounter supply issues with one of the ingredients.

Eyeballs and brains are something that cats would normally eat in the wild that is not easily sourced in homemade. This is (among other reasons) why some supplements are needed. Other reasons why supplements are needed is that processing and storage (freezing) of food can cause vitamins to degrade. These recipes, like the one from catinfo (or Feline Nutrition) have been put together by veterinarians. Trust those who have done the work before you rather than trying to off-road it on your own.

If you're confused or unsure, maybe start with a premix first like EZ Complete or Alnutrin. You don't have to switch them to homemade overnight. You probably won't get it right on the first batch anyway. It's better to start from a place of strength like a good canned and a good premix. Then you can stage in your homemade as a minority portion of their diet until you're confident in its quality and completeness to fully (or mostly) transition your cats to it.

 

[Baya08]

I would say that an unbalanced, improvised, or as I like to say, going off-road with the recipe is just as bad as not feeding raw at all. I would also recommend that you keep some canned in their diet until you're certain your recipe is nutritionally complete. Even then, I would keep some canned in as a minority portion of their diet as a little extra insurance and flexibility--especially if you ever run out before you can make a new batch or you encounter supply issues with one of the ingredients.

Eyeballs and brains are something that cats would normally eat in the wild that is not easily sourced in homemade. This is (among other reasons) why some supplements are needed. Other reasons why supplements are needed is that processing and storage (freezing) of food can cause vitamins to degrade. These recipes, like the one from catinfo (or Feline Nutrition) have been put together by veterinarians. Trust those who have done the work before you rather than trying to off-road it on your own.

If you're confused or unsure, maybe start with a premix first like EZ Complete or Alnutrin. You don't have to switch them to homemade overnight. You probably won't get it right on the first batch anyway. It's better to start from a place of strength like a good canned and a good premix. Then you can stage in your homemade as a minority portion of their diet until you're confident in its quality and completeness to fully (or mostly) transition your cats to it.

I have never even thought about trying to off-road it on my own,i posted this BECAUSE i got mixed opinions from different vets and wanted to understand the details more in order to provide the best and healthiest option for my cats.
I got confused by how freezing destroys vitamins and minerals in meat yet most recipes add the supplements prior to freezing and they’re not destroyed..i also read that nutrients coming from natural food and synthetic aren’t absorbed the same in the pet’s body...i’m new to this and obv lack alot of info.
However,i already feed them good canned and will continue to do so from time to time until i get the recipe right like you said!

 

[daftcat75]

Minerals don’t degrade. But vitamins do. Unless your cat is hunting and eating fresh meat, certain vitamins can and will degrade at every step of food making (butchering, freezing, transportation, thawing, cooking if you’re doing that.). Supplementation either adds what’s lost or adds insurance against current and future degradation.

 

[Baya08]

So i guess making my own supplement mixture is better? Because the supplements i found at the store are heavily loaded with minerals and vitamin A but contain a little amount of anything else (online orders are very limited in my area because of the coronavirus situation,i was told i will have to wait months to get my orders) ..i just bought fish oil and vitamin E And will look for taurine powder,anything else you recommend i add?

 

[SpecterOhPossum]

I don't make raw but I like this guy and this is a good video however if I'm misguided here, feel free to slap me!


...Ice cubes however sound very stupid to me, lol. I'd recommend weighing the portioned servings and storing them in mason jars in the freezer to ensure daily caloric accuracy.

 

[Baya08]

Thank you i haven’t seen this one his mixture is not complicated and he used everything i wanna use except for vitamin B complex which i haven’t found yet

 

[daftcat75]

I don't make raw but I like this guy and this is a good video however if I'm misguided here, feel free to slap me!


...Ice cubes however sound very stupid to me, lol. I'd recommend weighing the portioned servings and storing them in mason jars in the freezer to ensure daily caloric accuracy.

I use to portion to ice cube trays because they are easy to thaw and serve on demand. With a mason jar, I’d have to remember to move it from freezer to fridge at least the night before I need it and I’d have to use it all up in a two or three days. Whereas ice cubes, especially if they are the thin bottle cubes like those you can drop into a water bottle, can be pulled from the freezer and thawed to serve in just a minute or two under warm water. But these days, when I do make a batch, I portion to plastic baggies. Wasteful. I know. But she doesn’t eat very much of the raw. So I weigh out about 2 servings into a plastic baggie and press those baggies very flat before freezing. This makes thaw to serve from the freezer something even Krista (barely) has the patience to wait for.

I didn’t watch the video all the way through. Those supplements look right. Except. Are those thighs bone-in? Otherwise where is the calcium coming from?

 

[Baya08]

I use to portion to ice cube trays because they are easy to thaw and serve on demand. With a mason jar, I’d have to remember to move it from freezer to fridge at least the night before I need it and I’d have to use it all up in a two or three days. Whereas ice cubes, especially if they are the thin bottle cubes like those you can drop into a water bottle, can be pulled from the freezer and thawed to serve in just a minute or two under warm water. But these days, when I do make a batch, I portion to plastic baggies. Wasteful. I know. But she doesn’t eat very much of the raw. So I weigh out about 2 servings into a plastic baggie and press those baggies very flat before freezing. This makes thaw to serve from the freezer something even Krista (barely) has the patience to wait for.

I didn’t watch the video all the way through. Those supplements look right. Except. Are those thighs bone-in? Otherwise where is the calcium coming from?

I think He left the bone in some and took it out in the others. See 7:08

 

[SpecterOhPossum]

I use to portion to ice cube trays because they are easy to thaw and serve on demand. With a mason jar, I’d have to remember to move it from freezer to fridge at least the night before I need it and I’d have to use it all up in a two or three days. Whereas ice cubes, especially if they are the thin bottle cubes like those you can drop into a water bottle, can be pulled from the freezer and thawed to serve in just a minute or two under warm water. But these days, when I do make a batch, I portion to plastic baggies. Wasteful. I know. But she doesn’t eat very much of the raw. So I weigh out about 2 servings into a plastic baggie and press those baggies very flat before freezing. This makes thaw to serve from the freezer something even Krista (barely) has the patience to wait for.

I didn’t watch the video all the way through. Those supplements look right. Except. Are those thighs bone-in? Otherwise where is the calcium coming from?

Yep, bone in, he left bone in and skin on with a few and removed the excess ones... That makes sense. I used to use plastic baggies too and currently use them for her addons to canned (to make the canned calorically accurate) but decided to get the jars to just cut costs and waste. I've actually been hunting for some steel or glass teeny flat stackable containers for the add ons but no luck so bags make sense in that regard. The container ones I find usually have weird design choices that you can't scrub and wash properly. Specter also only can be trusted to have less than an ounce in one sitting (major scarfer) so throughout the day she's fed hourly which usually meant a 3AM me manhandling the plastic bag and ripping it and then throwing the whole bag out and wasting the entire 6.7OZ of food because I'm paranoid, so but thawing the day prior has just been the norm in our case : p

 

[furmonster mom]

Long time raw feeder here... I started in '08, when Dr. Pierson was the primary go-to for recipes.
Since then, several other respected vets and nutritionists have joined the ranks. I think this is why you see so many different philosophies and recipes. Also, some folks are limited by what is available to them either locally or financially. You need to decide what "style" works for you.

There are those who work with meat only; they need lots of extra broad supplementation.
Also, cooking meats will require broad supplementation.
Some work with meats and organs: their supplementation becomes a little more specific.
Some work with the MBO 80-10-5-5 ratio. Depending on the variety, they may need minimal to no supplementation. Variety is the key, here.

I'm of the opinion that eggs are a great add for any style, as well as a bit of fish oil now and then (though some have it as part of their mix). Depending on the individual cat and how they respond to the diet, some folks end up adding probiotics for good measure.

I personally do not feel the need to sear meats before processing (bagging/freezing). But that's more of a comfort level that comes with time and experience.

Start with small batches.
Watch how your cats respond to it: Do they gulp it down? throw it back up? ignore it completely? Do they have soft poo, or is it hard and dry? All these things will give you clues on how to adjust your next batch.

Be patient.
With yourself, and with your furkids.
It's an adjustment.

 

[daftcat75]

I jumped right in the first time and made the recipe exactly as one of the sites said to. Krista couldn't be bothered with it after one bite.

From that point, I made several micro-batches (1 lbs at a time) starting with one ingredient at a time. Obviously she likes the meat because I'd cut her off slices while I was processing it. The first micro-batch was meat, liver, and calcium supplement. She liked that. And I staged in one ingredient at a time. I came to learn two things. First, she has a definite preference for leg meat, specifically thigh meat. But more importantly, she does not like the B vitamins that smell like feet. I can get maybe 1/4 of a B-50 into 1 lbs of meat before she turns away. But my homemade raw has never been a majority of her diet (except for a few weeks last year when she wouldn't eat anything else until her dentist appointment.)

Count on it being a refinement process trying to stick as close to the recipe as your furkids will accept. This is why I recommend keeping canned in the majority until you know the recipe that they like. You may have to keep some canned in anyway to balance out what they don't like. I can't give Krista eggs because she has an allergy to them and she doesn't like the B's. So, if I can ever get a regular supply of gloves again, the homemade for her will be treat meals once or twice a day with canned filling out the rest of her diet.

 

[Silver Crazy]

Another thing to consider is when jumping into raw is that if a cat has been on canned food is that they have to learn to chew again.
If the cat eats a few mouthfuls then seems to reject the rest it could be that the underused jaw muscles suddenly hurt like hell..you know what its like yourself when you use muscles you haven't used for a long time..it hurts. And can cause the cat to reject the raw for a couple of days after because it was at first a bad experience.
So keep the chunks small until the cats jaw muscles have developed a bit more then you can give it some good chewy bits to clean its teeth and enjoy a good munch.

 

[Baya08]

Another thing to consider is when jumping into raw is that if a cat has been on canned food is that they have to learn to chew again.
If the cat eats a few mouthfuls then seems to reject the rest it could be that the underused jaw muscles suddenly hurt like hell..you know what its like yourself when you use muscles you haven't used for a long time..it hurts. And can cause the cat to reject the raw for a couple of days after because it was at first a bad experience.
So keep the chunks small until the cats jaw muscles have developed a bit more then you can give it some good chewy bits to clean its teeth and enjoy a good munch.

Even tho i was feeding them canned food i sometimes give them raw chunks as a snack so it’s not that new to them,but i did cut them very small when i made my first batch yesterday,thank you for the advice! [/QUOTE]

 

[Baya08]

Long time raw feeder here... I started in '08, when Dr. Pierson was the primary go-to for recipes.
Since then, several other respected vets and nutritionists have joined the ranks. I think this is why you see so many different philosophies and recipes. Also, some folks are limited by what is available to them either locally or financially. You need to decide what "style" works for you.

There are those who work with meat only; they need lots of extra broad supplementation.
Also, cooking meats will require broad supplementation.
Some work with meats and organs: their supplementation becomes a little more specific.
Some work with the MBO 80-10-5-5 ratio. Depending on the variety, they may need minimal to no supplementation. Variety is the key, here.

I'm of the opinion that eggs are a great add for any style, as well as a bit of fish oil now and then (though some have it as part of their mix). Depending on the individual cat and how they respond to the diet, some folks end up adding probiotics for good measure.

I personally do not feel the need to sear meats before processing (bagging/freezing). But that's more of a comfort level that comes with time and experience.

Start with small batches.
Watch how your cats respond to it: Do they gulp it down? throw it back up? ignore it completely? Do they have soft poo, or is it hard and dry? All these things will give you clues on how to adjust your next batch.

Be patient.
With yourself, and with your furkids.
It's an adjustment.

Hi ! Thank you for the precious infos,it helped me alot when i made their first batch,For now i used chicken breast and organs with eggshell powder,raw eggs,fish oil and vitamin E and i plan on including turkey,lamb and beef for variety! I’m not sure if the supplements are enough but considering this is only my first try i gave it to them and they loved it ! Only problem is that i don’t know wether i should add any other supplements or keep it this way AND wether i should add a little fiber to their diet cause they have been a little constipated since i started introducing raw,yet,i’ve read on many sites that it’s an ultradigestable diet so it’s totally expected ...what do you think? Any suggestions?

 

[Baya08]

I jumped right in the first time and made the recipe exactly as one of the sites said to. Krista couldn't be bothered with it after one bite.

From that point, I made several micro-batches (1 lbs at a time) starting with one ingredient at a time. Obviously she likes the meat because I'd cut her off slices while I was processing it. The first micro-batch was meat, liver, and calcium supplement. She liked that. And I staged in one ingredient at a time. I came to learn two things. First, she has a definite preference for leg meat, specifically thigh meat. But more importantly, she does not like the B vitamins that smell like feet. I can get maybe 1/4 of a B-50 into 1 lbs of meat before she turns away. But my homemade raw has never been a majority of her diet (except for a few weeks last year when she wouldn't eat anything else until her dentist appointment.)

Count on it being a refinement process trying to stick as close to the recipe as your furkids will accept. This is why I recommend keeping canned in the majority until you know the recipe that they like. You may have to keep some canned in anyway to balance out what they don't like. I can't give Krista eggs because she has an allergy to them and she doesn't like the B's. So, if I can ever get a regular supply of gloves again, the homemade for her will be treat meals once or twice a day with canned filling out the rest of her diet.

I made a small “test” batch yesterday and i included muscle,heart,liver,egg yolk,eggshell powder,vitamin E and fish oil..they seemed to like it! Even tho my supplement mixture came out too runny and it ended up looking like a meat soup and that’s obviously not right so yes i would rather keep the canned in their diet just in case! Do you feed her canned once a day or more? I would prefer keeping it to a minimum because of how unhealthy it is and how bad it can be to their dental health.. And do you add anything else to your homemade? I saw recipes calling for certain minerals, I also haven’t used vitamin B yet but if they can smell it i doubt they’ll eat it

 

[daftcat75]

I made a small “test” batch yesterday and i included muscle,heart,liver,egg yolk,eggshell powder,vitamin E and fish oil..they seemed to like it! Even tho my supplement mixture came out too runny and it ended up looking like a meat soup and that’s obviously not right so yes i would rather keep the canned in their diet just in case! Do you feed her canned once a day or more? I would prefer keeping it to a minimum because of how unhealthy it is and how bad it can be to their dental health.. And do you add anything else to your homemade? I saw recipes calling for certain minerals, I also haven’t used vitamin B yet but if they can smell it i doubt they’ll eat it

I have an almost sixteen year old with IBD that has very likely progressed to lymphoma. She's also toothless now. She was suffering through painful tooth resorption for a couple of years that came to a head last fall when she wouldn't eat her canned anymore and the only way I could keep her eating until her dentist appointment (because her vets no longer wanted to work with her remaining teeth and insisted I take her to a dental specialist) was homemade raw. I bought a manual grinder off Amazon for $40 so I don't have to worry about jaw strength or dental health for that matter.

When I was making turkey, I would use thigh meat, liver, and heart. To that, I added seaweed calcium since she can't do bone meal or eggshell. I also add vitamin E, kelp powder (iodine), taurine, and gelatin which helps make it a slurpable texture and also provides lots of gut-healing collagens. I have since switched her to rabbit because she wasn't digesting turkey very well anymore.

With rabbit, I use thigh meat, liver, and kidneys. For some reason, the fryers I buy don't have hearts. It takes two fryer rabbits to get one pound of leg meat. That's so expensive that she doesn't get this full-time. I portion it out to fat ounce bags (about 30'ish grams per bag) and I get about 20 bags out of a 1 lb batch. 1 bag would be about a day's worth or two half ounce meals.

But right now, I can't get gloves and the box that I was finally able to get off Amazon needs to be conserved for her chemotherapy medicine. Butchering rabbits and making food uses a surprisingly large number of gloves to prevent cross-contamination for an immune-suppressed cat. Any time I touch a surface that's not the rabbits or the knives (or the cutting board), those gloves are done and need to be changed.

Because she's old and her digestion doesn't work like it used to and because she has IBD and/or lymphoma robbing her of calories, she gets two 5.5 oz cans of Rawz Rabbit Pate (not low quality or price) per day split across 8 meals--a little more than an ounce of food (35 - 37 grams) every three hours except on the overnight where I put out timed feeders so that I can get some sleep. There's no way I could keep up with 11 oz of raw per day. Well, more like 10 oz. Because she's toothless, the plate keeps its share and so does the carpet.

 

[daftcat75]

Another thing to consider is when jumping into raw is that if a cat has been on canned food is that they have to learn to chew again.
If the cat eats a few mouthfuls then seems to reject the rest it could be that the underused jaw muscles suddenly hurt like hell..you know what its like yourself when you use muscles you haven't used for a long time..it hurts. And can cause the cat to reject the raw for a couple of days after because it was at first a bad experience.
So keep the chunks small until the cats jaw muscles have developed a bit more then you can give it some good chewy bits to clean its teeth and enjoy a good munch.

I use a grinder (a manual number I bought off Amazon for $40) to produce a slurpable texture for my toothless senior who no longer needs to worry about dental health. After two years of tooth resorption and extractions, I took her to a dental specialist last fall and said, "make this the last dental procedure she'll ever need so we can finally be done with tooth resorption." She does pretty well with the slurpable raw when I'm able to make her a batch, when I'm able to find gloves, and good enough with canned pate. The carpet takes its share.