Starting Raw, Have Questions (of Course):

[mokapi]

To preface, I've read through several of the posts in this particular part of the forum, trying to find an answer for my question.

I'm not new to the benefits of a raw diet-- I fed it to my dog for a couple of years-- but I haven't ever tried it with my cats, mostly out of fear of getting them sick with spoiled meat (my dog ate a lot of freezer burned game, as it was all I could usually afford). Recently, my older cat (~8 years) has been begging very sweetly for chunks of raw chicken thighs. I've been secretly splitting a chicken thigh between my dog and two cats when my boyfriend isn't looking, LOL.

My cats' bag of kibble is about empty, and Mrowmrow's hankering for raw chicken has reignited my pursuit of raw After some quick research, I figured out there's a raw food vendor called My Pet Carnivore about 10 minutes from my work. They sell a huge variety of finely ground, whole prey foods; some more coarsely ground mixes; entire organs, heads, etc...just generally good stuff. I bought a few tubs of finely ground, whole prey chicken, and one tub of a chicken "supermix", which is more coarsely ground, but has extra hearts and liver.

I do not have the option to make my own raw food right now. I feel like MPC is my best choice, but I would also like this to be as easy as possible. Just being honest here, folks.

At 2.5% of my cat's weight (the ideal amount to feed to maintain weight, I think), they should be getting just under a cup of food, total, once a day (I will split this into two meals). Additionally, assuming, that the whole prey mixes are the ideal 80/10/10. I like to think that no additional supplments are required. HOWEVER, I am aware that cats require taurine and vitamin A, which can be found in hearts and livers, respectively. My plan was to feed about 1/2 a cup of the ground whole prey mix twice daily, and add 1/2 a teaspoon of liver and heart (every other day) to their evening meals.

Will that be "supplement" enough? I can rotate between chicken, turkey, fish, pork, etc., and once I know they'll actually eat it (I'm worried about our kitten, Keegan, who is unsure of everything in his life except the fact that he definitely needs to use both litterboxes, one right after the other, every time he needs to relieve himself), I can make weekly trips to MPC and pick up 2-4 protein sources a week.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

 

[Graceful-Lily]

When raw meat is put through the grinding process, it losses a lot of essential nutrients. That's why it's highly recommended to add a supplement to the ground meat. For example, TCFeline Original Mix (not sure where you live).

I'm also not sure about the percentage or nutrients in the organs. How do you know how much to add to make it a nutritionally complete meal? I find it easier to just buy a ready made supplement and add it to the meat. It's also what I was told to do when I started transitioning to raw and asked for help here. I'm sure you'll get the same answer unless someone has another way of doing things.

 

[orange&white]

Looks like the SuperMix is balanced, unless you want to add some taurine just to be on the safe side. I add the supplements from feline-nutrition.org to my homemade mixes (Vitamin B-complex, E, Taurine, Lite Salt, egg yolks).

I weigh pet foods, so I'm not sure how to convert weight percentages of the mix to cups and teaspoons. (Sorry!)

Heart is rich in taurine and is considered a muscle meat... adding 1/2 teaspoon is almost nothing. Their Super Mix uses 1/3 hearts.

Adding 1/2 teaspoon of liver may be too much as it is very rich and Vitamin A can accumulate in the system and become toxic.

I'd probably call the manufacturer and ask for the percentages of meat/bone/organ in their mixes and go from there.

 

[mokapi]

Thanks for the responses!

I looked at the WildTrax supplement, & will look into TCFeline. As far as weighing goes, I just google searched "___ ounces to cups", LOL. I'll hopefully be able to pick up a food scale this weekend.

I can easily add an entire heart into every meal, or half of one...I know from experience that my older cat will readily gobble them up. Would you recommend one of those every day, or every other day? Can I use chicken hearts purchased from a grocery store?

I spoke with a MPC rep yesterday as I was picking up the food, and he said that the SuperMixes are actually TOO organ-heavy, and that the regular ground blends are the "balanced" ones (since they're "whole prey" blends...the entire chicken, minus the feathers).

I tried feeding this morning-- Mrowmrow loved it; Keegan gave it a sniff, recoiled, and immediately tried covering it like someone had left poop in his bowl. He wouldn't even eat it if I mixed in half a can of wet food...I guess I couldn't have two easy eaters.

 

[orange&white]

Thanks for the responses!

I looked at the WildTrax supplement, & will look into TCFeline. As far as weighing goes, I just google searched "___ ounces to cups", LOL. I'll hopefully be able to pick up a food scale this weekend.

I can easily add an entire heart into every meal, or half of one...I know from experience that my older cat will readily gobble them up. Would you recommend one of those every day, or every other day? Can I use chicken hearts purchased from a grocery store?

I spoke with a MPC rep yesterday as I was picking up the food, and he said that the SuperMixes are actually TOO organ-heavy, and that the regular ground blends are the "balanced" ones (since they're "whole prey" blends...the entire chicken, minus the feathers).

I tried feeding this morning-- Mrowmrow loved it; Keegan gave it a sniff, recoiled, and immediately tried covering it like someone had left poop in his bowl. He wouldn't even eat it if I mixed in half a can of wet food...I guess I couldn't have two easy eaters.

My mixes usually contain 20%-25% chicken hearts and gizzards. Hearts for taurine content; gizzards to lower the calorie content since I usually include most of the skin and fat from muscle meats. You don't really need to worry about feeding too much heart...except that you don't want to throw off the 80/10/10 balance of meat/bone/organs.

An entire chicken is around 30% bone, so as much as I hate to disagree with the MPC rep, that mix probably needs to be thinned out with extra boneless meat and organs.

Glad to hear Mrowmrow (love the name!) took to the raw food immediately! Keegan may need a bit of his usually canned food mixed in, or a piece of sardine, or some other enticement. When I started on raw fed cats, I mixed a large can of their cat food into the blend and slowly cut it out. I still needed better toppers for one of my three cats.

Someone on here said they put a blob of raw food into the cat's mouth and once he tasted it decided it was great food. Wish I had tried that when I first started. One cat took 3 months to convert.

 

[orange&white]

Also, you asked about grocery store chicken hearts. I buy all grocery meats because that's what I can afford for two cats and a dog. Going on 6 years raw (with a gap in the middle). No problems.

 

[mokapi]

Should not be a problem for me to thin out the whole prey mix with added organ meat, especially if the organs can be chicken hearts from Kroger I can also make a trip to a market to get some various meat cuts. Do you think that I should do more like 1/2 of a meal from the ground mix, or 3/4?

Unfortunate that the MPC blends aren't precise enough, but understandable. They also offer whole prey ground duck, rabbit, turkey, and emu "for cats" (aka finely ground). Do you think there's one animal that's more "balanced" than another when it's whole? Is there an ideal red to white meat ratio?

 

[mokapi]

Also, I wanted to add: I am extremely fearful of going overboard with organ meat. When I fed my dog raw, I made the 10% organ meat part of the 80/10/10 scale a once-weekly thing. Is it okay to put a large amount in one meal, and little to none in others for that week? Liver is obviously the easiest to obtain, but is it best from any particular animal?

 

[mokapi]

*Sigh* One more thing: just looked up Alnutrin, and I see that it's recommended for "chicken or rabbit". I am a very literal person-- does that mean I can't use it in conjunction with ANY other meat source? Since it has added taurine, will that take care of my issue with measuring out heart and organ meat?

 

[orange&white]

Also, I wanted to add: I am extremely fearful of going overboard with organ meat. When I fed my dog raw, I made the 10% organ meat part of the 80/10/10 scale a once-weekly thing. Is it okay to put a large amount in one meal, and little to none in others for that week? Liver is obviously the easiest to obtain, but is it best from any particular animal?

I'm answering your 2nd question 1st, because it's easier and I'm feeling lazy this Friday.

My cats eat 80/10/10 balanced meals every day, unlike my dog who eats his organs 2 days a week and his bone 5 days a week. A couple days a week he has boneless meat meals, and on Saturday I balance his diet to be 80/10/10 over the previous 7-day period. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I believe that cats' digestive systems are less tolerant of diet fluctuations than are dogs'.

I usually mix 7-10 days of cat food over the weekend and freeze it in tubs that last about 2 days each, so that I know that every meal is balanced.

Dogs are easier to feed.

 

[orange&white]

*Sigh* One more thing: just looked up Alnutrin, and I see that it's recommended for "chicken or rabbit". I am a very literal person-- does that mean I can't use it in conjunction with ANY other meat source? Since it has added taurine, will that take care of my issue with measuring out heart and organ meat?

You can use it with any protein. You don't have to worry about adding heart with a taurine supplement.

Organs are a different issue. You want 5% liver and 5% other organ. (I think there is an Alnutrin that has liver powder...or Vitamin A supplement that would substitute for liver...but you need to verify that...I'm not sure. It may be calcium supplement instead of bone that I'm thinking about.)

 

[orange&white]

Should not be a problem for me to thin out the whole prey mix with added organ meat, especially if the organs can be chicken hearts from Kroger I can also make a trip to a market to get some various meat cuts. Do you think that I should do more like 1/2 of a meal from the ground mix, or 3/4?

Unfortunate that the MPC blends aren't precise enough, but understandable. They also offer whole prey ground duck, rabbit, turkey, and emu "for cats" (aka finely ground). Do you think there's one animal that's more "balanced" than another when it's whole? Is there an ideal red to white meat ratio?

Hearts and gizzards count as muscle meat, not organ meat.

The MPC person you spoke with wasn't very helpful, but assume that their whole ground chicken is similar to Hare Today:
Product | Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow. The MPC may be even higher in bone since they are including heads and feet, and I don't think Hare Today is.

Hare Today lists whole ground chicken at 68% meat 27% bone 5% organ [liver].

What you need to do is get the bone % down to 10%, which means adding extra muscle meat and liver, keeping the liver @5%, and preferably adding another secreting organ @5% of the total final mix.

I'm not at my home computer, so I don't have access to my spreadsheet. @valentine put together a calculator/spreadsheet like mine. If she's around, maybe she can plug the numbers in for you. If not, I can get some numbers for you over the weekend.

 

[mokapi]

Hmmm, I gotcha. Math. I hate math. I think I'll need to get a food scale sooner than later.

MPC does offer ground beef pancreas. I'm trying to think and off the top of my head, I can't remember my local market having anything but liver available. Shoot.

I'd love to have some of those numbers!

 

[orange&white]

My local (conveniently located) store usually only has liver (out in the open). I just asked this week about sweetbreads though, and he said he would order for me. He forgot to order the first time, but I called this AM and he did place an order that will be in tomorrow. You might ask if there is any offal lurking in the back room at the grocer.

Otherwise, I drive far across town to either a Hispanic grocery or the other direction across town to an Asian market. You can also try local mom & pop meat market butcher shops.

I usually end up with a lot of pork kidney as the "other organ" from the Hispanic market, so I'm looking forward to getting some beef sweetbreads back in the diet.

 

[orange&white]

Hare Today lists whole ground chicken at 68% meat 27% bone 5% organ [liver].

I'm not at my home computer, so I don't have access to my spreadsheet. @valentine put together a calculator/spreadsheet like mine. If she's around, maybe she can plug the numbers in for you. If not, I can get some numbers for you over the weekend.

So, here are some numbers for you. One pound (16 ounces) of whole ground chicken contains the following:

10.88 oz boneless meat
4.32 oz bone
.8 oz liver

Since you want the bone to be 10%, one pound of whole ground chicken will make 43.2 ounces of food.

You will need to add:

23.7 oz boneless meat
1.36 oz liver
2.16 oz other secreting organ meat

You will end up with this 80/10/5/5 mix:

34.56 oz boneless meat (80%)
4.32 oz bone (10%)
2.16 oz liver (5%)
2.16 oz other secreting organ (5%)

Total 43.2 ounces, or 2.7 pounds of cat food.

Then mix in the amount of Alnutrin (if that is what supplement you choose) for that amount of food.

 

[mokapi]

Ah!!! Excellent! Did you find the numbers for the chicken somewhere particular? I'd love to find them for a few other protein sources as well.

EDIT: I found cat centric.org, and will be trying to use that site to figure all this out!!

Tried adding chicken heart-- M loved it. Tried adding liver, and he looked at me like I was nutty. Maybe something else will be more palatable, LOL.

Keegan still won't touch it, no matter what the ratio of wet food:raw is.

 

[orange&white]

I used the Hare Today site since they break out the percentages for their products: Product | Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow